This Morning

 I slept well and woke refreshed.

My cup of coffee was particularly delicious. As I poured from carafe to mug, I noticed how smooth it was, how the aroma wafted up to me.

My child and I enjoyed some bantering and conversation preparing for and driving to school. 

It was a peaceful, quietly joyful morning.

These observations are worth noting and appreciating, because doing so reinforces them. This post is an antidote to the doomscrolling, the slightly tight and tense way I inhabit my body, the default position of general, low-level foreboding.

"Yes, and the luminous and shocking beauty of the everyday is something I try to remain alert to, if only as an antidote to the chronic cynicism and disenchantment that seems to surround everything, these days. It tells me that, despite how debased or corrupt we are told humanity is and how degraded the world has become, it just keeps on being beautiful. It can't help it."
 - Nick Cave and Seán O'Hagan
Faith, Hope and Carnage
booklover
& still, the waves

The Alphabet of Right Now

I want to write, but my thoughts wander off like toddlers. So I'm borrowing a technique from a friend.

A - Air conditioning: so very grateful for it, despite that it's not strong enough to cool the upstairs.

B - Birthday: mine is coming up, and for the first time in my life I feel disinterest in acknowledging or celebrating in any way.

C - Covid: no longer has my child in its grip, and Hub and I managed to evade it.

D - Dinner: will I cook tonight? Yesterday it was 102, just too hot.

E - Elusive: my motivation to create.

F - Fruit: enjoying this season's cherries, strawberries, blackberries.

G - Gender: an ever-present topic in the household, discussions driven by my child.

H- Household: it needs attention, particularly the cobwebs.

I - Ice Cream: what I had for dinner yesterday.

J - Joints: a little creaky today.

K - Klondike bar: mint chocolate chip, "making squares cool since 1922."

L - Lonely & Letters: feeling it around the edges of my life, writing snail mail to friends.

M - Monterey: new OS upgrade on my Mac, which has nifty features (or so it claims).

N - Nighttime: so enjoying how late it descends this time of year.

O - Observing: a practice I enjoy; right now out my window I observe a crow preening its wings as it sits at the top of a tree.

P - Purging: wanting to clear out bookshelves and closets.

Q - Quilt: trying to decide to let go of one used by my mother in childhood, to which I have no attachment and am tired of storing it in the closet.

R - Reading: voraciously, read 11 books in the last two weeks.

S - Sound: noticing the cries of crows, the tap of the keys, my husband talking in a meeting, my tinnitus ever-present.

T - Temperature: intensely hot weather, bleaching life of energy.

U - Ukraine: still at war, struggling.

V - Voluminous: how I'm feeling lately.

W - Water: lovely, cold, lifegiving; being sure to water trees and potted plants in the heat.

X - Xenolith: I had to look this up; a rock fragment within a rock; X is a difficult letter.

Y - Yes: what to I want to say "yes" to?

Z - Zazen: doing it regularly, and it's hard as ever.