Be still – bring together both the sharpness and the softness in your own head
People will judge you, but you are over it.
You deleted all the news updates in your inbox this morning and you don’t care. (journalism is important though, be a subscriber, support journalism, even if you delete the emails)
You’re having a day where you don’t feel so informed, where you’re not trying to analyze and aggregate the data in your head to make better sense of the swarming numbers and talking heads.
By putting your foot down, this becomes a day you don’t have to fight for sensibility and logic.
Your brain feels assaulted. Today you are tired of patching up the wounds.
Today, you will have your coffee and watch the wildlife from your back porch. You will tap your keyboard and attempt to resolve conflict of a fictional nature, that which exists only in your head. You will create.
Today you will take a walk on the closed golf course, if only to peep the Pacific Ocean. The waves crashing will be loud and powerful. You will stop to take a video under an old tree and pan around to watch the waves for a full minute. You will send the video to your best friend and label it zen.
Later on the veranda, you will listen to the family of doves who have built a home in the roll down sunshade as they argue over who will sit on the eggs. Or something. They’re definitely arguing. Maybe it’s not domestic violence, but it’s something. Maybe you will watch and listen to something else instead.
You will read pages of the nonsense mystery thriller you acquired in a moment of weakness on your family’s Montana sojourn eight thousand years ago in January. It’s about a fictional girls’ school in Virginia nestled right next to Wintergreen with a few shout outs to Charlottesville. It’s silly and sexy and constitutes an entirely other world for your brain. You will thank J.T. Ellison for reminding you of cool Virginia nights, the soft crunch of fall leaves, old buildings refurbished, thick oriental rugs, worn but polished original wood floors, arboretums, the smell of pine.
Light reading for a brain break
It feels so good to escape.
Maybe you will peruse the real estate in Maui, just for shits and giggles. And rainbows.
You will play pool soccer with the boys and you will lose.
You will bend, because 9 weeks after back surgery, your surgeon has given you the green light, and you will celebrate this moment.
You will take time today to listen to John Prine until you cry because the loss is so significant. This artist was an amazing gift to the world. You are grieving not only the passing of an immensely talented story teller, but also because of the connection he gave you to your mom. RIP John Prine. RIP Mom. See how mourning can tether itself to another hard moment?
You will appreciate and be soothed by his words and his chords.
You will soak in the green of the garden and the azure of the pool and feel those colors in your skin, in your heart. And you will thank your perfect planning (idiocy) for placing you here.
On another day you will analyze, scrutinize and debate. That day is not today.
view from the veranda
Today is for being still, drowning in the natural world, fleshing out the stories in your mind, listening to kids create and play, and absorbing the light.