Up

Sometimes the only way to quiet all the rattle in my heart is to step outside.   The view from my backyard is easily one of the most spectacular things about my life.  As I write this, neighbors to west pitch horseshoes under an ever-ripening sky.  Lavender banks of cloud dissolve into swirls of light above my fence, a backlit sunset more lovely every time I look up than it was just a few seconds before.  This photo, taken at sunset Thursday night, attests to that.

As a kid, I didn't spend a lot of time outside.  There were neighborhood kickball games and the boys across the alley behind us came over a lot--I was often the only girl in our playing.  I was the only girl on our block, and though I had some friends who lived within walking distance, I would have always preferred--if given the choice--to be left alone to read a book.  In fact, when I learned to drive, I couldn't find locations I'd been traveling to my whole life, including my grandparents' house.  I'd had my head buried in books so long, I hadn't ever really bothered to look up.  There were worlds within my head that were so much more magical than whatever was passing by the car window, or the front porch.

Ani DiFranco wrote: 

when I look around

I think this, this is good enough
And I try to laugh
At whatever life brings
Cause when I look down
I just miss all the good stuff
When I look up
I just trip over things

My whole life, it seems, I've been missing stuff and tripping over things.  And, for a very very long time, I let those missed moments and those trips make me feel badly about myself.  Now, though, I'm trying to realize that whatever I miss or trip over doesn't matter, as long as I am paying attention to what I'm focused on--up, or down.  We can't judge ourselves for the things we miss out on, the little failures, the missteps.  Goethe wrote "As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live."

My wish is that we rely on the wellspring of inner strength within each of us so that we can begin to trust ourelves and in so doing, know how to live.

A Color of the Sky

From Anne Sexton's The Sun:

Now I am utterly given.

I am your daughter, your sweet-meat,

your priest, your mouth and your bird

and I will tell them all stories of you

until I am laid away forever,

a thin gray banner.

Until last summer, I spent bright days inside.  I loved the sun as a kid, but years of working during daylight hours (and fear of skin cancer, sunburn, etc.) kept me out of that bright light. Then, a year ago, I became involved with the Lawrence Arts Center and worked there during a lot of daylight hours.  I started to feel the itch to recharge, to lay in the heat--covered in spray on sunblock--soaking up sun, sweating, blood throbbing in my veins.  Sometimes at a friends' apartment complex pool, sometimes at the swimming beach at Clinton Lake, sometimes in my back yard with ice water to sprinkle myself if I got hot.  

It is that time of year again and I am feeling the itch, the need to lie in the heat, to soak up what I can, to feel exhausted from the complete stillness of sun worship.  Yesterday I played with my dog outside and when she tired I sat to read...which led to a thirty minute solar nap that felt better than other thirty minutes of sleep I've had in recent months.

I didn't get to spend too much time out today, but I did catch the sunset as it happened, and these pictures show it in order.  And these stanzas in this poem, which I stumbled across today, also fits.

Two stanzas from A Color of the Sky, Tony Hoagland

   What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.   

   What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.   

   What I thought was an injustice
                                             turned out to be a color of the sky.

   ...so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.   

   It’s been doing that all week:

   making beauty,

   and throwing it away,

  and making more.