Look at that sky! It's a brilliant 20 degrees Farenheit at the moment, with the sun slanting in through this corner room at the back of the house. The house is canted to the northwest, but at an angle where relatively few rooms receive direct light for any amount of time: our room gets pretty sunny, as does the sunroom on the front corner, and the Artgirl's room on this side upstairs. This room doesn't get fully flooded with light, but in the morning the sun does shine directly in, and it's marvelous to sit here in the window basking.
Look at how the light falls on the walls and surfaces:
In the minutes since I took the picture, the sun has moved past those photographs, though it still lingers on the timeless clock, the Artgirl vase with pothos, and the wall behind.
This pattern of light and shadow is already gone from the wall by the hall door. The clock has no hands, but the light and the time move just the same.
Drinking the last of my first cup of coffee and about to eat some hard-boiled eggs for breakfast. I've read the Mass readings, which may suffice for my prayers this morning, and played my daily New York Times games: Wordle, which I got in four (had to hit on one right letter to complete a word, which was frustrating); Connections (one mistake, not too bad); Letter Boxed; the daily Mini Crossword (took me 3 minutes --- usually I can do it in under a minute, but not today); and Tiles (an easy pattern, no missteps today).
It looks as though any snow in the forecast has evaporated --- it'll be chilly through the weekend, but by the end of next week highs will be in the high 60sF, which is how it goes around here. Except for summer, the seasons never sort themselves out firmly into categories and stay put. Well, that's why I have linen dresses, for a little breath of spring to go with the weather, even when it's not spring. On the day when it's 67F, I might just have to wear my delicious pink Leila dress, back from the seamstress and ready to go . . . gotta figure out how to dress the legs and feet for a warm winter day, which is always the challenge. It'll be a little early for sandals. But that blush of divine pink . . . I might have to wear it today, to be honest, even though it's so cold. That's what under-dresses are for. And warm cardigans and tights and boots.
Plenty to do today, as usual. I still have laundry in the dryer that needs to tumble one more round, then be folded. I need to order groceries. I have this Australian-poem essay to finish and some reading to do. I'm so close to the end of Making of Poetry, though now I want to go back and reread the beginning, which I've largely forgotten, having started the book two years ago. I need to work on my Milton memory work --- four more lines to go, I think, though there's a place currently where I keep bogging down (the blank space that has persisted in my memory all these years somewhere down the poem between "When I consider how my light is spent" and "They also serve who only stand and wait." Those two lines, plus "That one talent which is death to hide" and "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied," are the ones I've always been able to toss off, but the poem consists of ten more lines, between and between, that have remained a muddle in my head. My goal is to sort that out and be able to recite the whole thing.
After that, maybe, I'll go back and re-learn Auden's "If I Could Tell You," which I've always loved and used to have memorized in full. Again, I can toss off fragments --- the first stanza, for example:
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
Time only knows the price we have to pay.
If I could tell you, I would let you know.
Then these lines: "Because I love you more than I can say, / If I could tell you, I would let you know."
And so on, again in a muddle. You'd think its being a villanelle would help, because the last line of any stanza is always going to be either "Time will say nothing but I told you so," or "If I could tell you, I would let you know." But you can drop whole stanzas and not notice, as long as the pattern keeps up, and you can invert them and get lost, even with all the repetition --- if you're me you can, anyway. But I love the poem dearly and would like to be able to recite it again.
Tonight's our night out, too, yippee yay. One more reason to dress up a little.
Wearing today, because even in bulky-layers weather, sometimes you want to feel light and pretty:
*Secondhand Not Perfect Linen Leila dress (S/M) in Cinnamon Rose, bought at the end of December 2023
*Wool& Maggie dress (M/Long) in Marine Blue, worn as base layer, bought May 2022
*Very old thrifted Express gray beaded cashmere-silk cardigan, bought at Goodwill I can't remember when
*Snag merino tights in dark gray, bought fall 2022
*Secondhand Birkenstock Melrose boots in Graphite, bought summer 2023
Here's a peek at my base-layer dress:
Again, I just adore this blushy pink color, the kind of chameleon shade I think would look good on many people. The only people I think it might not flatter are very wintry types, with blue-white skin and a really high level of black-and-white contrast in their coloring. That kind of coloring would need something like a fuschia, but just about anybody else, including redheads, could probably wear this shade of pink. It's just lovely.
I feel great in it, at any rate, even though I'm not the tender sweet young thing this dress was made for. As Ashley reminds us, the way to style things when you're over the hill (and I'm way farther over the hill than she is, friends!) is to wear what you like, the way you always have. Never mind your rankly face! It's your rankly face, telling the story of the gift of your life. It's beautiful because it is.
Here's my rankly face, with my glasses on top of my head, as a reminder to myself and to anyone else of this essential truth. You are you. The passage of time is part of you, because we all exist in time, yet there is a you that transcends that one-way current. And however that you looks today, it is created, it is loved, and it is beautiful.
Anyway, better let the dog out.
AFTERNOON UPDATE:
*Had a nice, though rather short (20 minute) walk this morning
*Ordered and received and put away groceries (Aldi still out of organic milk)
*Ate lunch: a bowl of diced sweet potatoes and white beans, dressed in salt and pepper and a couple of spoonfuls of plain yogurt
*Took dog out again
*Wrote Australia Day essay on Henry Kendall's "Bellbirds" and uploaded it
*Finished memorizing Milton's Sonnet 16, though I should probably practice it for a few days before I take on the next thing.
*Read more of a poetry book I've been asked to blurb
*Just received an email from my colleague asking if I'm around. If I say yes, that means I'll spend the afternoon on Zoom, not exercising. But then, you know, when you look around and ask the universe, "What am I going to do with the rest of the day, now that I've finished this work," I guess you should not be surprised when the universe provides you with an answer.