I woke groggy from a deep sleep, and couldn’t immediately recall why I had set my alarm on a Sunday.
… Only it isn’t Sunday at all, it’s Friday…
Right. I’m off today for the Equinox. I’m up early to see the sun rise.
Welcoming the dawn, taking a moment for quiet joy and reflection.
I made it to the trailhead in time to see the first hints of dawn begin to color the horizon. It’s a gray Spring morning, quite overcast, and smelling of rain and green things sprouting all around. The meadow and marsh are looking less brown. The trees are full of little birds, and squirrels are playfully sprinting past me in the grass as if I might chase them. After yesterday afternoon in the garden, I ache all over, and would not be chasing the squirrels even if I were inclined to do so, which I’m not.
I’ll be in the garden again today, later. It’s that time. There is so much to do! Weeding mostly, this time of year, and some pruning (which I finished yesterday). Early seeds, like peas, should have been planted months ago, but my fall laziness paid off in consequences; the garden was not ready for planting. After I catch up on all of the preparatory work, I’ll plant young starts and enjoy them every bit as much as watching seeds sprout. There are lessons to be learned in the garden.
A small brown bird stops on the fence rail next to me, rather close. I stop writing to avoid startling her with my movement. We sit together for a couple minutes, then she looks at me and sings a little song before flying away. A good omen? Perhaps. If you’re into that sort of thing.
I think about the world, and it’s a crazy terrifying mess. Not humanity’s finest moment, if we’re being honest, is it? I sigh to myself and come back to this moment here. The coming of Spring… only… Spring got here weeks ago. But it is the Equinox, for me that represents balance and renewal. I breathe, exhale, and relax. I take a few minutes for meditation. As I sit, a small herd of deer wanders by, all does. They watch me with soft brown eyes as they pass me one by one. They cross the trail, heading into the meadow towards the marsh ponds. They are not troubled by the state of the world.
I reflect on the lessons of deer and of gardening. Life has a lot to teach us, when we live it. That’s worth considering more closely. I smile to myself and to the plump robin rustling breakfast from the ground beneath the leaf litter at my feet.
I welcome the Spring and the dawn of a new day. It’s time to begin again.
I’m sitting at the halfway point of my morning trek across the marsh. It’s beautiful here, the day is young, and the sunrise was splendid. I feel fortunate to enjoy this moment.
Each time for the first time. Each moment the only moment.
(No AI was used to create or edit this content.)
I walked the trail wrapped in contentment, joy, and love. Simply mentioning to my Traveling Partner that I might like to explore using a bit of makeup to improve my appearance on work calls got me more support than I could have imagined. I grin to myself, swinging my feet as I sit on this fence rail listening to the sounds of life along the riverbank in Springtime. I smell flowers.
I once wore makeup a lot. That was a very long time ago. I stopped all that when I went to war. When I came home none of that sort of thing to do with appearances mattered to me at all. Life was too short, too precious, and I was for sure too broken to be bothered with any of that. I could have continued to wear my BDUs and combat boots indefinitely. I exchanged them for jeans and sweaters. After my divorce, I just wasn’t having any part of partners, or lovers, or frankly anyone else telling me how to look or what defines feminity. I am a woman. I’ll define feminity for myself, as I please, and the entire world can fuck right off. 😂
…No one else tells me who I am, that belongs to me…
…But… Aging being what it is, and spending so much time “on camera” in work meetings, I can admit that it wouldn’t hurt to take another look at what I can do with a little makeup, minimal effort, and little expense, to highlight my natural look without plastering over my face with some mask of acceptability. lol Tools are tools; they serve a purpose.
I watch little birds playing in the trees. Being present matters most. Life is not about appearances.
…Where we turn our attention largely determines what’s on our minds…
There is beauty in the world. Are you seeing it?
I think about appearances, and distractions. I think about the way media companies and tech companies seek to hold our attention, in spite of our own interests and desires. It takes an act of will to put that slop aside and turn one’s attention to what matters most. This only works if we have an understanding of what does matter most to us as an individual (which implies sufficient self-reflection and self knowledge to have that understanding). It’s not surprising to me that so many people just give up and dive back into their phones. (Although that does strike me as a terrible wasteful approach to human potential.)
What are you looking at? The sky? The tree? The little birds? Choose. The choice is yours.
Are you mired in despair, trapped by doomscrolling? That’s a choice. Put it down. Go outside. Read a book. Laugh with a friend. You are choosing, every moment. No books? Go to a library; they still exist. No friends? Meet real people in the world, interact with strangers, and open yourself to conversation. It may feel awkward. Your results may vary, but the verbs and choices are yours. Incremental change happens over time. Keep at it. Choose your path and walk it.
Not a bit of this “choose your path” stuff is “easy”. Choices are complicated. The menu of the Strange Diner is so much to take in. “Can’t” is easier than doing the verbs, failing, learning, and growing… But here it is, Spring. It’s a lovely time for growth and beginnings. Like learning to apply makeup again, as if for the first time, it’s often the decision to do it that is the most difficult part. Taking the first step feels hard. Maybe that’s a choice, too?
… Gnothi seauton…
… What will you do about that? It’s important. Who are you? Who do you want most to be? To whom have you obligated yourself, or given your decision making? Are you just mouthing someone else’s opinions? Are you living your life?
I think about it as I sit watching a new day unfold. I’m glad I took the day off for self-reflection and meditation. Later, I’ll be in the garden, clearing away the weeds and preparing the soil. Yes, of course it’s a metaphor – but I’ll also really be there, with my fingers in the soil, doing the verbs. That’s how practicing works.
[No AI was used in writing or editing this content.]
It is Wednesday. An ordinary day in all obvious respects. Today I did not drop any bombs on my neighbors. It was surprisingly easy. There is reciprocal communication on all sides; I wave and say “hi!” when I see them, they return my greeting. No bombs required. I’m quite certain that adding bombs to our interactions would not be at all helpful, and the destruction would be costly. Just saying, the whole “let’s drop some bombs” approach to diplomacy isn’t a particularly useful way of reaching accord with one’s neighbors. It seems, in fact, pretty fucking stupid, but here we are; fuckwits with too much power dropping bombs because no one is stopping them from doing so.
I get to the trailhead before daybreak, put on my headlamp and set off down the trail. I get to my halfway point in darkness and sit listening to the sound of the creek nearby, still full and fast from recent days of rain. No flooding, and most of the puddles on the trail are gone after a couple of warm Spring afternoons. I hear soft hesitant footsteps, something stirring in the brush. A deer steps out of the trees along the trail and slowly walks past me, her eyes on me as she passes, then another, and then a third. They step down the trail a ways, before turning and disappearing from view.
I sit awhile with my thoughts. I have a lot to think about. I let the thoughts come and go like clouds, or the turn of an unread page in a book I’ve read many times before, skipping ahead to something better. I am choosing what to spend my time on, and where to put my attention.
I’m eager to get back to painting, if not this weekend, then after the Anxious Adventurer has moved out and I have my space back. The lack of creative work isn’t really about the space, though, it’s the environment. Initially, I was exhausted from caregiving and uninspired. This stopped me painting for about a year. The “emotional environment” became a more profound impediment, fairly quickly. It was an unfortunate harbinger that the living arrangement wasn’t going to work out long-term; I need to be able to paint in my own home. It wasn’t anything deliberate and there was no malicious intention, but there also was no willingness to be aware of the problem nor to address it. So. Here we are.
The wheel keeps turning. The clock keeps ticking.
One more work shift, then a long weekend for the Equinox. I hope to spend most of my time in the garden, preparing it for Spring. I may drive out to the coast for a day trip and some time walking the beach and listening to what the wind and waves have to say. I plan to continue my practice of specifically not dropping bombs or shooting people. So far it has been surprisingly easy to avoid. No idea why the head fuckwit in office is having so much difficulty with that, honestly. (One might be forced to assume that chaos, destruction and murder were explicitly the desired outcome. So incredibly vile and horrifying.)
I sigh to myself and watch the sky turn a deep blue gray as daybreak comes. I’m grateful for another day on which I can look into the sky without worrying about bombs or drone attacks; this place is not a target of bombs or drones (so far). I’m fortunate.
The clock is ticking. Where does this path lead?
The thought of my Traveling Partner sleeping at home brings a smile to my face. We’ve been enjoying each other’s company quite a lot, and as his recovery progresses, our intimacy is restored and the connection we share deepens. It’s lovely. It’s also another reason it will be good to “have our space back”. No ill will towards the Anxious Adventurer, and I’m grateful for the help he provided while he was here, but our lifestyles are not similar enough to make cohabitation easy, with regard to intimacy.
Change is.
I sit awhile longer. The clock ticks on. Eventually, it’s time to begin again.
I can remember my father mocking people who lacked “real skills” but who were also educated people with college degrees. He had no fondness for abstract intellectualism that could not get anything done in the world in a practical sense. It’s a fairly commonplace perspective, frequently held by practical minded working people, perhaps to secure a sense of achievement in spite of the lack of a degree. Memorized facts without comprehension aren’t particularly useful, generally. Applying knowledge in the real world can create change.
Books make great gifts!
Why do I mention it? I mean, it’s probably pretty obvious that “book learning” alone doesn’t amount to understanding a topic deeply or being able to make suitable use of the knowledge. I watched a video yesterday talking about the increasing lack of ability to read that seems to be developing in young cohorts of students (in the US). Book learning isn’t all there is to education, but g’damn reading is a pretty critical life skill, and if our youngsters receiving their education aren’t learning to read, we’ve got a real problem ahead. Traffic signs, price tags, menus, clocks, rental agreements, job offers…we need to read a lot of things, and recognizing shapes and colors is not an adequate substitute for reading comprehension.
Books can be filled with practical information.
Why learn to read when an LLM can read a summary aloud and save us the bother? (Why learn math when there’s a calculator always at hand?) I struggle with why these would be questions, but I remember teachers answering my own youthful “why learn math?” question by trying to give examples of the raw power and utility of having a basic understanding of math. One truth that is more important than any one example and might have been more persuasive; we need to learn math (and reading) to develop problem solving skills, and for depth and nuance in our understanding of the world. We need these skills to support our ability to think critically and recognize misinformation. If we lose our ability to read we become dependent on spoken opinion, and susceptible to marketing hype and outrageous lies by politicians and pundits.
Other books take us on an adventure.
I am fortunate to enjoy reading, myself. (It took me awhile to come around to the legitimate value in math, but eventually I got there, too.) I am happily reading The Stand, a gift from my Traveling Partner. I prefer to read the news rather than watch it. I can’t actually imagine not being able to read. If nothing else, the amount of paperwork required in life would be far less manageable if I couldn’t read the forms!
Thanks for being here, by the way. If you’re reading these words, now, I’m grateful that you are literate. (Not only because you’re reading what I wrote, but also because you can.) One day you may be considered to be among the elite intellectuals of the world, simply because you can read, at all.
Books are the software upgrades for our minds.
I sit at my halfway point on this trail, watching Venus setting slowly on the western horizon. I spotted it one morning some time ago and looked up what this very bright “star” might be. I read about it. Now I gaze upon Venus with even greater wonder and appreciation. I smile to myself, eagerly considering spending the day reading. Maybe I’ll pull a cookbook from my shelf and peruse the recipes and bake something? Seems a good day for it. I could spend more time writing, later – I hear snail mail is making a comeback as a hobby or lifestyle choice. Promising.
… I’m not pointing fingers or being critical of the shortcomings of other people. I’m quite human myself, and some of life’s critical skills fade with disuse. My handwriting (pen and ink on paper) has gotten pretty dreadful because I don’t often pick up a pen these days. Practice would be helpful. Letter writing has potential, with that in mind. I think fondly back to my great-grandmother, who lived well past 100 years. She wrote letters to friends every day. I used to write a lot of letters… until email and the Internet and the convenience of a keyboard intervened. Creeping incompetence – and I don’t have to succumb to it. I have choices and the freedom to choose change.
Anyway. Read a book. Don’t let that skill erode away completely! You definitely really need to be able to read. Reality can be unforgiving, and doesn’t accommodate ignorance in any gentle way.
Some books we fill with our own story.
I sigh to myself as Venus dips below the treetops. I breathe, exhale, and relax. I contemplate all the many books I’ve read, and the many more I have yet to read. The books on my reading list have guided me along my path. I doubt I could have come so far so quickly without them, and AI summaries would not have been enough to teach me what I needed to learn.
The first hint of daybreak touches the sky. Is it already time to begin again?
I’m still down with this sickness, although I continue to improve. When I’m lounging, resting and watching videos to pass some time, I find myself drawn to relaxed videos of various aquarists and hobbyists building small aquariums for shrimp and small fish suited to peaceful planted freshwater aquariums. I miss my aquarium. Sometimes I miss it a lot. It was, for a time, very low maintenance and successful – a thriving ecosystem that required very little work to keep up. One move, then another, disrupted my stable little underwater paradise, and things got messy, chaotic, and required a lot more work. For awhile that overcame me, and I let the algae take over. Then, noticing a favorite fish was actually still thriving, my renewed interest and enthusiasm – and real regard for that fish – carried me through several restorative projects.
Taking a moment to watch fish swim.
We moved, at last, to this little house. Life feels more settled, but the aquariums (at that point I had three) had no ideally suitable location. Every place they could be placed was a compromise that reliably resulted in more work, more inconvenience, or… more algae. One tank got broken when a bookshelf being moved into place shifted and fell onto it. The fish were saved. The damage and water and mess were cleaned up. I retired the other small tank, and focused on my 29 gallon freshwater community. Peaceful and beautiful, and seemed to be thriving (although my betta persisted in leaping from the tank at odd hours, which was a pain in the ass and very stressful for us both, I’m sure). One day, as I happened to be standing nearby, the silicon seals simply failed. The front glass panel fell to the floor and water went everywhere. My Traveling Partner heard me cry out, and rushed to help me. The fish were saved – into a bucket, with what remained of the water from the tank. The small tank was pulled from retirement long enough to house the distressed fish. I couldn’t bring myself to keep on saving fish from the floor, and felt rather as if the circumstances were a clear sign that this location and this time in my life were not suited to keeping an aquarium. As I’ve done with other pets in my life, I allowed the circumstances to direct my decision-making. I don’t have an aquarium now. (Or, any other pets, actually, for various reasons and due to my thinking about such things changing over time.)
Over-reaching for a good metaphor…content to watch fish swim.
…But I’m home sick, trying to rest and get well, and I keep finding myself drawn to videos of aquarium setups suitable for small spaces, small fish, small creatures, and low maintenance practices. I sigh to myself as I sip my coffee. Do I really want an aquarium, or am I daydreaming and missing what once was? For the moment, the difference is too small to matter. I still don’t have a really good location for an aquarium, even a small one, in this house. I don’t have the time, the energy, or perhaps even the will to provide the care and maintenance even a small one would reliably require (and the small ones often need more attention more often than a big one does). I still love a beautiful aquarium, and there are so many kinds!! Aquascaping has a lot of variety. It’s a beautiful hobby. I even indulge myself, as I consider the matter, allowing myself the fun of planning out what I would need to do a small aquarium… Maybe just 6-10 gallons? Shrimp and snails? Maybe a betta? Some neon tetras? The exercise reminds me that this is not a “cheap hobby”. The tools and materials (long before livestock is considered) are somewhat costly, most especially if chosen with care based on best suited to the concept, well-respected brands, quality goods, and aesthetics. I quickly found myself looking at a “budget” that would require $200-$300 dollars, before I even started pricing livestock and plants. Yeesh. Do I want it that badly? Enough to deal with a compromise on location, the work involved, the potential for more work if there was a tank failure, and the possibility that this was merely a passing fancy stoked and amplified by sick day boredom? Enough to push it to the top of the list of things that need doing, for which there are limited resources? No, no, and no. I don’t actually want to build a new aquarium… I’m just missing my old one. Human primates are weird.
The day the tank arrived at a new place.
Do I need an aquarium? No, I don’t. Am I lacking something in my life that having one would truly fulfill? No, it would be an unnecessary luxury that comes at a significant cost. Do I even truly want one? No, I don’t think so; I just want to be well, and free from constraints on my comings and goings, and limitations on my energy. I just happen to be filling some portion of time with engaging videos about a topic I have a connection to, and take a lot of pleasure in considering.
Do fish get headaches?
I finish my coffee, thinking about what a useful reminder this is that chasing some momentary yearning is a very human thing, but it can easily get out of hand, taking me down a path I didn’t plan to walk, and without real benefit from that detour along my journey (maybe). Do I love a beautiful planted freshwater aquarium? I definitely do. I remember my Dad’s aquariums when I was a kid, with great fondness. I remember mine, and what a haven it was for me in a difficult time (it was originally undertaken as a means of providing healthy background noise that would reduce my nightmares, and it worked well for that purpose for the years that I needed it most). The stress (and lasting responsibility) over the safe healthy lives of the inhabitants and the terror and panic when something went wrong (whether a power outage or a tank failure) are not so welcome in my life. I still miss my aquarium. I miss the fish and the lush green plants moving gently in whatever current there might be. I don’t miss the work or the stress or the worry when I’m away. I won’t be getting a new aquarium any time soon, because I don’t really want one. I definitely don’t “need” one.
Human primates are wired to go after what they want: food, sleep, money and love, and endless things in between. It makes sense to pause and give some new yearning a moment of real thought and reflection. We only have so much time to spend, and only so much available in spendable resources to acquire some new thing. Our yearnings are not necessarily tied to our actual needs in any practical way. Good thing we have minds and critical thinking skills – ideally we put those to good use.
Are you hearing me on this? It’s a metaphor. When yearning overtakes me, I pull my focus to other things, I seek out a sense of sufficiency. I examine the thing I think I am yearning for with great care looking for what may be driving that (it’s rarely the thing I’m yearning for, itself, which nearly always masks some identifiable practical need or another than can be more effectively addressed quite differently). I breathe, exhale, and relax. I enjoy this moment here, as it is, quiet and calm and pleasant (in spite of lingering flu symptoms). This is enough. No aquarium required. 😉
I smile and think about Spring. Soon enough, the weather will be warming up, and it’ll be time to get out into the garden. There are plenty of creatures there to watch and wonder at, and all manner of lovely plants and flowers to tend. My effort will be well-spent there. It’s enough. Soon, I can begin again in the garden I have.
Evening Light 