Evening Walk

-
Tonight, I went for a walk by myself.  There are many nights when Yoshi is with me but this was not one of them. As I walked up the steep incline on Belleview,  I distracted myself from my arduous journey by following the cracks in the pavement. This helped me not think about how much further I still had to go up the hill. I kept my mind on the upward trajectory of cracks in the asphalt an effort to remain more mindful and as practice for staying in the moment which is something I am really working on in my spiritual life right now. It helped but I really had to concentrate on the upward weave of the cracks in order to stay in the moment. I think of all the moments long past where I should have lived more in the moment and I feel sad.  As I am walking and get to the sidewalk, I cannot follow cracks. Although the houses in the neighborhood are old, in that area some are 100 or more years old, the sidewalks must have been replaced in recent memory and there are hardly any cracks in the sidewalks except for between the individual concrete slabs. Part of the hill has sidewalks so I move over to them to continue walking but the hill is still climbing. Instead of cracks, I look for twigs or branches that have fallen on the sidewalks and look for patterns or shapes. Tonight, I saw two that looked like mustaches and 2 that looked like parallel lines or even the number, 11.  As I was following etched cracks up the hill, I heard two Barred Owls calling to each other to the West. I have heard them on previous walks in that same area.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Simon

-
Image
I found out yesterday that I will be saying goodbye to a good friend sooner than I would ever have imagined.  I thought we would be together until he was an old cat and I was an old woman. I have promised him that I will work with him as long as the medicine and home care are helping him enjoy his life. And, that when he is ready or it is simply his time or a little bit of both, I will not let him suffer.
Read more

Baseball and #QAL

-
      I have come to understand that I can only really rely on two things to always be there for me. Notice, I said things. There have really only been two people I could always count on: my parents. Regardless of where I was either physically or mentally, they always listened unconditionally. It is from them that I learned how powerful unconditional love really is. My mother is gone from this world now but I know that, if I called my Dad up, he would be glad to hear from me. He always tells me that I am doing a "good job". Even at age almost 56, that means a lot.      There are, however, two things I can count on to keep me company: one has been around for over a hundred years while the other not nearly so long. That doesn't, however, negate its effectiveness. Tonight, I am listening to a Queen and Adam Lambert (QAL) concert from New York City.  I could be watching the live video but that doesn't work so well with my other summer vice, baseball. I ca...
Read more

No Hawks Today

-
 It's a lot nicer outside today than it was yesterday or the day before so Yoshi & I went for a walk around the block. I looked up into many trees but saw no hawks. I would have been okay with a far-off sighting of a Red-tailed Hawk but I, specifically, looked in tall, barren trees close to the sidewalk for Cooper's Hawks perching in wait. We went by the yard where, several years ago, I saw what I thought was a Peregrine Falcon dive bomb an unlucky robin to the ground. It seemed to look me in the eye before it lifted off with the robin still trapped in its talons. In retrospect and after a couple more years of observing hawks in this neighborhood, I realize that was a Cooper's Hawk. The thing with hindsight in life and urban bird-watching is that time can refine your perception of an event. Yoshi and I headed home. On the corner of 37th and Southwest Trafficway, I saw two small pigeon feathers. They looked scrawny and one was lying on top of the other one in roughly the...
Read more