Thirty of One Hundred Summer Days

And just like that, the sweetest days of summer end. May and June, the soft, flowering months of the year flew by on the wings of songbirds. Here, there are clouds and rain today. It's muggy and buggy. Everything drips with moisture, big, fat water droplets on the foliage. The air and greenery hang heavy with wetness. Only a few days ago, the ground in my garden cracked from dryness after days and days of clear, beautiful, sunny weather. Most of it punctuated with soft, cool breezes. 

Things change so quickly. When I bought this place, the ground was covered with snow. I had no idea what the yard and garden looked like, except for a few places where what lay beneath peeked through. We walk through life with small glimpses of a future we cannot truly know until we are living its days and nights in the now.

I am given this day. What will I do with this gift? 

Drive into Philly and view the Mary Cassatt exhibition at the Art Museum? Clear up some debris in my garden and neaten everything up? Unpack more boxes in my new place and advance my moving in? Lose myself in the Zen of cooking and make and enjoy a fabulous meal? Watch for a break in the rain and go swimming? Call a friend and get together or talk on the phone? Write the checks for my monthly bills? Start a new book and enjoy a cup of tea while I read? Watch a movie? Pull out my paints and start a new work of art? Finish the short story I'm writing for the new anthology project? Go to Reading Terminal Market and walk among the stalls and maybe come home with something fun? Take the train to New York and surprise myself with the unexpected? All of it? Some of it? None of it? Something else?   

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)

I think back to the poem that inspired this writing theme and revisit some of its lines. Awareness remains the path to cultivating joy in living, to cultivating presence, to experiencing each day in all its fullness and beauty. Even if the beauty of the day is achingly painful. It may be that I spend this day in reflection, cultivating awareness. It's easy to let it slip away as the days fly by and we lose ourselves in the busy-ness of our lives. 

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.

Stormy

After more than a week of beautiful summer days, clouds rolled in today. Clear blue skies and sunshine peeked through every now and then, and it was muggy. From the sound of things, the predicted storms are moving through. 

I hear rain falling and sighs of relief from my garden. 

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..

Bee Balm

A gift from a friend's garden. I enjoy watching her come to life. From four twiggy pieces in a plastic pot to a slender leafy stem with a stunning bud. I've never seen its like. And even this has changed as she continues to find her form. 

Deep green and dark pink, she opens to reveal tiny spikes in the center. What she will be tomorrow, I have no idea but I'm looking forward to her continuing growth and blossoming.

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. 

  

Can We Change a Couple of Things, Please?

There's a lot of hype tonight about the presidential debate and the campaign. Many things weigh us down spiritually. These endless political campaigns are one of those things. I wish they'd pass a law that limits political campaigns. Like to six weeks duration. Otherwise, no campaign events, no campaign speak, no premature so-called debates, no posturing ~ until mid-September before a November election. 

Nothing about this year's elections feels inspiring to me. I'd like to feel inspired by the people we look to for leadership. I also wish we'd pass some laws that limit spending on campaigns. Like each candidate gets the same budget and no donations are allowed. Take the money once spent on campaigns and use it for the public good ~ feeding and housing people, improving infrastructure, educating citizens in citizenship. 

I think these two changes would vastly improve life, general contentment, and likely the functioning of government. I have some opinions about tonight's debate. Thinks like ~ it wasn't really a debate. It felt more like ninety minutes of mudslinging, and we all got dirty. As for the rest of my opinions, I'll keep them to myself. 

It's just that I've been sitting here reflecting on it, and the evening sits uneasily on my mind.

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.. 

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Wiggy Wiggy Wag Wag Woo

It's been that kind of week. Wiggy. Unexpected challenges. Changes. Small and smaller changes that confound when I'm trying just to put together a schedule I can depend on and things to look forward to. I'd really love it if I could just relax and breathe, if life could flow smoothly so that relaxing and breathing could flow smoothly.

I'm rolling my eyes at myself.

I'd like to be able to roll with the small stressors, but there've been so many big stressors this year that I don't have much elasticity for the small ones.

But . . . I got a great haircut last week and the weather's been beautiful, so I've been enjoying the pool. I get great joy from my morning swim and the songs of birds, movement of tree branches in the breeze, and clear blue skies with or without gorgeous summer clouds. I'm getting my vitamin D these days the natural way.

I get great joy from spending time with my son. We've both been moving and have helped each other with that, have enjoyed making some meals together. This evening we baptized my new grill with a marinated flank steak. 

I get great joy from spending time with friends. I have a standing date for dinner with one every week. I have a standing date with a group of friends one evening every month. Other friends and I try to find time to get together for tea and conversation or tea and poetry. I check in with two writing groups every day and am working on a new anthology contribution with another. 

The writing groups bring joy on two fronts ~ friends and writing.

What doesn't bring me joy is the tedium of moving boxes, but I'm working on changing my mindset around that. To cultivating the joy of discovery. Opening a box, only to find something I've been wondering about or have missed. The ease I'm feeling around getting rid of things. Tedium sometimes has its benefits.

I'm not quite finding joy in putting together a new home. Stress and decision fatigue seems to be in control for now, but I'm working on changing my mindset around that too. But there's time. I'll get there.

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.

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Angel Numbers

When I signed in to write today, I noticed something. A number. 555. An angel number. The triple 5 sequence pops up for me frequently, usually when I least expect it. It always invites me to pause, notice, reflect, smile. I like the idea of angels all around us and that sometimes they remind us they are there.

This time it really grabbed my attention. It indicates the number of reflections that I've written since I started this blog in 2012. My life had just been through some big changes, changes that would continue for a couple of years, changes that would come around again every now and then. 

New Age writer Doreen Virtue popularized Angel Numbers in the early 2000s. She later began to study theology and withdrew her work, saying it was demonic. I don't think that casually noticing number repeats and delighting in them as uplifting messages is demonic. Perhaps if one idolizes them, a claim can be made. Of course, idolizing anything ~ money, success, power, to name a few, is a spiritual stumbling block. Numbers figure in many ancient esoteric systems, including the three Abrahamic faiths ~ Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There are overt expressions as well as mystical expressions. Numbers can be symbolic. This quotation is attributed to St. Augustine (I was not able to find the citation. Google is not always a helpful search engine) ~ 

Numbers are the universal language given to us by the deity as confirmation of the truth.

Whatever the facts are, we find truth in many things and they don't always make sense. I'll take my Angel Numbers, especially my frequent 555 that invites me to relax and trust in the midst of big changes.  

 

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.

A Little Bird Told Me

I'm in some kind of weird lull. The only time I feel happy is when I am swimming, or lying in the sun, listening to the birds sing or watching them fly around.  Even things like reading, writing, cooking, and gardening fail to hold my attention. In other news, my mother's house is now cleared out and ready to be listed. It should happen one day soon. 

The other day a gold finch came and landed on my window. Nodded his head at me as if he was trying to tell me something.

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.