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.

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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.  

Swimming Beneath a Rainbow

Between a quick trip to Washington and storms moving through the area, it's been tricky to get in my swim. But, an early morning swim on Friday and evening swims on Saturday and Sunday, before and after the storms did the trick. Saturday's was short, as thunder rumbled 15 minutes after I began and 15 minutes later the skies opened up. This evening skies were mostly blue with some cloud and just a little light rain. 

About halfway through I turned my head and looked up. A rainbow was set against the clouds in the east. A full arc, camouflaged in the center, as the sun sank in the west and the cloudlets blushed.

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.

An Accounting

I've written 21 of 31 July days for my daily writing practice. It's interesting to me to notice my own reactions to this news. When I began these summer daily writing projects, I was strict with myself about showing up every day to write and ship. One night, I even got out of bed because in the busy-ness of the day I'd forgotten to write. 

I knew this summer would be challenging in different ways than other summers have been. A new house, a new job, anticipating the sale of my mother's house, a deadline for a new anthology, some more focused attention to my health and well-being in the middle of a lot of stress, and a hundred other little things. A friend suggested I might like to give myself permission to skip it this summer, but that did not feel like something I wanted to do. 

Instead, I've been practicing some kindness toward myself. I don't get out of bed to write. I don't turn around when I'm headed upstairs for bed to write. I continue my practice of swimming in the morning as a priority. I'm fitting all the things in where they fit and I'm not worrying about it. Actually, I'm a little surprised with how relaxed I've been about most things. 

That may be coming from the same well of kindness.

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 about the small things in life.   

Sixty of One Hundred Summer Days

The momentum of the season seems to be gathering speed. It's all perception, of course. The first thirty days of summer moved gently like the slow ripple of a meandering brook. 

The brook opens into a rushing river. 

Days flow one into another with such force that I sometimes wonder where the weeks have gone as we come to the end of July. 

August is on the doorstep.

My days stream in a now familiar pattern. A morning swim, and if I'm lucky time in the sun. Afternoons at work at the church or at home. Evenings gather up moments and make space for things I was not able to do during the day. Last night was a trip across the river to Jersey for gas and a stop for provisions at Trader Joe's. Come home, put away the groceries, have something to eat, watch the Olympic equestrian events in the gardens of Versailles. Cross country.

In my quest for gymnastics, I've instead come across surfing, fencing, skateboarding, white water kayak, dressage. It's been a delight to watch. 

The poem that inspired this writing series begins ~

Be glad dear soul for what you have / You now have a hundred summer days / And today is the first.

It ends ~

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.

Be glad, dear soul, for what you have. You now have these summer days. Pay close attention to where you stand. 

Before you know it . . . 

The days flow, a rushing river . . . 

You can never enter the same river . . . 

The flow changes everything . . . 

Still, we have . . . 

So much.

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.