I grew up on a small horse farm in upstate New York. In my early childhood, it was an extraordinary place, full of magic. My brother and sister and I were like wild ponies. We roamed all over the farm, but also foraged in the woods and swam in the pond and made fairy bridges across the creek. When I went full-on angsty teen, I also developed an unkind blindness. The farm was shabby, not beautiful. The pond was full of algae. Someone should clean up all that junk, and why was this place so dirty? Why did we have mushrooms growing in our basement?
I spent a great deal of my young adulthood hating the place, wishing my parents would sell it so we could have something easier, like my friends had. Something more ordinary.
My mom was diagnosed with Glioblastoma Multiforme on March 19, 2022. The doctor gave her 12-14 months. I was primary caregiver to both my mom and my dad, who has Parkinsons. Enforced time on the farm, with nothing to do but be of service. As my mom began to fade, she slept more. I began to wander the farm and the forest again, this time lonely and heart-sore, in need of a different magic. This place--this extraordinary ordinary place--enfolded me in its green self again. My mom died on June 13th, 2023. Now every acre is infused with her spirit, and the whole place sings with beauty and peace and home.
I'm sorry--this is only my second post and it's ridiculously long. What can I say? I'm triggered. I've been thinking so much about the farm and how it has reclaimed me. I resisted, much to its amusement. Now it's welcoming me back--and I'm so grateful that I don't even care that it's also whispering, "Told you so."
I went through a similar journey when my stepfather had bile duct cancer and I returned to Ohio to care for him and then, when he died, to help mom clean and sell my childhood home so she could move closer to myself and my brother out West. I had the opposite feeling because I’d always treasured that home (even though it was 100 years old) and loved the park nearby, etc, despite it being a small town I’d fled from towards the sun. Cleaning my depressed mom’s house room my room took my idealism and nostalgia away and I became a side of myself I didn’t know I had: leader, project manager, advocate. I had to put poetry aside and help because mom is neurodivergent and has other medical diagnoses too. My dads house down the street became my refuge--where he’d just met the girlfriend who would become his 4th wife. I lived in the moment with their lives and new love whenever I could to escape my stifling, dusty past. Sorry for the long reply I just find it fascinating how opposite things can feel to what we expect!
I am sorry for the loss of your mother. Your post was not too long. It drew me in. I am smiling to hear that you have found home again as well as your mom's spirit in place. I hear the land saying welcome back!
Heart-sore. What a word. Your post is a feast. Of grief and love and tenderness. I am so sorry for your loss and glad for the place that holds you and welcomes you back.
I have been to “reclaimed” antique stores, I have felt the repurposing going on, but your story is so unusual in how the place of your childhood reclaimed YOU!
I LOVE this, Shelly! The clay of her former home still calls her name, as John O'Donohue would say. It remembers her and misses her and now it has reclaimed her as it's own. The clay closed that life loop. Beautiful!
What a beautiful torrential outpouring of grief and tender loss that brought you back to a Youthful time of wondering and wandering now only to be brought home again. I'm so sorry for your loss and the caretaking you're doing. But what a profound space to remind yourself of nature's compelling embrace.
Such s beautiful description of what home is, Tierney. All of the layers are what make the ordinary place extraordinary. Your mother sleeps and awakens in those layers.
I hear your mourning, your loss, your joy, your wry humour...told you so. And the love, so much love, appreciation, joy alongside the grieving. Thank you so much for your short post of longing, love and where you have found yourself.
How moving, Tierney, and how beautifully expressed. I can feel how such a place, and your receptivity to its gifts, is holding you, and your parents, in earthly form and otherwise, as you move through this journey. Thank you for your sharing!
Every morning I sit on my screened in porch. In so many ways it is ordinary. A common screened porch. But for me, it is my happy and holy place. I hear and see the birds. I appreciate the flowers I have planted and tended. I hear the neighborhood waking up. And I am grateful for another day.
Thank you. I truly feel that way. I hope you have sacred spaces in your day to day life. Also, my office (I am a therapist) feels sacred to me, too. I am fortunate, indeed.
It’s still dark when I walk the twenty barefooted steps to my old chair. The rose velvet cover is peppered with cat claws and, yes, early morning coffee stains. It is here that the world opens herself to me - outside through the dusty glass and inside through my melting heart
How interesting...have you actually counted the steps, Marta? Do you know why you counted them? I'm just curious because I can certainly navigate my home in the dark, but I have yet to count the steps. Except when I am walking up and down the actual steps, just to be sure I don't miss one and fall...XO
My kitchen table. Its sturdy chairs have been painted many
colors over the years and filled with all the past present and future possibilities of kinship and friendship. Chairs empty too with those gone and those who haven't shown up. But the table is nevertheless set in offering of the sharing of food or conversation and deep abiding love for all who gather there in body or spirit no matter how abundant or meager the moment.
I liked “those who haven’t shown up”. It stings twice because we’ve all been the person with an empty chair and we’ve all been the person who couldn’t make it sometimes. But then you encourage us with “set in offering” and remind us that every empty chair is an opportunity for someone new.
Almost every morning I make a cup of coffee and walk to my living room windows. Two windows opening to a magnificent old maple tree. Each offers a slightly different perspective on the tree and the world beyond. At each window I recite:
The Presence of Trees
I have always felt the living presence of trees
The forest that calls to me
As deeply as I breathe,
As though the woods were marrow
Of my bone,
As though I myself were a tree
A breathing, reaching arc of the larger canopy,
Beside a brook bubbling to foam
Like the one deep in these woods
That calls
That whispers, home.
By Michael Glaser
So many birds visit the suet placed on the tree trunk by my downstairs neighbor. Thus, this day begins. 🏮
Lovely! Talking of trees. I am building a house in a village - I believe this will be our forever home. The land is a half an acre and long and narrow. Our house is storied and exactly outside our walls on the western side, my Neighbour’s eucalyptus tree sway amd send a breeze in our windows! An I am thrilled to hear the sound of wind rustling through the branches! Honestly - this is the place.
I love this!! What a beautiful morning ritual you have. I am quite sure you have cast a spell, that continues to weave its magic on your heart every single day. I pray that, even as you age, you never miss a morning and you never fail to find the magic within. XO
Tis interesting… each seemingly ordinary place I think of becomes extraordinarily beautiful once I ponder it. A place of slowing down to appreciate the details of the day I might typically pass by… even reading the comments… the table and chairs, the coffee slowly and knowingly sipped… ordinary as a portal to the extraordinary of “here” 💗
“each seemingly ordinary place I think of becomes extraordinarily beautiful once I ponder it.” - the key to ceaseless joy and gratitude! Thank you for this, Christina!
My garden - always. There is the physical place that centers me in the creation of beauty, in the remembrance of the cycles of time. There are also the memories of childhood summers with my wise old Italian grandmother with whom I spent hours in her garden. Through her example and words I began to see beauty, struggle, the cost of growth to bring forth fruit. My garden is a place where I can be silent, and it is a place where the deeper voices speak to me. It is a place where I can focus on the life beneath my feet and begin to see across the cosmos.
There is a place at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains where I go to lay it all down, and then, when I can, I shoulder it again. There’s an apple orchard there, and four horses in a paddock. Sunflowers grow wild and there is a vegetable garden planted in mounds. The eye of Horus gazes out from the wall of the stable - a symbol that offers protection. And healing. My heart is both lighter and more full after being in this place. I am connected there - to the sun, to the earth, to the blue New Mexico sky.
You know, I always connect May Sarton to New England and especially Maine. I forgot that it was in Santa Fe that Sarton met her long time partner Judy. I think it is Judy she is addressing in Of the Seasons.
I live in Bogota, Colombia a big city full of contrasts. The view from my apartment is beautiful because it overlooks some of the only rural fields that the city has not yet take over (though there's plans to fill them with apartment buildings in the next few years). I can see the mountains, some beautiful trees, and my favorite part: birds that I had never seen in other parts of the city. I walk everyday to take my kids to and from school and the landscape is radically different. I live in a working class neighborhood, the streets are littered, there's a sharp contrast between the green side of the mountain and the one with an unplanned neighborhood (think a favela from City of God, the Brazilian film). Everyday in my walk, I walk past a tree that blooms with yellow flowers, a Guayacán (I don't know if there's a name in English) and somehow I see the beautiful trying to find it's way in the midst of the chaos and the ugliness of the not-so-well-planned side of the city in which I live. It gives me hope.
Thank you for sharing these beautiful thoughts! I learned this year that Colombia hosts members of almost a fifth of the world's bird species. Maybe some of the lovely birds migrating through my Milwaukee, U.S.A. yard are on their way to you!
I grew up summering on a lake in the Adirondacks. I still go there, a few times a year. There is an island I used to swim to with my siblings. While many things have changed at the lake over years--people growing older, so many who have died, families growing their huge clans, and a revolving door of community dramas--the island never changes. It stands alone, unperturbed, and always available for a conversation. I photograph this island, like a friend. So this is where I go, especially early mornings, when it is just the two of us.
I cannot explain why but hanging laundry on the clothesline in my backyard settles my soul. Forty years ago I was pinning cloth diapers and baby clothes to the line, then overalls and pajamas with feet, soccer shirts and shorts, and always sheets and towels. There is something in the elemental act of asking the sun and the wind to dry what I have washed that brings me peace.(And there is nothing in this world that smells as good as freshly dried sheets.)
For a year we were between houses, engaged in the necessary and cleansing downsizing and culling of years of accumulated stuff, we lived in an apartment and I had no clothesline. As we searched for our new little house, two things were essential to me: a window over the kitchen sink and space for a clothesline. I count myself among the most fortunate because I now have both.
Yes! To the window over the kitchen sinks of my life, to the view of bird feeders and squirrels and moonrises and leaf-fall. To the memory of the curtains over Mother’s sink pierced with her collection of needles: black thread, white, ecru. Thanks for evoking those places.
I'm reading comments in reverse chronological order. So you, Patricia, introduced the topics of clotheslines and windows over kitchen sinks. Thank you. They are such obvious places for reflection and comfort that I never consciously thought of them that way before. And kitchen window sills. They make perfect little altars.
I so enjoyed reading this, Patricia! I live in an apt, and one of the specific things I fantasize about when I think of living in a house is having a clothesline! :)
My god. That poem! What a profound, sacred, holy note on which to start this week. (am so excited!). Perhaps a short substack, but tremendous in its impact. Thank you, thank you, and thank you and deepest bows to you, Jane Mead. 🙏🏾. Wow.
I recently moved, and my current dwelling is in a 37-story building with a rooftop that one can go to, with a view so vast it opens, widens and softens my gaze, and often my mind, just in the looking. It overlooks the East river, and depending on which way one looks, there are multiple bridges and ferries headed out to Queens, down towards Brooklyn, up to Harlem and further north towards the Bronx. The water that flows between it all. And the sky! So much sky!!! It’s a new experience for me, to have access to a view that goes on for miles. So it’s not quite “ordinary” to me in that sense, it is rather extraordinary; but, because I don’t need to trek to get there, as I would to the ocean or the woods, in the past few months, it’s become the “ordinary” place I go.
You've reminded me of the several years I lived in a north-facing 8th floor apartment. And that was high enough to see over the roofs of all the houses to the horizon in the west (when i stood on the balcony). In rain or shine, summer or winter, i would step out onto the balcony to watch the sun go down. It never failed to evoke a feeling of connection with our rotating, orbiting, wobbly ball of Earth. I suppose, for those ten years, it was my happy place.
We walk to Tilden Park. Our children never played there. That’s where bad boys went after dark. New sidewalk? Covid? Who knows? But soccer teams play now. Festive family picnics on these autumn days. With swarms of pickle-ballers on the court. We walk there between my husband’s chemotherapies.
Every morning, pre-dawn, I sit on the chaise portion of my couch to read Lao Tzu and meditate. It is a space that holds me in my physical stillness but allows me to travel deeply within in order to find my daily path. To be truly present, even it lasts only for those moments, reminds me of the importance of connection with myself and with the world.
What a great way to begin the day, Sean. Have you read the Ursula Le Guin translation of the Tao te Ching? If not, it is worth a look. I just finished it (for the first time). It is my favorite of all the translations I have read.
I have. It is my favorite translation as well. Unfortunately, I appear to have misplaced my copy, so I’m using an older translation till I can get a replacement. I love the scholarship she draws from and her sharp insights into what’s needed for a great translation.
I grew up on a small horse farm in upstate New York. In my early childhood, it was an extraordinary place, full of magic. My brother and sister and I were like wild ponies. We roamed all over the farm, but also foraged in the woods and swam in the pond and made fairy bridges across the creek. When I went full-on angsty teen, I also developed an unkind blindness. The farm was shabby, not beautiful. The pond was full of algae. Someone should clean up all that junk, and why was this place so dirty? Why did we have mushrooms growing in our basement?
I spent a great deal of my young adulthood hating the place, wishing my parents would sell it so we could have something easier, like my friends had. Something more ordinary.
My mom was diagnosed with Glioblastoma Multiforme on March 19, 2022. The doctor gave her 12-14 months. I was primary caregiver to both my mom and my dad, who has Parkinsons. Enforced time on the farm, with nothing to do but be of service. As my mom began to fade, she slept more. I began to wander the farm and the forest again, this time lonely and heart-sore, in need of a different magic. This place--this extraordinary ordinary place--enfolded me in its green self again. My mom died on June 13th, 2023. Now every acre is infused with her spirit, and the whole place sings with beauty and peace and home.
I'm sorry--this is only my second post and it's ridiculously long. What can I say? I'm triggered. I've been thinking so much about the farm and how it has reclaimed me. I resisted, much to its amusement. Now it's welcoming me back--and I'm so grateful that I don't even care that it's also whispering, "Told you so."
Beautiful!
The land does that!
A few weeks back, Padraig posted some Joy Harjo lines. I’ve been lingering with this one:
The land is a being who remembers everything.🌱
I went through a similar journey when my stepfather had bile duct cancer and I returned to Ohio to care for him and then, when he died, to help mom clean and sell my childhood home so she could move closer to myself and my brother out West. I had the opposite feeling because I’d always treasured that home (even though it was 100 years old) and loved the park nearby, etc, despite it being a small town I’d fled from towards the sun. Cleaning my depressed mom’s house room my room took my idealism and nostalgia away and I became a side of myself I didn’t know I had: leader, project manager, advocate. I had to put poetry aside and help because mom is neurodivergent and has other medical diagnoses too. My dads house down the street became my refuge--where he’d just met the girlfriend who would become his 4th wife. I lived in the moment with their lives and new love whenever I could to escape my stifling, dusty past. Sorry for the long reply I just find it fascinating how opposite things can feel to what we expect!
So different and yet so full of love and grief as well. Mourning and celebration. Thank you for your sharing too.
Dear Tierney,
I am sorry for the loss of your mother. Your post was not too long. It drew me in. I am smiling to hear that you have found home again as well as your mom's spirit in place. I hear the land saying welcome back!
Heart-sore. What a word. Your post is a feast. Of grief and love and tenderness. I am so sorry for your loss and glad for the place that holds you and welcomes you back.
I have been to “reclaimed” antique stores, I have felt the repurposing going on, but your story is so unusual in how the place of your childhood reclaimed YOU!
I LOVE this, Shelly! The clay of her former home still calls her name, as John O'Donohue would say. It remembers her and misses her and now it has reclaimed her as it's own. The clay closed that life loop. Beautiful!
We all go through cycles in our lives. I am so glad that your cycles led you back to the magic of a home you shared with your mom and family.
What a beautiful torrential outpouring of grief and tender loss that brought you back to a Youthful time of wondering and wandering now only to be brought home again. I'm so sorry for your loss and the caretaking you're doing. But what a profound space to remind yourself of nature's compelling embrace.
Tierney, thank you sharing every word of your heart felt, soul felt post. The haunting richness that captures the circle of life will stay with me.
Such s beautiful description of what home is, Tierney. All of the layers are what make the ordinary place extraordinary. Your mother sleeps and awakens in those layers.
I hear your mourning, your loss, your joy, your wry humour...told you so. And the love, so much love, appreciation, joy alongside the grieving. Thank you so much for your short post of longing, love and where you have found yourself.
Tierney, an outpouring such as yours is as long as necessary, period. Thanks for sharing and please accept my condolences.
Gorgeous
So glad you are here, sharing this poignant and revealing bit of writing. Both the tale and the writing are something special.
Do not apologize. Thank you for sharing your story. This is so beautiful.
How moving, Tierney, and how beautifully expressed. I can feel how such a place, and your receptivity to its gifts, is holding you, and your parents, in earthly form and otherwise, as you move through this journey. Thank you for your sharing!
No need to apologize, your post is beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
Every morning I sit on my screened in porch. In so many ways it is ordinary. A common screened porch. But for me, it is my happy and holy place. I hear and see the birds. I appreciate the flowers I have planted and tended. I hear the neighborhood waking up. And I am grateful for another day.
I loved your words, the honouring of a piece of home as sacred. beautiful.
Thank you. I truly feel that way. I hope you have sacred spaces in your day to day life. Also, my office (I am a therapist) feels sacred to me, too. I am fortunate, indeed.
It’s still dark when I walk the twenty barefooted steps to my old chair. The rose velvet cover is peppered with cat claws and, yes, early morning coffee stains. It is here that the world opens herself to me - outside through the dusty glass and inside through my melting heart
Dusty glass and melting heart - this sounds like a poem to me! Lovely.
Heart-speak maybe? With a smack of Love. Hugs
Your “melting heart.” This really got me! I want to hear more about it. I feel mine melting too.
That last sentence is so lyrical, Marta! It’s also comfortably familiar, the feeling you describe. Kind of like a favorite chair. 😉
Thank you , Mandy. May we all share a bit of comfort together
How interesting...have you actually counted the steps, Marta? Do you know why you counted them? I'm just curious because I can certainly navigate my home in the dark, but I have yet to count the steps. Except when I am walking up and down the actual steps, just to be sure I don't miss one and fall...XO
My kitchen table. Its sturdy chairs have been painted many
colors over the years and filled with all the past present and future possibilities of kinship and friendship. Chairs empty too with those gone and those who haven't shown up. But the table is nevertheless set in offering of the sharing of food or conversation and deep abiding love for all who gather there in body or spirit no matter how abundant or meager the moment.
I liked “those who haven’t shown up”. It stings twice because we’ve all been the person with an empty chair and we’ve all been the person who couldn’t make it sometimes. But then you encourage us with “set in offering” and remind us that every empty chair is an opportunity for someone new.
A beautiful perspective, Amy...it makes me want to go and sit at my table and remember... and dream.
Oh thank you Mandy....I love your response!
Tables are sacred, yes!
Almost every morning I make a cup of coffee and walk to my living room windows. Two windows opening to a magnificent old maple tree. Each offers a slightly different perspective on the tree and the world beyond. At each window I recite:
The Presence of Trees
I have always felt the living presence of trees
The forest that calls to me
As deeply as I breathe,
As though the woods were marrow
Of my bone,
As though I myself were a tree
A breathing, reaching arc of the larger canopy,
Beside a brook bubbling to foam
Like the one deep in these woods
That calls
That whispers, home.
By Michael Glaser
So many birds visit the suet placed on the tree trunk by my downstairs neighbor. Thus, this day begins. 🏮
Lovely! Talking of trees. I am building a house in a village - I believe this will be our forever home. The land is a half an acre and long and narrow. Our house is storied and exactly outside our walls on the western side, my Neighbour’s eucalyptus tree sway amd send a breeze in our windows! An I am thrilled to hear the sound of wind rustling through the branches! Honestly - this is the place.
such a quietly gorgeous poem--thanks so much for sharing it. And trees--always. 🌳
One of the things I cherish about this Substack group are the poems I am introduced to! Thank you for sharing your lovely ritual.
I love this!! What a beautiful morning ritual you have. I am quite sure you have cast a spell, that continues to weave its magic on your heart every single day. I pray that, even as you age, you never miss a morning and you never fail to find the magic within. XO
Thank you for sharing the Michael Glaser poem. I have stored it in my favorites to read and read again.
Tis interesting… each seemingly ordinary place I think of becomes extraordinarily beautiful once I ponder it. A place of slowing down to appreciate the details of the day I might typically pass by… even reading the comments… the table and chairs, the coffee slowly and knowingly sipped… ordinary as a portal to the extraordinary of “here” 💗
“each seemingly ordinary place I think of becomes extraordinarily beautiful once I ponder it.” - the key to ceaseless joy and gratitude! Thank you for this, Christina!
What a beautiful perspective, Christina.
I actually just said “ooooh” out loud. Your words, they are lovely. ❤️
My garden - always. There is the physical place that centers me in the creation of beauty, in the remembrance of the cycles of time. There are also the memories of childhood summers with my wise old Italian grandmother with whom I spent hours in her garden. Through her example and words I began to see beauty, struggle, the cost of growth to bring forth fruit. My garden is a place where I can be silent, and it is a place where the deeper voices speak to me. It is a place where I can focus on the life beneath my feet and begin to see across the cosmos.
Same Jim! My garden is my sacred space.
"Through her example and words I began to see beauty, struggle, the cost of growth to bring forth fruit. "
Profound... Thanks.
Yes! Me too! Lucky us.
My Italian Grandma loved her garden too. That and her croquet set in the grass are two of my favorite happy places
There are places that sustain us and are of life itself. I can feel life breathe in and out in the place you describe.
There is a place at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains where I go to lay it all down, and then, when I can, I shoulder it again. There’s an apple orchard there, and four horses in a paddock. Sunflowers grow wild and there is a vegetable garden planted in mounds. The eye of Horus gazes out from the wall of the stable - a symbol that offers protection. And healing. My heart is both lighter and more full after being in this place. I am connected there - to the sun, to the earth, to the blue New Mexico sky.
Hi! This makes me remember a poem set in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, called "Of the Seasons" by May Sarton:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=59&issue=5&page=7
Hi Elizabeth,
You know, I always connect May Sarton to New England and especially Maine. I forgot that it was in Santa Fe that Sarton met her long time partner Judy. I think it is Judy she is addressing in Of the Seasons.
Hi, Erin! I didn't know she met Judy in Sante Fe; when I think of May Sarton, I always think of her epistolary love for Juliette Huxley.
I live in Bogota, Colombia a big city full of contrasts. The view from my apartment is beautiful because it overlooks some of the only rural fields that the city has not yet take over (though there's plans to fill them with apartment buildings in the next few years). I can see the mountains, some beautiful trees, and my favorite part: birds that I had never seen in other parts of the city. I walk everyday to take my kids to and from school and the landscape is radically different. I live in a working class neighborhood, the streets are littered, there's a sharp contrast between the green side of the mountain and the one with an unplanned neighborhood (think a favela from City of God, the Brazilian film). Everyday in my walk, I walk past a tree that blooms with yellow flowers, a Guayacán (I don't know if there's a name in English) and somehow I see the beautiful trying to find it's way in the midst of the chaos and the ugliness of the not-so-well-planned side of the city in which I live. It gives me hope.
Thank you for sharing these beautiful thoughts! I learned this year that Colombia hosts members of almost a fifth of the world's bird species. Maybe some of the lovely birds migrating through my Milwaukee, U.S.A. yard are on their way to you!
What a lovely idea!
I have just looked up some images of the Guayacan tree, and it is so beautiful! Thank you sharing this, and for seeing what's beautiful.
Yes! It's a beautiful tree. Thank YOU for your kind words.
What a rich description you have shared with us! Thank you for this look at the persistence of beauty, and life. I share your hope. ☺️
I grew up summering on a lake in the Adirondacks. I still go there, a few times a year. There is an island I used to swim to with my siblings. While many things have changed at the lake over years--people growing older, so many who have died, families growing their huge clans, and a revolving door of community dramas--the island never changes. It stands alone, unperturbed, and always available for a conversation. I photograph this island, like a friend. So this is where I go, especially early mornings, when it is just the two of us.
See you at Omega, Padraig!
Thanks for taking me back to the Adirondacks. A place that I also love.
Heading up there this morning! Happy Fall...
I cannot explain why but hanging laundry on the clothesline in my backyard settles my soul. Forty years ago I was pinning cloth diapers and baby clothes to the line, then overalls and pajamas with feet, soccer shirts and shorts, and always sheets and towels. There is something in the elemental act of asking the sun and the wind to dry what I have washed that brings me peace.(And there is nothing in this world that smells as good as freshly dried sheets.)
For a year we were between houses, engaged in the necessary and cleansing downsizing and culling of years of accumulated stuff, we lived in an apartment and I had no clothesline. As we searched for our new little house, two things were essential to me: a window over the kitchen sink and space for a clothesline. I count myself among the most fortunate because I now have both.
Yes! To the window over the kitchen sinks of my life, to the view of bird feeders and squirrels and moonrises and leaf-fall. To the memory of the curtains over Mother’s sink pierced with her collection of needles: black thread, white, ecru. Thanks for evoking those places.
I'm reading comments in reverse chronological order. So you, Patricia, introduced the topics of clotheslines and windows over kitchen sinks. Thank you. They are such obvious places for reflection and comfort that I never consciously thought of them that way before. And kitchen window sills. They make perfect little altars.
Lovely!
I so enjoyed reading this, Patricia! I live in an apt, and one of the specific things I fantasize about when I think of living in a house is having a clothesline! :)
Yes, a clothesline is a sacred place!
Thank you for reminding me of sitting at the picnic table while my mom hung laundry.
My god. That poem! What a profound, sacred, holy note on which to start this week. (am so excited!). Perhaps a short substack, but tremendous in its impact. Thank you, thank you, and thank you and deepest bows to you, Jane Mead. 🙏🏾. Wow.
I recently moved, and my current dwelling is in a 37-story building with a rooftop that one can go to, with a view so vast it opens, widens and softens my gaze, and often my mind, just in the looking. It overlooks the East river, and depending on which way one looks, there are multiple bridges and ferries headed out to Queens, down towards Brooklyn, up to Harlem and further north towards the Bronx. The water that flows between it all. And the sky! So much sky!!! It’s a new experience for me, to have access to a view that goes on for miles. So it’s not quite “ordinary” to me in that sense, it is rather extraordinary; but, because I don’t need to trek to get there, as I would to the ocean or the woods, in the past few months, it’s become the “ordinary” place I go.
You've reminded me of the several years I lived in a north-facing 8th floor apartment. And that was high enough to see over the roofs of all the houses to the horizon in the west (when i stood on the balcony). In rain or shine, summer or winter, i would step out onto the balcony to watch the sun go down. It never failed to evoke a feeling of connection with our rotating, orbiting, wobbly ball of Earth. I suppose, for those ten years, it was my happy place.
My word, what a poem you have offered us this week, Pádraig.
'I am not equal to my longing' stopped me in my tracks.
I have a favourite tree in a woodland about half an hour away.
To anyone else, that's an ordinary place...but I go there when I need to have words with my friend who left too soon.
We walk to Tilden Park. Our children never played there. That’s where bad boys went after dark. New sidewalk? Covid? Who knows? But soccer teams play now. Festive family picnics on these autumn days. With swarms of pickle-ballers on the court. We walk there between my husband’s chemotherapies.
Peace and healing to you and yours.
Hugs to you Cynthia.
Every morning, pre-dawn, I sit on the chaise portion of my couch to read Lao Tzu and meditate. It is a space that holds me in my physical stillness but allows me to travel deeply within in order to find my daily path. To be truly present, even it lasts only for those moments, reminds me of the importance of connection with myself and with the world.
What a great way to begin the day, Sean. Have you read the Ursula Le Guin translation of the Tao te Ching? If not, it is worth a look. I just finished it (for the first time). It is my favorite of all the translations I have read.
I have. It is my favorite translation as well. Unfortunately, I appear to have misplaced my copy, so I’m using an older translation till I can get a replacement. I love the scholarship she draws from and her sharp insights into what’s needed for a great translation.
I find my way to my cup of coffee and soft chair. I sit with my gratitude journal and ponder on
the beauty of this wonderous life. Words of gratitude and delight fill my mind and journal. Bless us all on this and every day.