Today, again and like most days, I had coffee when I woke up. I peed first, though, pretty soon after I got out of bed. Just so you know. And then I thought about making toast, but I didn’t. Instead, I decided I’d have toast later in the morning when I actually felt hungry. I thought again about finishing things and how I’m afraid I won’t do it. I’ve quit lots of times, and I worry that I am a type, that I have a pattern. How I’ll just get distracted, or disgusted, and quit. Like here, with this little experiment I’m beginning. Will I quit in shame and confusion, because I am sharing mundane life details shoulder-to-shoulder with my various inner voices?

I fear that I will. I fear oversharing, being too earnest, too…I don’t know. Too something. I think I need allies, or people to talk to about this so I have a little bolstering when the Critic’s voice comes to haunt me. Anyway, this is what I thought about while the water for my coffee heated in the electic kettle, that yeah—some little humble blog posts might be good. Like reps of finishing stuff, for my creative muscles. Practice in sharing, connection, finishing, reviewing, learning and modifying from the results.

Today, I had coffee when I woke up. Lighthouse coffee, which I love from a coffee-flavor perspective and from a cool-business-and-cool-shop perspective. I used a handmade mug I like because I cannot abide drinking coffee or tea from a mug without character. Only second or late-afternoon cups can be had on machine-made mugs, if at all. I wrote for a little while, and thought a bit about what if I never finish anything, i’m so bad at finishing things.

Then Jamie and I took River to school. It was cold and humid in the car. I wiped condensation off the rearview mirror on my side so Jamie could see out the back. He did the same on the driver’s side. Later, after River went into his classroom, we walked back to the truck and rode home. We talked a little bit about how it might be nice to go to Hawaii, and I again said that I really wanted to spend a month in Rome investigating ruins and thinking about myths. Jamie said he wants to go outside more and I said, gesturing towards the buildings we drove past, “the outside is right there, just open the door.” He didn’t reply, because I’ve said that a lot of times and I think he’s sick of hearing that, and that’s not really what he means, anyway.

Soft winter rain
Clings to my body—
What a marvel.

No moon/new moon:
A day is half dark, after all, like us.
What power fear has

The sky of the plains—
vast and close, a lightning dome.
Fear, my steady friend.

Gutter with fall leaves,
winter’s endless rainwater,
and a cast-off mask.

“D.M., the wife of the chief of staff,
was spotted carrying out a stuffed pheasant from her husband’s office
and loading it into her car.”

— CNN

What a vast nation.
Mostly it’s a nightmare that
I can’t quite recall.

I am my mother’s daughter
I am my father’s son;
my brother hews a stack of sticks
and gives my sister none.
I sit and knit and count the days:
one and one and one

Each breath is new, yet
Nothing known to me is new.
Waves slide on the sand.

Done. Wring the rag and
drape it on the bucket’s edge.
What work is next?

The vast gray outside,
much like the vast gray within:
a tangle. Not simple.

A touch and a touch;
another and another.
An endless drip at the door.

The earth may shake us,
Though typically it will not.
Why wait for tremors?

a fulfilling long term vision always looked fuzzy. now some real-life new experiments may be in order.
there’s abundance on many counts here, though: look at its external and internal benefits. see its lessons! enjoy it, even.
but think on this: is the abundance really that? or is it also a trap you’re stuck in?

-7p, Kp, -10p

body says
let’s change our environment so we can change our outputs

but mind says
please visualize the future vividly before drastic changes

and the spirit says
the higher road can be a harder walk. Slow down.

When the eagles are overhead,
you wanna watch the water extra closely.
The steelhead swim upstream.

thesis
move on with kindness
antithesis
but move towards where?
conclusion
follow your intuition

subconsciousness says
movement is important. keep moving.

consciousness says
focus on the destination you want, not on the one you don’t want.

superconsciousness says
there is joy is using what you have to create what you need.

a little bedding
but otherwise just rats
in the rat’s nest.

as fall advances,
squirrel moves quickly.
the trees tremble!

Two men slurp tea.
The crow shifts to preen
upon the wire.

All night long
At rim of the canyon
The mouse shivers.

The heron fishes.
I see, or do not see.
She carries on.

beneath the small fruit
sparring sparrows twist and flash—
hard to say who wins.

sticker bushes, and
a golden autumn day:
perfection, it seems.

the moon, they and I
we both move widdershins
a sinistra

what’s next?
the sun or the moon—
simple.

rowdy children,
social time, then sleep:
a simmering glow

night rain,
the weight of a work day:
inertia.

how to show
a ranging set of thoughts—
the world, compressed.