Really I can think about, talk about things other than sunrises.
(But why would I want to?)
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Sunrises
Yesterday, an abstraction: deep blue expanse, morning star high to the west, two jet trails angling in from the east, palely illuminated by the not-yet-risen sun.
Today, just quiet dark fading into light. No opportunity to experience the best moments -- the delicious last pause of darkness, then pure thrill when the sun smiles up over the horizon. With buildings and trees and streetlamps and schoolwork blocking the view, day and night lose all definition.
Today, just quiet dark fading into light. No opportunity to experience the best moments -- the delicious last pause of darkness, then pure thrill when the sun smiles up over the horizon. With buildings and trees and streetlamps and schoolwork blocking the view, day and night lose all definition.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Little things, and awareness of the big things
Yesterday afternoon: beeeep! And darkness in the lab. Waiting, waiting. People started to gather in the corridor, faces lit by the glow of the emergency lights, then drifted into the main hallway. Word slowly spread (well, not too slowly, thanks to cell phones) that power was out all over campus. No more computers, no more lights. Silence inside, revelry out as students streamed free from classes and campus. Power failure holiday!
I lost a sentence or two from a paper I'd been working on, but I'm sure others were far more inconvenienced (and thus far less delighted by the occurrence). How often do we stop to "save"? More importantly, how often do we stop to think about just how much we rely on that darn electricity, no, expect, even demand it? As I was strolling home, I thought about the traffic signals, the streetlamps, the radio, the stove, the hot water heater, even the plug I need to charge the battery on my laptop. And I just take for granted that it'll be there. So many things, so many big things, are out of my hands in this specialized yet interconnected society we've created. I don't like that. But need to remember to be thankful for each and every little thing that works properly on a day-to-day basis.
Normally it takes a good thunderstorm or blizzard to knock out power to an area as large as the K-State campus, but in this case, it was a couple of squirrels. Squirrels. Thank goodness for squirrels, gathering acorns, reminding us to think ahead, be prepared for winter, or at least appreciative of autumn.
Speaking of autumn and other silly little things that encourage awareness, it's finally cold enough in the mornings that I have to wrap my scarf around my nose. This, of course, fogs up my glasses unless I adopt an inhale-through-the-nose, exhale-through-the-mouth breathing patterns. Inhale-through-the-nose, exhale-through-the-mouth, inhale-through-the-nose, exhale-through-the-mouth... Sharp sting of the fresh air through the nose, humid warmth of the stale air from the lungs, a steady rhythm that I rarely remember to observe, to delight in.
That's what yoga is for, to return to the breath, the ham sa of existence, but I forget to integrate it into daily life, into sitting in front of the computer, into walking along the sidewalk. Until "inconvenienced" by wearing a scarf.
I love my scarf -- it's a rich mustard-yellow color (the color of cottonwood leaves in autumn), extra long (so I could wrap it around my nose twice in Wyoming), and, best of all, it has pockets! Hooray for pockets! Somewhere to put my keys or stow my hat and mittens or stash Hershey bars.
Maybe I should slip some squirrels in there too, just to be sure.
I lost a sentence or two from a paper I'd been working on, but I'm sure others were far more inconvenienced (and thus far less delighted by the occurrence). How often do we stop to "save"? More importantly, how often do we stop to think about just how much we rely on that darn electricity, no, expect, even demand it? As I was strolling home, I thought about the traffic signals, the streetlamps, the radio, the stove, the hot water heater, even the plug I need to charge the battery on my laptop. And I just take for granted that it'll be there. So many things, so many big things, are out of my hands in this specialized yet interconnected society we've created. I don't like that. But need to remember to be thankful for each and every little thing that works properly on a day-to-day basis.
Normally it takes a good thunderstorm or blizzard to knock out power to an area as large as the K-State campus, but in this case, it was a couple of squirrels. Squirrels. Thank goodness for squirrels, gathering acorns, reminding us to think ahead, be prepared for winter, or at least appreciative of autumn.
Speaking of autumn and other silly little things that encourage awareness, it's finally cold enough in the mornings that I have to wrap my scarf around my nose. This, of course, fogs up my glasses unless I adopt an inhale-through-the-nose, exhale-through-the-mouth breathing patterns. Inhale-through-the-nose, exhale-through-the-mouth, inhale-through-the-nose, exhale-through-the-mouth... Sharp sting of the fresh air through the nose, humid warmth of the stale air from the lungs, a steady rhythm that I rarely remember to observe, to delight in.
That's what yoga is for, to return to the breath, the ham sa of existence, but I forget to integrate it into daily life, into sitting in front of the computer, into walking along the sidewalk. Until "inconvenienced" by wearing a scarf.
I love my scarf -- it's a rich mustard-yellow color (the color of cottonwood leaves in autumn), extra long (so I could wrap it around my nose twice in Wyoming), and, best of all, it has pockets! Hooray for pockets! Somewhere to put my keys or stow my hat and mittens or stash Hershey bars.
Maybe I should slip some squirrels in there too, just to be sure.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
How to take all the delight out of a sunrise
I hate it when I turn my brain on.
Such a beautiful sunrise, indescribably vast, envigorating, fleeting, the entire redpinkorangegold of the spectrum skittering softly across the base of the clouds. Seen first in the reflection off windows, colors of the sky embracing cold buildings in their warm glow. Echoed in the rustle of the leaves, the breeze that couldn't quite prevent me from sitting outside watching it along with the pigeons who've become my sunrise compatriots here. (The squirrels don't stop to watch.) Lost all awareness of ticktock time and felt moments flow like light, experiencing the wonder of Einstein's equation while completely ignoring the science of it, felt the only way to comprehend physics, science, life is to step outside of it and experience existence like a pigeon watching the sun rise over Kansas.
Then oh the sky literally turned off, blink and it was day. But not just any day, memories can linger? Until I start thinking, then the magic is gone.
By retreating from my body back into my mind, I'm losing something visceral, something real, that sense of poignancy, of time and place and death and life that sunrises and especially sunsets afford. I'm destroying the sunrise with every word I type, the damn clicketyclack of the keyboard eating away at the original sensation.
Yet I continue to write, to write, to try to share something with anyone and everyone. No one reads this blog, really it's for me, but something in me wants to believe that simply by trying to describe this morning, this life, oh perhaps there's some way to make sense of it.
"Make sense." Odd, the words that flow out. "Sense" isn't made. I had sense. Sense is seesmellhearfeel. Not a blinking cursor and serif font. Somebody please tell me to turn my brain off, I need to go sit with the pigeons
Such a beautiful sunrise, indescribably vast, envigorating, fleeting, the entire redpinkorangegold of the spectrum skittering softly across the base of the clouds. Seen first in the reflection off windows, colors of the sky embracing cold buildings in their warm glow. Echoed in the rustle of the leaves, the breeze that couldn't quite prevent me from sitting outside watching it along with the pigeons who've become my sunrise compatriots here. (The squirrels don't stop to watch.) Lost all awareness of ticktock time and felt moments flow like light, experiencing the wonder of Einstein's equation while completely ignoring the science of it, felt the only way to comprehend physics, science, life is to step outside of it and experience existence like a pigeon watching the sun rise over Kansas.
Then oh the sky literally turned off, blink and it was day. But not just any day, memories can linger? Until I start thinking, then the magic is gone.
By retreating from my body back into my mind, I'm losing something visceral, something real, that sense of poignancy, of time and place and death and life that sunrises and especially sunsets afford. I'm destroying the sunrise with every word I type, the damn clicketyclack of the keyboard eating away at the original sensation.
Yet I continue to write, to write, to try to share something with anyone and everyone. No one reads this blog, really it's for me, but something in me wants to believe that simply by trying to describe this morning, this life, oh perhaps there's some way to make sense of it.
"Make sense." Odd, the words that flow out. "Sense" isn't made. I had sense. Sense is seesmellhearfeel. Not a blinking cursor and serif font. Somebody please tell me to turn my brain off, I need to go sit with the pigeons
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