“Go to the nearest window. Look out for a full minute. Write about what you saw.” http://dailypost.wordpress.com
Today the beautiful view is a soft gentle grey, with evergreen branches and other trees in contrast. Lake Michigan and the sky are the same at this minute. There are whitecaps rolling to shore. Low energy lights are on in the house.
I also spend many hours a day in a tiny room that looks into the backyard and to a birch tree, which shelters my room and has been part of my life for over two decades. The leaves fall; the leaves return. We took my big desk apart – a counter top on file cabinets – when we had to rebuild the house from the inside. I did not put it back together the same way, because I saw my life had changed. File cabinets line a wall. A recliner is the only chair. This is a place for prayer, reading and new ideas to arrive.
Yesterday I went grocery shopping at Piggly Wiggly in Cedar Grove. The person ahead of me was speaking of the passing of someone, so you well know her story caught my empathy. Last week was the anniversary of my mother’s passing and also her birthday. So I shared too. I remembered to bring my reusable cloth bags, but was too absorbed to put my reading glasses on for the charge machine. The kind person helping me offered to handle things if I “couldn’t see.” Then on the way home, the willows looked gold, but it seems a little early.
I used to feel clumsy and out of place sometimes, when first learning my way in small towns, after the city, and a new life. Now I don’t mind.
One moment, one day, at a time … and a new chapter falls into place. I’m grateful I know the feelings of a new person, a new place.
And when I was teaching, a course is new each time it is taught.
A writer’s life, to coin a phrase. Not knowing so much every day. How the pages will be written. What new ideas will arrive. It is an act of faith, to create something new. The afternoon can be so different than the morning. A bird flies by the window in the fog.
“Heart tiles background” image: wpclipartcom.