Color Study: in Progress

 

Preferably with Glitter

She greets me with enthusiasm and mispronounces my name every week. She loves to relay all the information she knows about me and repeats any phrases that sound extra melodic to her. The state of her thrilling topknot of curls communicates what kind of morning has had. I’m sure she could acquire the same information from the state of my bangs. She tells me about my daughter and son, adding extra syllables to their names that I secretly adore. She asks questions about my daughter and son before moving on to a new question. Do I like mushrooms? Do I eat them off the ground? I tell her I eat them, preferably grilled, with my pizza or cheeseburgers. I am sure this information will be repeated back to me next week. “Ms. Coke likes grilled mushrooms on her pizza and cheeseburgers. Not mushrooms from the ground.” And like the brilliant lyrical Susan Boynton Belly Button Book book I will echo in my head: No, never mushrooms from the ground.

It is sweet to have someone who holds fragmented details of your life in their thoughts. To have someone interested in the tiniest, mundane details and listens so thoroughly that she can repeat it back to you as though it were a fascinating fact. I hope she knows that I treasure fragmented conversations between us as well. This is what I love about my job- the daily interactions spanning over years with people I otherwise would never have any chance of meeting. I recently listened to an occupational therapy podcast that called for us to really dig into our client/ student/ patient’s dreams and values in a life worth living and work from this perspective. If I love nothing else, I love a good dream. 

I think of the 55+ year-old bachelor spending twenty minutes of our session finding his best angle for a selfie to post on a dating website and using his hemiplegic fingers to take the shot. Or the woman who wanted to pick back up writing her finance blog but first chose the most vibrant of colors to paint the fingernails of her hemiplegic hand. It was she who taught me about the concept of “the party nail”- a fingernail painted a different color than the others. “Preferably, with glitter.” Or the jeweler who was unable to form words but always came with tools and chemicals to clean the wedding rings of his therapy team. Or the woman who called me “Dr Pink-Purple” so affectionately that I still sometimes long to hear those words again. I have a thousand tiny treasured stories from tens of thousands interactions that I am so thankful to have been a part of. Every day I go to work, I get to encounter more. 

When I left my last job at the hospital, a colleague casually said to me “Now I’m going to be the one with the loudest laugh.” At first, I was taken aback and a little embarrassed. But as I thought about it, most of the time outpatient occupational therapists are one of the last stops in a medical journey. I have learned this journey can be incredibly dehumanizing- not because of the lack of an amazing medical staff but because it is such a system. A colleague used to joke about the Labor and Delivery unit always winning the “most satisfied customer” award every year. “Of course, they win- people get to come home with a baby and happy hormones. What do rehab patients get? A quad cane and a grab bar in their shower. At best.” So when my patients visited me and were open to dreaming, joking, and laughing, I loved meeting them right there. When they wanted a tiny party between functional hand exercises and practicing visual scanning strategies, I filled the Dixie cups with water and we drank to possibilities. And I guess we laughed pretty loud sometimes too. 

"There in the shade and hid from the sun we freed our minds and learned 
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned 
There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life's reason why 
The people laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die" 

- Mountain Bed, Jeff Tweedy/ Billy Bragg 

Life Lately... January 2024

Lately the air temperature over lake Michigan is tens of degrees colder than the water. It is negative thirteen degrees and a rare sliver of sun is minutes from sinking into night when my mom and I step onto the beach. Frozen craters of ice-sand shift and crumble beneath our boots but our eyes are set on the horizon. In the distance, celestial pillars of lavender-gray steam stretch upward from the water’s surface and connect to the low ceiling of clouds brooding above. This type of chemical architecture demands admiration and we stand in awe, wrapped to our watering eyes in scarves and hats, taking it in far beyond the minutes we stand there. Hours after the sun has set. (We will not see the sun again for days.)

Lately, it’s been too cold or icy to complete my daily running path. Instead, I spend evenings under a blanket with my son who has just cracked the phonics code. I enjoy listening to the intonation of his voice when he is feeling confident about the words he is reading and the way he giggles before the funny part has even occurred. Nearby I hear another set of giggles, belly-jiggling, merciless giggles as my daughter finishes another Garfield comic book. The word Arbuckle alone brings laughter to us all. Meanwhile, I continue to read poetry and Covenant of Water. On an extra cold morning, I read a Mary Oliver poem. First to myself, then to my daughter. I am moved by its lines for the rest of the day because lately, I've been thinking a lot about both the beauty and deterioration that the passing of time brings. I love to find these thoughts summed up by another- we are never alone. 

Lately, Mad Libs has taken over all areas of our lives. I love that my son calls it “Mad Lips” just like I used to do. I love to hear my daughter and her friends sit in a stairway for hours and laugh at how their silly verbs, adjectives, and nouns form ridiculous stories. On the car ride home, my daughter shares that she found a poem in one of their creations. Something about a violet cat that ate over the moon. It’s a fantastic image, I agree. Later that weekend, during the Sunday night church soup potluck, more of her friends gather in a circle, laying on their stomachs between the couches, madly scribbling, and bursting out into laughter. And in a light-flooded restaurant booth the next morning, my son carefully spells out a Mad Lib story for his 22-year-old cousin. Words are spelled phonetically and in all capitals which I savor in memory boxes.  He tries not to overuse the action word “fart” but they both do it anyway. 

Offscreen Voices & Backyard Beauties

An advantage of our quirky, partially subterranean dining room is the intimate view of our garden and a

fantastic view of the sky. We can often observe animals and birds much closer than if we were outside among them- sometimes mere inches from their little bodies. I plant wildflowers, poppies, and dwarf hydrangeas in this space adjacent to our wide windows to draw these furry and feathered friends closer. From the dining room table I can watch chipmunks scurry between the blooming coneflowers, praying mantises creep across thick bearded iris stems, goldfinches perch on wintered heads of sedum, and the red cardinal settle on the bare branches of the lilac tree. During breakfast in summer we see a monarch land on the hummingbird feeder and wonder aloud if that is the same monarch we kept safe in our home while she crystallized and transformed. Is she still lingering a few days more in our garden? 

I keep a space for videos of “things I see in my backyard” on my Instagram. They catalog little ghost prints of beauty witnessed right outside our dining room window. I revisit the fires that Ben made in the snow, Olivia and I drinking White Russians in the glow of the flames and giggling at the effort my then three-year-old son exerts to pull his seven-year-old sister on a sled. I can recapture the image of the time it snowed 24+ inches and I shoveled it all into a mountain so we could have our own sled hill. That same evening I recorded Ben, solo, climbing and sledding down that hill in the light of the Christmas lights we strung across everything living in the backyard. What truly pokes at my heart is not the recording of the possum passing under the hosta but the offscreen voices: the one-year-old babbling to himself “bub bub bub”, a tiny two-year-old voice commenting to a butterfly that “he’s so so so cute”, or the one-year-old narrating “big….. bug…. I seeeeee” as an enormous praying mantis on our window sill bends and extends one of her middle legs like a ballerina warming up at the barre.

I often think social media (specifically Instagram) is a literal manifestation of my favorite Jean-Paul Sartre quote: “I live in the past. I take everything that has happened to me and arrange it. From a distance like that, it doesn't do any harm, you'd almost let yourself be caught in it. Our whole story is fairly beautiful. I give it a few prods and it makes a whole string of perfect moments. Then I close my eyes and try to imagine that I'm still living inside it.” Sometimes I am very guilty of still living inside beautiful moments gone by.

But this morning it is a “real feel of -30” and Chicagoland schools have been canceled. It's hard to not be present in dramatic weather. I invite my friend’s children over for the morning and I listen to their voices playing as I type this now. What is more exciting to a child than a snow day/ frigid temp day? Even the homeschooled are excited as they suddenly have hours of their friends in the sunlight again. They are eating lunch in my quirky, sunken dining room and, for as long as I can remember, they have always asked me to read stories to them as they eat. (I imagine I will be devastated the day that they don’t.) So I read a collection of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories when all of a sudden they are aflutter and pointing outside at the lattice where the chandelier blows in the wind. 

“A woodpecker!” they exclaim excitedly. And there he is, quite close so we can get a very good look, with his striking red cap and white dotted wings, dribbling his bill into the wood beams that are normally nibbled by carpenter bees. We record, of course. I make sure to include the offscreen voices, munching of chips and happy sounds. I know these details will be just as important or more when I watch it one day in the future and remember that day school was called off and we watched a woodpecker dance back and forth between the lattice and beams.

---------

* An excerpt from a poem that I read today and captured all the things that are all the things I am feeling these past few months: 

Snow Geese by Mary Oliver

"Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!

What a task

to ask

of anything, or anyone,

yet it is not by the century or the year but by the hours."

read entire poem here 

Radiation Bliss

He has been my champion of the occupational therapy profession since I met him many years ago. “I love OT!” he used to shout every time I entered his classroom. It didn’t matter how many times I had already been there that day or if I was walking in on a quiet lesson being taught. The enthusiastic greeting was consistent and welcoming. His classmate would follow by broadcasting something like “The Obstacle Course is here” in a more monotone cadence. And that became my name- Obstacle Course- with their teacher finding the most joy in this career rebrand. I loved this class. I loved this group of six and seven year olds. I loved this teacher. I still love being called “obstacle course” every once in a while because we continue to find it amusing.

Years later I am standing in a kitchenette and my now-grown-friend is practicing microwaving pancakes for a small group of friends. He is careful and thoughtful, slowly lowering the plate into the microwave and punching in the numbers to heat them for a minute. As soon as the microwave begins to glow he starts to jump, occasionally twirling, and bombards me with anticipatory questions.


“Are they gonna love it?”

“Is this so nice that we are making them pancakes?”

“Is this the best party we've ever had?”

“Are you going to eat pancakes too?”


The microwave beeps and his jumping instantly halts. He slowly reaches into the microwave, adjusting the stack of pancakes and monitoring the temperature while being cautious not to burn himself. We decide to add 15 more seconds. The jumping and twirls begin again as the microwave lights up and hums.


“Do you think they will love the pancakes?”

“Isn’t this so nice of us?”

“I love my friends so much. Do you think they will love this?”


I ask my friend if he feels happy. Excited. He is losing his mind in these fifteen seconds and after this, I never use the microwave without recalling this all-consuming delight. Radiation bliss. We serve plates of steaming pancakes to his friends minutes later and they, being wonderful humans sticky with syrup lips and fingers, tell him how much they indeed love these pancakes. He is so full of joy he almost forgets to leave a few pancakes on the plate for himself. "These are the best pancakes I've ever had," he finally says between bites. I respond that they absolutely are. 

Gut Punch

A tree swing hangs long and low
She listens to wheels spin
Out, around and around,
Dune buggies creating grooves
In the gravel road that circles the trees
Race car captain hearts
Dusty smile after smile
We haven’t heard them laugh that hard
In weeks?
In months?
In years?



Late-July Saturday with nowhere to be
The fridge has been stocked since Tuesday
Lounging on wide front porches
Taking turns with all types of automobiles
We are between significant departures
The second wave that followed the first
Unseen just right now, just like the last
We didn’t know then what we know now
Maybe we can cook together this fall, he said.
Dreaming of homemade empanadas & dumplings to share



My daughter swings beneath the tree minutes before-
Her legs stretch out toward the pond that absorbs
reflections of cumulus creations from above
Her toes clap
Bursting bubbles
In a picture, I catch our dispatched orbs
The ones we blew mercilessly into
the swing’s pendulum path



I joke with Antonio many months later
My pandemic toddler now believes
All vacations come equipped with
Miniature private islands hosting three-story tree houses
Airborn four wheelers
Fishing buddies and
Birthday cake for thirty



From the porch I record
a trail of children running
Backlit by a setting sun
My son second to youngest
Chasing ten paces behind
Right arm pumping as they cross
The narrow grass bar between dots of ponds
I love to watch them move across the property
Always running, always somewhere exciting to be


A tire swing hangs empty and quiet
He listens to the gravel that shouts
from between my teeth
embedded in my palms
Lateral ligament torn
Wheels- now horizontal- still spinning
As I count children, scanning the ponds
Looking for ripples of disruption
Finding none
We haven’t seen them run so far
In weeks?
In months?
In years.

2023 Year End Status

2023 Wrap Up: Books, Shows, & Spaces that I enjoyed this year


Books (Fiction)

Kindred by Octavia Butler
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
       *Read in memory of Judith Roode, who loved to make Dickens analogies 

By Ash, Oak, and Thorn by Melissa Harrison
The Hobbit by JR Tolkien
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
The Covenant of Water (still reading!!) by Abraham Verghese


Selected poems of Mary Oliver
Selected poems of Marge Piercy
Selected poems of Mark Doty


Books (Nonfiction)

Dog Years: A Memoir by Mark Doty
How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy
Tesserae: Memories & Suppositions by Denise Levertov
Essentialism by McKeon
The Next Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley
The Simple Path to Wealth by J.L. Collins
Nature’s Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy
Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy
The Good Life: Scientific Study of Happiness by Robert Waldinger
Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change by Pema Chodron
Good Inside: A Guide to Parenting by Rebecca Kennedy
all about love by bell hooks
Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison


Bible

Habakkuk with Tim Keller "Living by Faith in Troubled Times Series" (podcast)
* Habakkuk was by far my most memorable quiet time study in 2023
James
Psalms
Proverbs
Philippians with "Get Out of Your Head: A Study on Philippians" by Jennie Allen
Elijah with "Elijah: Faith and Fire" by Priscilla Shrier
Genesis with Tim Keller "Bible: The Whole Story- Creation and Fall Series" (podcast)
Acts with Derwin Gray on "How to Heal Our Racial Divide" by Derwin Gray
The Deeply Formed Life by Rich Villodas


Shows & Such

Fisk (Netflix)
Derry Girls (Netflix)
Better Call Saul (Netflix)
*My favorite fictional character, Kim Wexler
Rings of Power (Amazon)


Happy Spaces

Montrose Bird Sanctuary, Chicago
Garfield Conservatory, Chicago on a February morning
Heritage Museum & Garden, Sandwich, MA
Mountain pond, VT
Woods in Woodstock, NY
River Park Wildflower path, Chicago
The homes of friends, always
Lighthouse Beach, always

Bangs, Beards, & Reading Glasses

The optometrist is openly flustered by the presence of my bangs. “Your hair is all over your eyes!” he exclaims, exasperated as he makes a third attempt at photographing my retina. I consider explaining that I am in the process of growing out my bangs and it is my paralyzing indecision about the matter that has resulted in this “hair sitting on my eyelashes” stage. I stop myself, realizing this conversation will probably lead down a meandering purge of deep thoughts where I will also explain how my bangs have become a part of the family over the past ten years. A fifth member of the family with good and bad days, who makes family and friends wait while it requires special attention, and whose presence elicits conversation and camaraderie. (My second-third-fourth grade student, George, loved to push my bangs away from my face and insist that this was my better hairline. I’m not going to say he was wrong but he also named my in-utero son Sprinkles so...) 

“You need reading glasses!” the optometrist reports after I have flustered him a variety of ways. Apparently, I am the only one who blinks with the air puff tonometer test and my indecisiveness carries over as I have a hard time discerning “very clear” from “very, very clear” during the distance acuity check. “They can’t be both!” he sighs, irritated. “Am I going too fast for you? Do you need me to slow down?” Nonetheless, the doctor gives me the diagnosis that I came to confirm: aging eyes. He then compliments me on a “remarkable symmetry of cone cells” which slightly redeems the appointment. The way he lingers on the image of my cell wall for a few extra microseconds communicates that he has great reverence for the eyeball. I immediately walk over to the CVS to purchase a pair of +1.25 readers. Who is this new Jenny without bangs wearing glasses and what will my children think? 

My father-in-law always had a beard when Ben was growing up. Ben once told me that his dad shaved it off sometime when Ben was in high school. Ben joked that he felt a strong need to grow a beard of his own to offset the absence of his father’s beard in the family. “Someone needed to wear a beard,” I remember him saying. I felt similar about my mom and her bangs. It took me years to adjust to my mom growing out her bangs and consequently, I cut my own around the same time. Should we call this a familial hairline / facial hair homeostasis phenomenon?

In our current family, Ben has had a beard all of our daughter’s life. There was a period when she was three or four that Ben needed to shave it off for work. Ben’s mom recommended shaving it off in our daughter’s presence since he would look so drastically different without it. We heeded this sound advice but it did not work. Our daughter would not even look at Ben for days after the naked face was created and presented. I felt awful when he went to give her a hug or talk to her and she simply turned her back on him, outright refusing to engage with this man who “looked so friendly”. The only pictures I could find of a clean-shaven Ben were from our wedding so I spent an afternoon scrolling through those pictures trying to convince her that this beardless creature was the man I married and still her father. 

Tonight I am thankful as I reach for these new glasses- astounded by how much easier I can read Christmas cards and books of poetry in the couch corner! How had I been managing until this point? “I almost didn’t recognize you but they look good,” my daughter laughs when I look up. She does not turn her back on me but snuggles in, as she always does when given an opportunity. I tell her, “If you think these glasses look good, you should see my cone cells.”

* Picture: Chandelier at the beautiful Plant Salon in West Town

Woodstock, NY

We arrive in Woodstock a few hours past sunset. Just in time for a spectacular Windshield Special Feature Show starring cascading snow flurries and dark mountain roads. Our headlights illuminate a vignette of tall bare trees and our car slowly follows a narrow snowy path that leads through them. It is a cinematic shot- horror or romantic comedy, I am uncertain which but I feel I might pass out from beauty. Happiness. Longing for more. The heavenly smell of pine trees, the familiar cadence of my niece's voice, and an excited wiggling pup greet us as we exit the car into a snow-covered forest. Inside the cabin, our family explores strange nooks, purple refrigerators, fourth-story observatories, and hot dog art while Rachel spoons out a chili that has been simmering and waiting for our evening arrival. Hours later, after others have arrived and the kids are in bed, Ben and I enjoy moments in a hot tub that also has been simmering and waiting for our arrival. Snowflakes melt on our bare shoulders, chrystals of coolness that perfectly offset the warmth of our bodies below the waterline. This celestial snowscape can spin my senses when I gaze up, a snow galaxy rushing toward our faces like a view I imagine from the captain’s chair of the Starship Enterprise. 

Fog covers the mountain and hovers over snow-packed earth the next morning. This delightful disorientation is welcome- to be briefly alone and have minimal bearings to location. The dog, my children, and my niece join me in this Catskill wonderland and we explore. A tiny brook still moves through its in-ground groove and my son throws snowballs that crack a fragile sheet of ice covering a connected pond. In the meadow we build a snowman, our voices echoing and then hushed by blankets of snow. We are hidden away in this fog and insulated by snow- the dog bounds in and out of our periphery with my daughter running behind her in rain boots. 

This scene continues for days- my daughter and the dog, my niece nearby, my son bouncing, throwing, and building- even as the November sun burns off the fog and begins to melt the snow in town. The view of the steaming Hudson River at sunset, the waterfall ravines and icy paths, the chess and checker games that my daughter delights in practicing with her cousins on Thanksgiving Day, the hike with the two Swedish expresso-colored labradoodles that bound and splash through the mud puddles ahead of our crew, the in-town bookshop and the street corner of a very old town where my son turns to us and announces his tooth is ready to fall out. And it does. Right there on our stroll. So I run back to my car to grab a tissue to stop the bleeding. We all share a delicious fig tart minutes later to celebrate lost teeth, beautiful places, being alive together, and a larger-than-life Connect Four game. Always the dog and my daughter dashing in and out of the fringe. (Except at the quick tour of the alpaca farm, for obvious reasons). 

But the moon. My father-in-law was the wanna-be-astronomer this year who suggested packing the telescope. I don’t think we fully understood the gift of the cabin’s tower until our final night- all windows, vaulted ceilings, and an elevation of four stories (surely significantly closer to the heavens than the meadow!). There is something extra momentous about having to climb a ladder and lift a heavy wooden hatch door in the ceiling to reach a telescope. We never would have seen the moon had the fog and the snow stayed- as much as I desired to stay insulated and unfindable. Almost too bright to look at, the full moon with all her elevated and depressed surfaces, like the gentle impact from bubbles popping on a thin layer of snow. Tectonic bleeps and bloops. I watch the silhouettes of my son and daughter, niece and nephew as they peek into the eyepiece of the telescope. My son's eyelashes press and bend against the lens- a boy's first mapping of stars and planets.

“It’s so bright!” They squint and momentarily look away from the enlarged pock-marked surface, pupils panicking and adjusting. But the moon is always there. As we fall asleep facing westward windows in New York and Chicago and wherever we find ourselves. Viewable, at some point, by every human being on this planet- the same moon, sometimes in different forms or brilliance. It is present beyond the fog and the snowstorms and dreary days. For me, a reminder of a bigger, even more beautiful, and complex existence. But for now the moon. Out of wonder or the need for counsel and comfort, we will always return our gaze and reposition to look outward again- lashes bending.

******

*Fun Resource: I loved listening to this New Yorker Poetry Podcast & Bianca Stone's poem "What's Poetry Like?" Listen here. 

** I read the book "Dog Years" by Mark Doty while on our trip and highlighted this beautiful snippet describing Doty walking with his two large dogs and how it anchored him after the death of his partner. I found this especially beautiful after spending an afternoon watching a group of Swedish men hike with their two giant Labradoodles. 

"Walking is an affirmation of physical life. We're in the world, we're breathing, we're together. I move in a straight line, more or less, along the paths, and sometimes the dogs are right in front of me or beside me, but more often, they are threading around the path, padding the woods or thickets or marsh on either side of me. I begin to conceive of us as one extended consciousness, reaching out in different directions, sensing, our bodies making a braided trail but our awareness overlapping. That helps, just now, when a self seems fragile, erasable. With the two of them, I'm joined  to something else, perception expanded, not just stuck there in the world in my own bereft, perishable, limited body." 

Midnight Highway (thoughts on running)

 

Midnight Highway

(Thoughts on running)

Saturday mornings 

With Melissa and her Wire Fox Terrier Miko 

Trotting, talking, scuttling along the perimeter  

Of her-tree lined Chicago neighborhood

Just off the Francisco brown line train stop

Or along the lakefront from Lee Street to Noyes

Thirteen-fourteen minute mile times

With occasional indulgent stops for community gardens or pie 

Two thirty-something-year-old girls
eventually sharing a first pregnancy together

Attempt to run and then trot then stroll 

Two old friends discussing pelvic pain, gestational diabetic diets, and baby registries

getting comments from strangers on our adorable pregnant pairing

An unexpected and early birth of my first child occurs hours after

Strolling with Melissa along the lake followed by

a bench view of the water for an hour, 

Two round-bellied friends and an August morning breeze

No better way would I have spent the hours before delivering

A six-pound baby girl

Running-trotting-jogging-shuffling 

A self-regulation tool I have used in almost all life transitions

Angst, sadness, heartbreak, or the need to ponder life circumstances and change

all seem to launch me from zero to multiple miles 

Six miles around the fields of West Lafayette 

for the blurred seasons of winter and spring 2000

Trying to stimulate my capillary system in an effort 

to rebuild and repair the biggest broken heart or

Lunchtime jaunts along the Mississippi with Lisa 

As we name origins and insertions of muscle groups in preparation for 

Our anatomical exams or 

The day I transferred to Northwestern University and ran 

To Lake Michigan before even one box was unpacked

(tangible happiness I had not encountered since 

previously mentioned broken heart almost two years prior) or 

Training for a half marathon with Elizabeth

after the move from St Paul back to Chicago and

transition from being single to being married and

becoming an occupational therapist facilitating neural healing or

Senior year of high school 

Friday nights around and around an indoor track with Megan 

Dreaming beautiful faulty vision boards for our future

not realizing we had been running all that time and

eventually coining the term “midnight highway” for that transformation where your 

breath 

Just

floats 

steadily, easily, expanding and contracting above two legs

Lightly treading, carrying, propelling a body forward

Twenty-four years later the midnight highway finds me on an elevated track

Overlooking a half court where my five-year-old son kicks a soccer ball

Melissa once likened him to a bouncy ball 

I cannot unsee this comparison

his movements more vertical than lateral

and, like me, his big feelings more vertical than lateral

This track located above my son's Sunday morning soccer class

helps meet my sudden compulsion to run 3-4-5 miles as often as possible

My son smiles and waves up at me as

Something about when a baby turns five

The freedoms and the growing up-ness

The letting go of being a mama to a baby-toddler-preschooler

The ability to return and inspect one's own life

I ponder the root of this blindside angst and

hyperawareness of transition

That my body increasingly intuits by

The need to feel air moving past my body

The desire to feel both the limits and rhythm of my slow stride 

The search for the beauty of steady breath

Which I envision hovering above my body like the dot of a lowercase i 

Or the image of the holy spirit floating above the apostles' in my daughter’s illustrated storybook bible

Or the wheels of an airplane as they just lift off the tarmac 

Until I enter the space of the night highway

Effortless propulsion forward wrapped within a tunnel of unknown 

Thoughts and sensory flooding, everything external disappears

Alone with a secure and steady breath 

It will carry me through

Stretching toward the clarity of dawn

* Picture: Francisco El platform is so beautiful (photo: July 2023)

** Fun resource: How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy.

*** Running playlist: My Autumn 2023 Running Playlist