One Hundred Summer Days

The day was nearly perfect. Clear, blue skies. Cool, dry air. I wish I could say I spent the day outdoors, but I spent most of it inside working. I did get to walk from the house to the car and from the car to the church, and then later from the church to the car and from the car to the house. Lunch, a couple of meetings and work at the computer. A quick step outside to breathe some fresh air. The sun set on the one hundredth day of Summer at 7:19. The one hundredth of 100 summer days.

And just like that . . .

Tomorrow Has Become Yesterday is a (sometimes) 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. 

 

From Time to Time

From time to time, I miss my old place. 

Like when I look out my front door and up into the darkening blue skies with pink-tinged clouds that move quickly across the skyscape. A sky that seems to go on and on, forever. I step outside onto the patio and watch forever. At the old place, the wall of windows in my kitchen opened forever to me as I sat at the kitchen table, writing. It's just different. But I do miss the light.

From time to time, I think wistful thoughts about the past.

A past that dresses itself up in its Sunday best and smiles prettily. She's not always so demure, so mindful. And the memory is as wrong as that usage. Still, the past plays her games and sometimes we fall right into it. 

From time to time, I wish I had lived my days differently.

I get to the evening and look back on the long stretch of hours that flew by nearly unnoticed and wish I could grab a handful and use them differently. That I had allowed them to be more useful. Still, I live today as I choose. Did some laundry. Ran errands. Luxuriated at Whole Foods, picking up things like good black tea and root vegetables. Talked to my cousin for two hours as we planned our upcoming trip. Made soup. Ate soup. Spent a few minutes placing the bromeliad I bought today in my bedroom.  

It rained, and the temperature dropped by at least ten degrees. The sun has set on the 99th of 100 summer days and I don't want to blink. We know what happens when we do. 

Tomorrow Has Become Yesterday is a (sometimes) daily writing practice that opens a landscape 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.

Tomorrow Quickly Becomes Yesterday

The pool is closed. I lift my head from about ten days of a belly virus. My brother tells me he's heard that something like it has been going around. The air cools, and it feels like summer is quickly slipping away. 

Labor Day brought an end to the season in our East Coast mindset. Today is the 98th of 100 days of summer. The equinox is just a few weeks away. Tomorrow quickly becomes yesterday.

My garden needs a good pruning. Spent flower heads, exhausted herbs, weeds that have grown up between the stones of my patio ~ they all need my attention. When things are tidied, the garden will look fresh again.

A healthy harvest of sage waits to be picked. I'll let it dry and use it in my fall cooking, give some of it away. While I don't care for pumpkin spice anything, I love pumpkin ravioli with a nice sage brown butter sauce. 

But not until October.   

Tomorrow Has Become Yesterday is a (sometimes) 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.

Until It's Undeniable

I'm getting ready to take a few days off for rest, reflection, and relaxation. It's been a heavy pull with the new work over the last two months, and some time for being still feels welcome. 

The last time I was in the pool, I watched leaves gently fall to the water as I moved rhythmically, back and forth, length by length. An easy wind moved across the water. The other day I was driving through a forested area, and red and golden tinged leaves on small trees gave me pause again to reflect on this theme. How quickly the days of summer pass, how the light builds, levels off, and then begins to diminish once again. How fleeting are the flowers in the blossoming, and how quickly green stems become brown. How quickly weeds spread in the garden after a few days of rain.

The funny thing is we don't always notice while it's happening, but only once this movement has advanced, until it's undeniable.   

Tomorrow Has Become Yesterday is a (near) 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.

Got Weeds?

Writing escapes me like summer days careening toward the season's end. 

It's been another whole week since I've written. In the meantime, I've filed my submission for the new anthology. A tiny grief memoir of poems, prose poems, and reflections from the first 40 days after my mother's death, part of a larger work I'm creating. 

The pool is out of commission due to an electrical issue. A perfect summer day yesterday, and I walked up to the gate and saw the sign. No telling when it will be repaired. The responsibility is PECO's, not the HOA's, and it's the last week the pool is open for the season. It's such a disappointment. 

There are other little things ~ the friend I meet for dinner most weeks is traveling, the garden still is overgrown, my new place remains a chaos of boxes as I await furniture. I could order my bookshelves. Ikea, finally, has restocked. I'd be able to set up my library and writing room. I hesitate only because I know I will have to cull books. My new space has less space for bookshelves. It's a strange hesitation I feel to complete my moving in.

What's that about?

I'm in the weeds. I wish it was as easy as calling Blake. 

Tomorrow Has Become Yesterday is a (nearly) 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.

  

Momentum

I've careened through these last weeks, since the 66th day of summer and my last writing. It's now the 80th. You can close your eyes and breathe for a second, it seems, and whole weeks have passed. I've been living my days, enjoying the pool and the sky and the breeze, the clouds that move across the skyscape, and time with people I love. 

My garden is completely overgrown. Growth from a weedy bush on the other side of my fence has burrowed underground and come up in my lawn. Weeds grow through the cracks in the spaces between the stones of my patio. Flowers bloom on my lettuce plants.

It never occurred to me that there is such a thing as lettuce flowers.

Twenty summer days are ahead of us. But it seems the seasons are already turning. Leaves fall from trees. Cool overnight temperatures make for cold morning swims. The air smells like fall is on the wind, a trace, a premonition. Color begins to tinge the leaves of small trees and shrubs.

I'm careening and the lettuce has bolted. Time to slow down.

Tomorrow Has Become Yesterday is a (nearly) daily writing practice that opens a landscape 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.

.

 

All Quiet on the Western Front

Actually, it's not. Change abounds. This morning while swimming, I noticed the quiet. The catbirds no longer are calling, no longer perched on their familiar seats, and the chatter from deep within the tall shrubs is gone. It seems they've flown the nest; the nestlings have fledged. 

After awhile I noticed a convention of sparrows gathered around the tall shrub. Almost as one, and suddenly, they penetrated the deep green foliage and disappeared. Will the sparrows take over the space? Is there something left to forage? What interest do sparrows have in the former territory of catbirds?

There's always someone to come in after someone else is gone.

Dragonflies gilded in deep, shiny gold fly over the swimming pool today. Hovering, diving, aerial acrobatics on display. Are they a sign that the seasons are changing? In a few weeks, golden school busses will move through the neighborhood and I'll likely see them for a few weeks during my morning swim. And then, the pool will close and I'll migrate back to LA Fitness. The summer seems to fly as fast as dragonflies do.

Tomorrow Has Become Yesterday is a (nearly) 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.