The sound that comes: ssshhhh. Maybe instead of a word for the year, I need a sound. Maybe it will be more meaningful for me to swap out “om” with sssshhh in morning meditations. It’s the sound that comes when the tide pulls out. When a person tries to calm a baby.  Or someone else….

My second cup of coffee. The space heater is already turned on, but I don’t remember doing it. And once again those last twenty minutes having slipped by accounted for – not as in black outs, or anything concerning –  just a matter of inattention. Birds sleep half-a-brain at a time. I am awake this…

Still Leonard refuses to go into the yard alone when it is dark – which is pretty much always these days. I think he’s afraid of the hedgehog that lives in the holly hedge. He has to pass that corner before the yard opens up facing the road – and the streetlights. I think I…

And a very domestic start to the year. Last night we spent the evening with good friends. We lit sparkler hearts and toasted with champagne as the calendar flipped. And I was introduced to a New Year’s tradition: 12 grapes. One for each month – 12 wishes for the coming year. After enough food to…

Tomorrow I will run on the beach. The 9th year of a personal tradition for New Year’s Day. Today I will try to tick off some of the things on my to-do list before I head back to work, and into a new year. I write lists. And sometimes I find them lying around the…

Missing instagram. The constrained attention of a photo-a-day habit – when it really is fine not to add an interpretation of the moment. To point – and let it be. And let the words come when they will. When in a quiet moment, the dragon decides to move through. * These days are in-between the…

The sun turned two days ago. And isn’t this the way it always is – so ready, so over-due for something to change, only to find myself lagging behind. The sky is a lazy white, and as bright now as it will be all of today. There is a silent mumuration of starlings over the…

These days nothing feels as it should. There is an off-ness in the gusts of wind, in the bad news that I read from the local paper while the dog pees on the dying bush that is his 4.30 a.m. go-to spot. I’m going to have to find a new morning routine for the two…

There is a wisdom in traditions. They must be borne of intuitive responses. The first of December means the Norwegians bring out the advent lights. These days – when leaving for work in the dark and heading home in the dark can make me feel robbed of something – these small lights evoke sensations of…

Some mornings, even dark mornings, the world seems too bright. And I feel an extra pressure to step up. To be good enough. It’s as if something is hawking, mustering, whistling a rally cry. I have no idea what for, but there is rising sense of urgency, a sharp edge of panic touching my diaphragm….

A loud run. The wind in my ears, even through the scarf. My right knee with its brittle rubber squawking, my left hamstring belting obscenities like Ethel Merman. Then turned to head back, quiet and easy. Then came the rain. Go figure.

It isn’t often that I feel terribly out of place. That I am acutely aware of being transplanted. That I feel a pinch of want – the severed root that cannot nourish – and I feel just slightly withered. Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason, you sing. For no reason, you accept the way of…

So much of the Buddhist philosophy makes sense to me. Except the aspect of non-sensuality – at least as I am understanding it. To give up the pleasure of the senses, seems to me a premature death. Surely one can consciously experience and enjoy being in the world – this very physical world that we…

from whatever perspective offers itself. Work days in a literal black box, desk facing the wall – I have to remember to take the time to seek out a window. A reflection of the setting sun, early afternoon. Somewhere in the world it’s Thanksgiving, with all its ambivalence.

A walk this morning while my hamstring mends. I was unsettled, but it took me a few minutes to understand why: Missing the birds. Not a magpie, not a crow, not a sparrow this morning. Finally, the ducks who dare to over-winter here, along the edges of the water. Quiet. Too quiet. Leonard shakes off…