Sunrises, sunsets and cycles
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
While recovering from a cold and therefore sleeping in late, I have been missing the sunrises. I’ve been arising after 8:00 a.m. after the sun is up and well on its daily trek across the sky. (I know that it’s the earth that moves around the sun, but I like to think of it happening the way it appears.)
I miss my sunrises. Somehow my day just doesn’t get off to a proper start without saluting the sun upon arising myself. If I miss the sunrise, it is like my day began in my absence and I will never quite catch up to it.
I’ve come to love the sunrises here at Stepping Stones and I need to realize the effort it takes to tear myself from a warm bed and go out into the cold kitchen to make coffee is well worth getting up for to witness the bursting forth of a new day right from its beginning.
The reason for my tardiness, however, is a good one. For since the onset of the winter months and also my cold, I enjoy, after the sunset and the gloaming, to retire to bed with my husband, John, and our dog, Maya, and read late into the night while John either reads or watches TV with wireless headphones so as not to disturb my reading. In the months prior to the early setting of the sun, it was my custom to be outside involved in some sort of manual labor, which I thoroughly enjoy, for I put my whole being into the work at hand and all else slips away. I am then wholly absorbed in the task at hand and am totally present in the moment.
I like to work outside. I like to walk about the land and feel the ground soft beneath my feet where moles have/are been digging their underground tunnels. I like the smell of the cedars; so fresh and clean. I enjoy the swaying of the tall grasses, especially pussy willow, or at least that is what I call it. Since we live on a hill overlooking a lake and valley beyond, there is almost always a wind unless, of course, it is summer when I need it the most to cool me, drying the sweat from my brow that I’ve worked up as I go about my chores.
I like the big open sky where I can get lost in its infinite blue depths. And yet on a cloudy day, I enjoy the confinement of the limits imposed by the clouds. It gives me boundaries and exudes coziness and comfort. I’m even developing a fondness for the ever present East Texas sand. It is called sugar sand, I’ve learned, by those who have lived here a long time, because of its fine granular nature.
I laugh each time I clean house for it’s simply a process of recycling. The dog, John’s wheelchair, and I track in the sand or sometimes it simply blows in. I see it settle upon everything inside the house. With dust cloth in hand and vacuum cleaner in tow, I go about collecting it; whereupon, I take it back outside and empty it upon the sandy ground. Then of course, the whole process begins all over again.
In east Texas, the suspicion of having cataracts is often resolved by simply applying a cloth across the screen of the television or computer monitor. Vision is immediately improved.
I love its smell. It is so clean and devoid of chemicals, so antiseptic. I can smell it when I love on my dog, Maya, after she has taken a sand bath. I can smell it when, with a good book, I sit on my front porch in my wicker rocker, covered head to foot in a quilt that has withstood the winds’ tossing about and has been left with the residue of the winds’ heavier sand particles’ fragrance.
When my adult children visit Stepping Stones dressed in their city clothes of shorts, t-shirts and sandals, they complain of the sand’s nuisance and its habit of becoming entrenched in the toes and on the bottoms of their feet. And yes, when first I moved to Stepping Stones, I cursed its ever present annoyances. But now, I have learned to live with it rather than fight it, and I laugh about its tendency to never be satisfied with where it lays but much like its inhabitant to always shift its presence to other places, though in my case, in thought and daydreaming.
And in this process of recycling the sand, I am engaged in a never-ending process, one that reminds me of the nature of cyclical patterns in my day and in my life. Much like the illness from which I have recently recovered, I can smile to myself and say “this too shall pass” and anticipate with excitement the next shift in the cycle.
While recovering from a cold and therefore sleeping in late, I have been missing the sunrises. I’ve been arising after 8:00 a.m. after the sun is up and well on its daily trek across the sky. (I know that it’s the earth that moves around the sun, but I like to think of it happening the way it appears.)
I miss my sunrises. Somehow my day just doesn’t get off to a proper start without saluting the sun upon arising myself. If I miss the sunrise, it is like my day began in my absence and I will never quite catch up to it.
I’ve come to love the sunrises here at Stepping Stones and I need to realize the effort it takes to tear myself from a warm bed and go out into the cold kitchen to make coffee is well worth getting up for to witness the bursting forth of a new day right from its beginning.
The reason for my tardiness, however, is a good one. For since the onset of the winter months and also my cold, I enjoy, after the sunset and the gloaming, to retire to bed with my husband, John, and our dog, Maya, and read late into the night while John either reads or watches TV with wireless headphones so as not to disturb my reading. In the months prior to the early setting of the sun, it was my custom to be outside involved in some sort of manual labor, which I thoroughly enjoy, for I put my whole being into the work at hand and all else slips away. I am then wholly absorbed in the task at hand and am totally present in the moment.
I like to work outside. I like to walk about the land and feel the ground soft beneath my feet where moles have/are been digging their underground tunnels. I like the smell of the cedars; so fresh and clean. I enjoy the swaying of the tall grasses, especially pussy willow, or at least that is what I call it. Since we live on a hill overlooking a lake and valley beyond, there is almost always a wind unless, of course, it is summer when I need it the most to cool me, drying the sweat from my brow that I’ve worked up as I go about my chores.
I like the big open sky where I can get lost in its infinite blue depths. And yet on a cloudy day, I enjoy the confinement of the limits imposed by the clouds. It gives me boundaries and exudes coziness and comfort. I’m even developing a fondness for the ever present East Texas sand. It is called sugar sand, I’ve learned, by those who have lived here a long time, because of its fine granular nature.
I laugh each time I clean house for it’s simply a process of recycling. The dog, John’s wheelchair, and I track in the sand or sometimes it simply blows in. I see it settle upon everything inside the house. With dust cloth in hand and vacuum cleaner in tow, I go about collecting it; whereupon, I take it back outside and empty it upon the sandy ground. Then of course, the whole process begins all over again.
In east Texas, the suspicion of having cataracts is often resolved by simply applying a cloth across the screen of the television or computer monitor. Vision is immediately improved.
I love its smell. It is so clean and devoid of chemicals, so antiseptic. I can smell it when I love on my dog, Maya, after she has taken a sand bath. I can smell it when, with a good book, I sit on my front porch in my wicker rocker, covered head to foot in a quilt that has withstood the winds’ tossing about and has been left with the residue of the winds’ heavier sand particles’ fragrance.
When my adult children visit Stepping Stones dressed in their city clothes of shorts, t-shirts and sandals, they complain of the sand’s nuisance and its habit of becoming entrenched in the toes and on the bottoms of their feet. And yes, when first I moved to Stepping Stones, I cursed its ever present annoyances. But now, I have learned to live with it rather than fight it, and I laugh about its tendency to never be satisfied with where it lays but much like its inhabitant to always shift its presence to other places, though in my case, in thought and daydreaming.
And in this process of recycling the sand, I am engaged in a never-ending process, one that reminds me of the nature of cyclical patterns in my day and in my life. Much like the illness from which I have recently recovered, I can smile to myself and say “this too shall pass” and anticipate with excitement the next shift in the cycle.
posted by Sandra | 12:23 PM
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