Photos taken in the gloomy kitchen while waiting for the coffee to brew. It's a cold, hazy morning with a hard frost --- kind of glad I didn't get around to setting out my baby lettuces yesterday.
And my own window, looking east to the dawn:
I really like this light, actually --- it is the light of winter-verging-into-spring, the mornings brightening, just as the twilight hangs longer in the evening sky than it did a month ago. It's cold, but it's not dark. If it's bleak, it's the bleak light of Lent, a hopeful bleakness like seeing that the grief you feel won't last forever, however awful it might be in the moment.
Not, mind you, that I do feel awful. As it happens, I feel just fine. A little sore from the pilates/barre workout I did yesterday, but otherwise fine. We went out to the brew pub in the old train station in Hickory last night and had us a good time, as one does after sundown on the first Saturday in Lent, when liturgically speaking it's Sunday already.
Now I'm drinking the coffee that's brewed at last, pecking away at some little trimeter poems I've been writing, just to write something other than pentameter, and gearing myself up slowly to get ready for Mass.
Wearing:
*Wool& Willow dress (M/Long) in Ocean Teal, bought October 2023
*Secondhand purple cashmere poncho, bought with Marly in the bougie mountain consignment store, September 2023
*Snag merino tights in Crocodile
*Secondhand Keens Mary Janes, which I meant to resell. They haven't sold yet, so I took them out of the for-sale box and decided to try them again, mostly because I'm a little tired of boots.
I dunno what it is with me and these Mary Jane shoes. I now have three pairs, and I've been dubious about two of them, but I think I can warm to them. If not, I can always put them back up for sale. But I like Mary Jane shoes! These are kind of nice for this wintry weather: heavier and warmer, being leather, and dark enough not to seem too summery or lightweight with dark wool tights.
This sort of thing is why I'm glad I'm doing a Lenten no-buy --- ordinarily, when the floodgates are open, they're really open. I'm too apt to say, "Oh, why not buy this?" It's good to have to revisit things I already have on hand, even when I've decided that buying them was a mistake. Sometimes I'm right about that, but sometimes I've just had a hasty negative initial response. Continually I'm realizing how important it is for me to evaluate these responses: Is how I feel a reflection of reality? Or is it simply a reflection of the reality that something feels different?
I'm comfortable with what I know. I like familiarity. I'm not nuts about change. So I have to discern whether my reaction to something (this is larger than clothing, by the way) is a reaction to the thing itself, as a poor fit for me, or simply a reaction to the unfamiliarity of the thing. This kind of reactivity has felt a little out of control lately, so it's nice to have this season of reflection and quiet discipline to slow down and discern and try to be clear about things before I make up my mind one way or the other. Again, this is bigger than clothing, though sensory issues related to clothing matter and are real in themselves. It's just that nothing is ever one isolated thing, and when there's a small issue, it's good to look to its larger resonances.
In other news, the first goldfinches, still in their winter gray, have appeared on my dogwood tree this morning, with its feeders. I need to put out more regular seed, but there's suet and thistle for them. And now there are bluebirds, a male and female. Definitely time to put out more seed. Everybody all of a sudden wants to alight in this tree this morning.
So I think I'll let the dog out and she can come with me to fill the feeder. We'll take a quick spin, then it'll be just about time to leave for Mass.
LATER:
Mass: attended
Brunch: eaten
Shoes: still honestly okay. I think I was being a nimnool about them before. Leather does give, as I am reminded, and my feet feel fine. No bunion pain. No knee pain. It's all okay.
I will remind myself to wear my new-to-me Xero Cassies in the same spirit, i.e., telling myself not to be a reactive nimnool, but to see if I don't get used to the fact that they are not the same as my previous pair.
In the meantime, it's a cloudy Sunday afternoon, which makes me sleepy. I think I'll curl up here on the daybed with the dog (whose new goal in life, incidentally, is to go outside and snarf up all the seed the birds spill out of the feeder) and read Little Dorrit.
