Tomorrow Has Become Yesterday

I sip tea, and nibble on a lavender vanilla scone from a local baker. There's butter from pastured cows, and a creamed lemon honey from a local beekeeper. I just unpacked the bags I carried in from my trip to the local farmer's market ~ little gems lettuce, lacinato kale, slender scallions, sugar-snap peas, and the last harvest of asparagus and strawberries. Another local baker had challah slider rolls, perfect for little burgers. 

Above me, bright blue stretches beyond what I can see, and there's not a cloud in the sky. So different from yesterday's parade of huge, puffy white clouds. Both achingly beautiful. Sunshine falls on the greens of my garden, and illuminates colorful blossoms. My garden. How wonderful it is to say that. I've not had a garden for ten years, and my new place has one that's small and manageable. Since my furniture won't arrive for months, I've been making the garden a paradise, as gardens were created to be. Sanctuary. Oasis. Space apart. The fragrance of a flowering shrub hitches a ride on the breeze and glides through my open windows.

June 1 ~ summer begins and my thoughts turn to my summer blogging project. I've been flailing wildly for a theme. Until today, I thought it might be Patterns of Disruption. There was also Table Full of Blessings. Both are stories for different posts. And, really, neither of them feel completely true for a summer of writing.

But then I read the translation of a poem that a friend posted today. She's read it on June 1 every year since her mother-in-law shared it with her when she was 19. I feel similarly gifted today. And one piece of the poem resonates for this writing ~

Pay close attention to where you stand/Before you know it, tomorrow has become yesterday,/Wandering (through life) goes so fast. Pay close attention to what you receive/Which is a hundred summer days a year,/And tomorrow is the second. (Cai Lundgren, translated by Imelda Almqvist)

 And, so, a theme is born in an unlikely way, as so many themes are born. 

Tomorrow has become yesterday. The days give us their gifts and then are gone, passed into the past, passed into memory having weaved themselves like threads in a tapestry. There's an invitation to be deeply present, to notice what's emerging, to notice what's challenging and maddening as well as what is wondrous and beautiful. Presence and noticing intensify the mundane and elevate it. The extraordinary in the ordinary.

  

Tomorrow Has Become Yesterday is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

For the full text of the poem, in Swedish and the English translation, click the link below. 

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10232596698717814&set=a.10205195541105999