The Color of My Wednesday

I walked along the riverfront in Napa downtown (Napa Valley,CA) where I took these photos last Wednesday.

Books I’m reading:

The Lover by Marguerite Duras and Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner.

Fall and afterwards

Since my fall about 4 weeks ago I have not walked to the river until today. I walked halfway, easing my way slowly.

I felt good.

Yukka and palm trees shadow the sun

Thorns and leaves abound

Life.

Books I am reading:

Middlemarch by George Eliot

(with my Book Club)

Coming to Our Senses by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Abandoned Grocery Cart

Jammed with the rocks at the riverbank

Submerged in water at high tide

Saved by a fisherman brought inland

Now you are with flowers along the walkway

Which journey will I find you again?

You can’t venture on your own.

Will you vanish somewhere

Or drift into oblivion

What will happen if Kierkegaard

or Salvador Dali find you?

I don’t think I will be dancing in strawberry field

I may write about absurdity of abandoned grocery carts.

Perhaps some ideas are astonishing

We think of wild things

Like kissing at the middle of storm

I will not be writing in Russian.

note: The book I am reading: Either/Or by Elif Batuman.

How & Why

thinning darkness

voices rising, footsteps of children

soul of a new day

start a work,

a particular work

to find a worthy self

before a final stage

there is a longing

when work is done

life is still incomplete

seeking until the end

doing and giving

the highest region of life

Is it a messy tangle

or a real knot?

She disappears in the crowd.

note: Books I finished reading: The Present Alone Is Our Happiness by Pierre Hadot.

The book I am currently reading: Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Musing

Merrily I adjust the binoculars

birds perch on the sycamore tree

sharing exhilaration.

Books I am reading:

Keats A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitah by Lucasta Miller

and The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

Begins With A Question

Life is not a simple flow of time

 A lived experience

a taste of beauty

then taken away

Is there enjoyment in being immortal

though everything you touch is not permanent

a statue, a stone, unlike a snowflake

everyone will pass away

and you remain

immortal, you,alone

with all your elaborate memories.

Can we still ask

and live life’s hard question

or remain submerged in modern angst?

Or are we waiting like a jar

to fall into fragments on the floor?

Or do we bloom for each other on virtual reality?

In the reddening sun

we should not be content

just to be alive.

note: I finished reading the book, Paris in the Present Tense by Mark Helprin. About time, art and life and love.

Seeking OThers

It’s becoming clearer and clearer to me that I need to leave the familiar, but I don’t want to do it entirely alone-I want to seek others who can offer perspective into my predicament, who can help guide my passage.”

-Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

Hummingbirds

Hummingbirds suddenly 

seem to be everywhere

Chasing each other

 or hovering over the lavender 

The morning fog rises gently

You are standing in the midst, smiling.

I look at you and start talking

to myself.

You ask why ?

My way of clearing my mind 

sometimes it gets crowded with thoughts.

Don’t you get frightened 

when it gets empty?

Maybe that happens 

when someone you love leaves, 

walks away.

The hummingbirds leave one by one

and my friend

I am alone again.

The fog returns

I feel cold

I linger awhile

before I return home.

note: Books I’m reading: War and Peace. I was persuated by an article about Yiyun Li reading War and Peace once a year. And reading it along with others-Tolstoy Together.

Also reading Inseparable by Simone de Beauvoir.

My Monday and Tuesday Walk

note: The book I finished reading, The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. It’s a story of loss and redemption, courage and perseverance, humain frailties, survival and acts of kindness. It’s a love story. An inspirational story.

Orange Moon

Years of drought

the hills are tinder-dry

wild fires start as if spontaneously

all so near us and moving

Evacuation warnings, be ready

I wake this morning

with one wish

from a constellation of wishes

spare us

of more fires

I will keep praying

Orange moon looks on us

I have faith

I’m afraid.

note: The photos are from my walk to the river this morning before the air quality became unhealthy. The photo of the moon was taken this evening.

Book I finished reading: Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. Books I’m reading: The Sea by John Banville for my Book Club. I’m re-reading the English Patient.