Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Saturday, May 1, 2010
FIELD NOTES: “It’s ten o’clock. The day’s almost over...”
Sunday morning
...is something I say that makes my children laugh. I am a morning person…I can get up easily…that is to say, at whatever time the sun breaks and the birds chirp …not when it is thirty degrees out and still as hard and black as cast iron at five or six…then, I do have to force myself out of my quilty nest to prepare for work…but this morning, it is Sunday…it is spring…the windows are open – they have been all night – due to above average temperatures (whatever ‘average’ is for New England) and I notice a perfect Symphony of Quiet…an adagio of birds and people sleeping…I go to brush my hair and can still hear the arpeggio of my bacon and eggs in their little skillet and the whispering rondo of the coffee pot…I write a little, surf a little…and then comes ten o’clock…like the surface of water or snow, the air does not stay undisturbed…a crescendo of working vehicles, tools and machines…the neighbors have started their weekender’s construction project…hammers, drills, power saws, male voices in a language I do not understand…I hope they will be finished soon…and then, oh, if I could have a week of spring-like Sunday mornings, what a vacation that would be!
The World's Quietest Places
...is something I say that makes my children laugh. I am a morning person…I can get up easily…that is to say, at whatever time the sun breaks and the birds chirp …not when it is thirty degrees out and still as hard and black as cast iron at five or six…then, I do have to force myself out of my quilty nest to prepare for work…but this morning, it is Sunday…it is spring…the windows are open – they have been all night – due to above average temperatures (whatever ‘average’ is for New England) and I notice a perfect Symphony of Quiet…an adagio of birds and people sleeping…I go to brush my hair and can still hear the arpeggio of my bacon and eggs in their little skillet and the whispering rondo of the coffee pot…I write a little, surf a little…and then comes ten o’clock…like the surface of water or snow, the air does not stay undisturbed…a crescendo of working vehicles, tools and machines…the neighbors have started their weekender’s construction project…hammers, drills, power saws, male voices in a language I do not understand…I hope they will be finished soon…and then, oh, if I could have a week of spring-like Sunday mornings, what a vacation that would be!
The World's Quietest Places
Sunday, August 30, 2009
FIELD NOTES: I'd been away...
Sunday morning
...then jumped right into a new school year - hadn’t walked or considered my home place in weeks. Finally, sitting down with a glass of wine and a novel at my back deck ‘bistro’, a feathered friend reminded me - no, reprimanded me. “Have you forgotten? Have you forgotten?” Its partner (some variety of sparrow) joined in the trill that was somewhere between aria and lecture, delight and indignation…..somewhere between “nice to see you” and “where the hell have you been?” With unusual boldness, they perched practically in my face, causing me to put down my book, remove my reading glasses, get aroused from a mentally dulling week and respond audibly with “thanks, I needed that.” I see missing relatives in the actions of creatures around me because my grandmother, my father and his brothers, would recognize it as a reliable conduit for uncommon communication. I needed that kind of jolt from the minutiae of management, from packing and unpacking, laundering and bill paying, food shopping and cooking, cleaning and sorting and realigning with routine. The next morning on my way north, an ethereal image of heron-on-green-pond-in-morning-fog appeared. Had I heeded the advice of the sparrows, I would have had my camera with me and would have stopped - staff development be damned – because there can be value, and very personal liberation, in having that 'cat who ate the canary' feeling.
...then jumped right into a new school year - hadn’t walked or considered my home place in weeks. Finally, sitting down with a glass of wine and a novel at my back deck ‘bistro’, a feathered friend reminded me - no, reprimanded me. “Have you forgotten? Have you forgotten?” Its partner (some variety of sparrow) joined in the trill that was somewhere between aria and lecture, delight and indignation…..somewhere between “nice to see you” and “where the hell have you been?” With unusual boldness, they perched practically in my face, causing me to put down my book, remove my reading glasses, get aroused from a mentally dulling week and respond audibly with “thanks, I needed that.” I see missing relatives in the actions of creatures around me because my grandmother, my father and his brothers, would recognize it as a reliable conduit for uncommon communication. I needed that kind of jolt from the minutiae of management, from packing and unpacking, laundering and bill paying, food shopping and cooking, cleaning and sorting and realigning with routine. The next morning on my way north, an ethereal image of heron-on-green-pond-in-morning-fog appeared. Had I heeded the advice of the sparrows, I would have had my camera with me and would have stopped - staff development be damned – because there can be value, and very personal liberation, in having that 'cat who ate the canary' feeling.
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