the very best way to start a day

In the arena with Keil Bay, who teaches me all I need to know about letting go, forward motion, breathing, and balance.



I am grateful indeed.

A Ritual To Read To Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider-
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give - yes, no, or maybe -
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

William Stafford

growing up

Each morning when I go into my daughter's room to wake her, I find the book(s) she's reading very neatly placed on the floor beside her bed. Like me, she reads incessantly, and often ends her days with a book.

This morning the juxtaposition of two titles was startling. It seems the little girl is growing up.

back at the office

It felt like I'd been out of the office forever, but it's only been a week. After seeing clients, as I was walking out to the car, I happened to look back and up at my office windows and noticed the sky. It looked as if glorious energy was coming right out of the top. Which very much matched the work done there today.

the remains of the (very cold) day(s)

Tender new leaves on many of our trees following the recent hard frost are wilted, shriveled, black. The dogwoods seem to have come through well. The flies, ticks, carpenter bees, and ants have disappeared.

Interesting that even with the unseasonably warm days we had before this late frost, the horses did not shed completely out. Yesterday and today, after the worst of the cold, their shedding has tripled, the barn aisle covered with tiny carpets of chestnut, bay, white mixed with brown, and black.

The toad prince has gone back into his burrow.

It was so loud outside, and now it's gone quiet again.