Weather report: sunny with a chance of books. Outside, besides sunny, it's still pretty cold: 17F currently, as it was when I got up yesterday morning. Yesterday actually warmed up and was a nice day, with a high of about 40F. Last night, for the first time in several nights, I took Dora for a longish walk around the neighborhood in the dark, bundled in two coats: my puffer jacket with my thrifted L.L. Bean Gore-Tex light coat zipped over it. Even with the hood down, I was plenty warm and enjoyed the brisk walk through the sleeping neighborhood, with the stars hung silently in the bare trees. Even in a mild climate with little to no snow, winter nights are their own kind of glory. I like to look for Orion, whose three belt stars are the only ones I reliably recognize as a pattern without consulting a star map --- and even then, in the instant it takes me to look from the map to the sky, the stars get themselves all confused again. But that doesn't diminish my enjoyment of them.
I've seen children who couldn't yet read take up books and puzzle at the words on the page --- then happily decide for themselves what the words say. And while I knew that this process was in service of something, the larger drive to learn to read, I always found it lovely in itself, and wasn't in a hurry to correct the child. To say, "No, what it says is . . . ," would have been to spoil something that however impermanent, was fine as it was. Of course, here the analogy breaks down. The words on the page do say something. They have a fixed meaning. Sooner or later the child will discover that fixed meaning and be off to a whole new set of imaginative races. The stars, on the other hand, are simply patterns which have suggested certain things to certain people, and some of those names and meanings have stuck. But even the patterns are a matter of our own perception, and not necessarily what was intended by the hand which set the stars there. We think we know what these large things mean, but the mind of the Creator is bound to be stranger and wilder and greater than anything we could possibly come up with.
I'd like to be better at recognizing constellations, because that's a kind of literacy. It's good for the mind to pursue as much literacy, and as many kinds of literacy as it can. This is how we're awake to things. To learn something new is to be awake to it, more alive. This is what our minds are made to do, and to hunger for. At the same time, I'm happy just to walk out on a night of starlight, the moon riding high on the frozen sky and the houses quiet beneath it, and to be struck by the beauty of it all, that quality beyond the bounds of language, which is more like the mind of its maker than any human literacy can encompass or express.
Mathematics, a language I barely comprehend, probably comes closest, in its intimations of order and symmetry. Not surprisingly, it's the language of astronomy, which is why I never took astronomy in college. Stars: yes. Algorithms: no. That's a failing of mine, which I'll readily admit: a failure of curiosity, and of courage, and of humility. Nobody likes to do hard things and risk looking stupid. There's nothing, but nothing, more limiting than pride, which so often expresses itself in our psyches as fear and fragility and self-defeat. This is why it makes such inroads: because it goes in disguise. And like all the deadly sins, it's not so much a bad thing we do. We don't really choose to be prideful. It's just there, a root cause of things, a primal wound that sends out its tentacles to bind us in ways we don't even recognize. So anyway, that's why I didn't risk astronomy and a whole host of other possibly worthy things in the course of my younger life. But even mathematics, that language the hem of whose garment I can barely touch --- as a language, even that falls short, I think, of being able to say everything there is to be said about the cosmos and the Word that speaks it continually into being.
On Twitter yesterday I saw this little thread, which I bookmarked largely so that I would remember the prayer: "Lord, deliver me from the temptation of what could have been, and wasn't." Our looking backwards and regretting the past --- and our feeling that we could have done things differently, if only --- is another form of interior bondage which I think is probably linked to pride: that if only such-and-such had been different, we'd have known how to live better. I mean: genuinely, there are things in our pasts that are not our fault. Sometimes people did do things to us. Sometimes mitigating conditions in our lives went undiagnosed or unrecognized, except as character flaws, for which other people beat us up plenty. All that can be, and often is, the plain truth. But I don't think we're supposed to waste time beating ourselves (or other people) up over things we couldn't help --- or over things we can't do anything about now, because they're in the past. All we can do is set our face for Jerusalem, our feet on the road. Anyway, I thought the little parable and the prayer that attends it were powerful and important, and I wanted to keep them in mind.
Also I wanted to keep the link to this Prayer for Daily Neglects.
Now that I've got all that off my chest, on with the day. So far I've gotten out of bed and eaten breakfast: avocado toast with the last of the smoked salmon. I'm drinking coffee. I'm looking out at the brittle sunshine and thinking about
*playing my New York Times games, which are frequently humbling, though it's fun when I win
*letting the dog out --- we'll walk later, I think, not first thing
*doing the needful work of the day, which includes
--prayers
--work on a new poem to memorize (Auden's "If I Could Tell You," which I propose to reclaim from my own forgetfulness)
--looking over the revised manuscript for the short-story collection, which I need to submit by Friday
--reading poetry submissions at Able Muse, assuming somebody else hasn't already read them all, which is so often what happens
--working on this new project, about which I will be able to say more by the end of this week
--exercising --- I think it's an abs workout today
--getting dressed for a day when it's below 20F in the morning, but will rise to nearly 50F, practically balmy, by mid-afternoon
Wearing today:
*Wool& Brooklyn dress (S/Long) in Beetroot, bought November 2023
*Secondhand Patagonia men's navy base-layer merino-blend tee, neckline cut out by me, bought fall 2021
*Secondhand Peruvian Connection alpaca cardigan, bought fall 2022
*Secondhand Allbirds slate-blue leggings (L), bought January 2024
*Darn Tough Socks, bought summer 2023
*Secondhand Birkenstock Melrose boots, bought summer 2023
Repeating these leggings for the third day in a row, because the color is so versatile --- and they're still fresh, after airing out overnight, and holding their shape. I wanted to wear this navy base-layer tee under my short-sleeved dress, but I didn't want it to match my legs, because while some people like the "outfit sandwich" look, I really vehemently do not like it. What I do like is to have some harmony between elements: here, my tee and my leggings don't match, but they are tones in the same color family. If I were inclined to wear leggings by themselves, I could wear this tee and leggings, and the colors would make a nice outfit. As it is, I think they make a good subtle frame for my bright dress.
I really adore this magenta: it's not a hot, brittle bright pink, but a dimensional, saturated pinky purple, or purply pink. At any rate, what I love about it is the intense, jewel-tone saturation, which feels rich and luxe and delicious. It's a satisfyingly bright hit of dopamine on a cold morning.
My much-worn alpaca cardigan adds another warm layer and covers the long-sleeve-under-short-sleeve situation happening with my dress and tee. That by itself doesn't look bad, just kind of not as office-appropriate. Mind you, the office is mine, in my own house, and I make the rules, but still. Today is a work day, and while I'm going to do a lot of different things, some of them active and outdoors, some of them active and indoors, some of them sedentary, I work better when I feel dressed for work, as in kind of for an actual professional job. I take myself more seriously when I'm dressed for work. But I can live with myself when dressed for work means also comfortably dressed to go for a walk in the cold.
Anyway, there it is. I'm stuck on the Wordle currently, but I've made it through Connections, Letter Boxed, and one round of Tiles. I solved the Mini Crossword in under 2 minutes, which is not my best time, but is okay. The dog is still quiet in her crate, so maybe I can drink one more cup of coffee and figure out today's word while she sleeps for a few more minutes.
A LITTLE LATER:
I've been out in the yard with Dora, during which time I hung a suet feeder and a seed feeder, both filled, in the dogwood tree outside my office window.
Now I can sit back and wait for the squirrels to show up.
PS: I have to go to the store today for dish detergent and dog food. I'm adding bird seed to the list, because I finished the old bag filling this feeder and the one by the gate from the patio into the backyard. I think I might get a new thistle sock, too, because the finches will be coming back in the next few weeks. The garden beds are still full of seedheads, but if I want to watch them closely, a thistle feeder will draw them into range.
I might consider planting a little wildflower garden around the base of this dogwood, so that I can see it from my window. The southeast-facing spot gets plenty of sun for a good part of the day, and it would be nice to have some pollinator-attracting flowers there. I can build up a little bed with some pavers and soil and sow some seeds. Which reminds me that another thing I want to do today is cold-sow my lettuces in my milk-jug greenhouses. I've bought the potting soil, so all I have to do is cut open the jugs, fill the bases with soil, sow the seeds, and tape the tops back on to keep them warm but sunlit.
But at the moment I'm reclining on the daybed, and the dog is gazing at me in dewy admiration, so I'm probably not going to do anything for a while but bang on this laptop, caught in the adoring canine gaze.
NOON UPDATE:
I've finished an essay draft, half of which I hope won't get cut in editing. The assignment was to write about Gerard Manley Hopkins' "The Windhover," which I did, but by way of doing it I wrote a number of paragraphs about . . . wait for it, you'll never guess . . . J.A. Baker and The Peregrine. I tried to integrate them so thoroughly that the editorial delete button can't just wipe Baker out of my essay, but we'll see. I'm usually not that attached to my prose in these pieces, but I am kind of attached at least to the whole argument I'm making in this one, which I hope is not going to read to someone else as too beside the point. I had a Big Fun Thesis, dammit, and this is what happens when you have a Big Fun Thesis.
And again, where this Big Fun Thesis, or what's left of it once it undergoes scrutiny, shall appear . . . is TBA. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, I'm going to have some lunch.
LATE-AFTERNOON UPDATE:
*I've been to the store and back, finished an essay draft, and begun another: crankin em out, as I have apparently learned to do.
*Talked to my mother on the phone.
*Took the dog for a roughly 20-minute walk in the sunshine. Chilly, but not terribly cold.
* Did a 23-minute abs workout (all the Pilates workouts on this app are exactly 23 minutes, which strikes me as funny).
*Saw a chickadee, or maybe multiple chickadees taking turns, at my new feeder station outside the window here.
*Have decided that I'm off the clock for the rest of the afternoon and going to do my cold-sowing. I also need to unload and reload the dishwasher, so the sink is freed up for dinner prep.
AFTER-DINNER UPDATE:
As a favor to the Artgirl, who is doing a presentation on Catawba Valley pottery, specifically the face jugs traditional to this area, we're walking up with Dora after we drink our tea to see if we can identify the artist who threw a particular large face jug which is part of the series which decorate our Main Street.
But right now I am drinking my decaf Earl Gray, having had a rare (these days) glass and a half of wine with dinner. I haven't officially been doing any kind of less-is-more challenge, though in hindsight I can think of things I'm doing with less of, and alcohol is certainly one of them. We still preserve our pub night out, but ordinarily at home these days we drink no-alcohol beer: Becks is the clear winner here, I can report. O'Doul's makes a surprisingly decent amber. Anything we've had from Athletic Brewing Company has been very good. My husband likes Guinness 0, but I don't --- I like stouts, but Guinness was not anything like my favorite to start with, and the Zero just tastes like zero to me.
Dresses are another less-is-more thing, I guess, this year, though I hardly have not-very-many dresses. I'm just not buying any more of them in 2024 --- though I'm making up for that in things like leggings and shoes. But then those are things I wouldn't have bought before, so much, because I was buying dresses . . . anyway. My rule for 2024 is Nothing New, and I'm sticking to it. I have bought a pair of light hikers (still waiting for those to ship) and a second pair of Xero Cassies (gray and teal --- they're so cute, and I couldn't not), both of which are secondhand and were available in like-new condition for less than half their retail price. My mind is running ahead to possible travel this summer, as well as upcoming weather which will not always be cold. In fact, the high on Friday is 69F, which means not exactly summertime attire, but I could go out with, like, bare ankles. I have loved my red Cassies and have been wanting a pair in a more neutral color (especially since the Keens Mary Janes didn't work out for me). I was going to look for a black pair, but then I saw these darling ones in gray, with a leather toe cap and a teal strap, and that was it.
So, I dunno. That's not really less. But it is allowing myself to have multiple pairs of shoes, which in the past I didn't allow myself to have, so much. In the past, I might buy one pair a season, and they'd have to go with everything (or else they'd look weird with a lot of things, which certainly did happen). This having shoes that make my outfits is honestly a relatively recent development in my life, and I'm not sure I'm ready to let that go. BUT steeling myself not to buy dresses, even though of course they tempt me, does mean that when resources come my way (thank you, O thousand readers of Works of Mercy in 2023!), shoes present themselves as one of the things I can obtain with those resources.
A week from today, God willing, I'll be in Memphis with my mother, on my way to Dallas. My brain wants to plan my packing for a summer trip that hasn't materialized yet, but I can turn some of that nervous energy to planning what to take for a weird variety of events, including a massive outdoor college party which is likely to be muddy, if not cold, but at which the Artgirl's band will be a headliner. The entry ticket for this party is an official sweatshirt, which I have purchased and will pick up there. No idea what color it'll be, but who cares? I just need to think what I'm going to wear it over. I'll probably leave it with the kids, since I don't really wear sweatshirts, but anyway. It'll all be fun. And I do need to plan what I'm taking, so that I don't haul my whole closet with me. Less is more, I remind myself . . .
BEDTIME UPDATE:
Back from a lively scavenger-hunt walk downtown with Dora and the husband, looking at and photographing the face jugs on Main Street. I'll post photos tomorrow --- stay tuned! But now I'm going to finish my last cup of tea, get into bed, and read Little Dorrit until I pass out.