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Wanderings, Wonderings
There’s a certain liquid but frictioned struggle when I walk through the grass in the morning after it rains. My feet, less sure now, more prone to missteps and the cruelty of unbalancing, skim through the green sea of clover and vetch, leaving long strokes like ski tracks behind me. But I do not turn to look at these tracks as I walk, because I do not trust my own footfalls. This, then, is what aging is: a gradual mistrust of all the powers and agile techniques and reflexive movements that I once took for granted, like a good Catholic who, when he sees death’s cowled head bobbing up over…
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She Dreams
As I read, my arm is draped across Bluebelle, who snores. Just now, while scanning some lines by Ezra Pound, I felt her muscles beneath my forearm bunch and twitch. Her breathing quickened like an engine starting to rev. Her breath funnels down into groans, then tiny yips, and a tide rushes across the surface of her warm body just beneath the brindled fur; she dreams now. And I, pater lacking perception, cannot tell. I cannot tell if her dream is a bad one or joyous. Is she fleeing some foe, or chasing a rabbit…or her own multihued tail? And even if I could stroke her small arena of a…
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What Matters As Advent Approaches
It felt so cold this morning that I could feel it working in my bones, as if little ice crystals were forming in the synovial fluid of my knuckles and knees and ankles. The world outside was a frosted sheet of patched russet, an expanse of the leaves weighed down by the same sort of tiny ice crystals. While Jinx and I were walking (Bluebelle sticking close to my wife in the warm house), I saw a large red oak leaf detach from the tree over near the cemetery and glide like a paper airplane down, then over, then back this way, then down a little more, then that way,…
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Sexagesima Snow
If you look closely (or if you can enlarge it) at the photo above, you’ll see a black spot near the bottom, just to the right of the center of the frame. That’s a black bear. I saw him while Jinx and I were out on our walk this morning. The bear was several hundred yards away, loping away from us towards the south, but I knew that if Jinx spotted him, it would be Katy-bar-the-door and every-botty would be kung-fu fighting. I yelled and made silly noises to distract the spotted menace while trying to snap a few pics of the bear. This was the clearest of the ones…
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Tidbits From An Old Master
Ever since I found one of his books at a library sale, I have enjoyed and benefited from the writings of Abbe de Tourville. His slender volume, Letters of Direction, is a book I frequently use in my lectio divina. Here are some passages from that book that I think my readers might enjoy and from which you might gain nourishment: Let us be able to depend quietly on ourselves. Let us judge for ourselves which things most help, guide, and teach us, by observing the degree in which they fit our own particular temperament; learning by experience those things which help us and which we most need. Live according…
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Twinkling Of An Eye
Yesterday morning, I did something I rarely do. I stopped for breakfast on the way to work. I’ve been feeling less-than-stellar lately, mostly because of work-related stress. I try to heed my body’s promptings, and yesterday was one of the times I sensed a clear prompting. I usually don’t eat breakfast during the week, and then I enjoy my wife’s breakfast-brunch feasts on the weekends — I just function better this way. But when I awake feeling puny, I do eat a bite in the mornings in order to fuel myself for the day. So I went through the drive-thru at a locally-owned joint that serves first-rate sausage biscuits. Got…
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Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.…