A Wednesday wander: Living in interesting times

Sleepy-eyed on a gray day.

What else is going on right this minute while ground water creeps under my feet? The galaxy is careening in a slow, muffled widening. If a million solar systems are born every hour, then surely hundreds burst into being as I shift my weight to the other elbow. The sun’s surface is now exploding; other stars implode and vanish, heavy and black, out of sight. Meteorites are arcing to earth invisibly all day long. On the planet, the winds are blowing: the polar easterlies, the westerlies, the northeast and southeast trades. Somewhere, someone under full sail is becalmed, in the horse latitudes, in the doldrums; in the northland, a trapper is maddened, crazed, by the eerie scent of the chinook, the sweater, a wind that can melt two feet of snow in a day. The pampero blows, and the tramontane, and the Boro, sirocco, levanter, mistral. Lick a finger; feel the now.

Spring is seeping north, towards me and away from me, at sixteen miles a day…

~ Annie Dillard

A Saturday chat

A shroud of fog at sunrise this morning.

When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us.  When our community is in a state of peace, it can share that peace with neighboring communities and so on.  When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for but also helps us to develop inner happiness and peace.

~ The Dalai Lama

A Monday meander: Love and place

A beautiful sunrise.

Love makes you see a place differently, just as you hold differently an object that belongs to someone you love. If you know one landscape well, you will look at all other landscapes differently. And if you learn to love one place, sometimes you can also learn to love another.

~ Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces 

Walking

Time to get moving.

Walking is the best possible exercise.  Habituate yourself to walk very far.

~ Thomas Jefferson