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
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.
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
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
We are surrounded by wild fires for several days started by thousands of lightning strikes. Air quality was poor for a few days because of the smoke.
I have been walking every day since Saturday except yesterday.
I am happy to see the heron is back.
Note: Books I finished reading: Bell by Iris Murdoch and Dante’s Divine Comedy (Inferno) translated by Hollander and Hollander.
edgarone2
simpleimages2 