these days

it's raining today. it's the kind of day that smells smoky, and wet, and makes you thrilled to be inside, with a lamp on and endless episodes of the gilmore girls season 6 to curl up with. the kind of day that smells like october.

last thursday i had a headache, and the world seemed too much for just one day. then lena posted this, and i found dear ada and her grace. and nothing will be the same again. a sense of shoring up the frontlines came rushing through, and i cried because i hadn't realized just how much i had come to believe (and accept) that i was simply alone in all of this. and last week the relief (in both the sense of a burden being lifted and a distinction by contrast) that i'm not was almost overwhelming; i didn't know how much it had dampened my spirits to feel that way.

the next day, though, i'd had a great sleep and the day was quiet and cool and i was filled with this calm sense of knowing that things are coming together. i've been thinking a lot lately about how to balance everything, how my health always seems to demand more from me than i want to give it, and i find myself wondering how to have the energy to be creative in a sustainable way, how to live in the hours of the day, become the time, so that you and the day are one. so much gathers at the edges of life when you try to focus on too much, and the clutter is like entropy, it wears you down.

i've loved reading abby's thoughts on living with intention and i've also been feeling almost overwhelmingly inspired lately, so shari's posts this week have folded in with perfect timing. inspiration and intention: somehow they fit together. perhaps inspiration leads to intention, makes you want to pull forward the truly beautiful in your life; or maybe choosing to live with more intention clears space to be open to inspiration, makes room to attend to it, as it were. this is what i want to think about more.

before i started grad school, i was very interested in this, living sustainably, and honestly, i thought that i would be studying it, at least in part (my program was an interdisciplinary one, so even though my background was english lit, i intended to take science classes, even architecture. it was the first year of a new program, and well, let's just say they were still defining it when we got there, and things did not turn out as planned.) grad school brings its own kind of pace, and demands, and within the first week it was clear that there wasn't much time for simplicity. this last year has been a rediscovery of so many things, and i want to get back to what i intuitively knew years ago, living with intention, and write about it here.

although i much prefer emerson's essays to his poems, there is one of his poems that has stayed with me:

emerson, "days"

daughters of time, the hypocritic Days,
muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
and marching single in an endless file,
bring diadems and faggots in their hands.
to each they offer gifts after his will,
bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
forgot my morning wishes, hastily
took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
turned and departed silent. I, too late,
under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

i've always thought that the day was scornful not because the narrator didn't select kingdoms instead of herbs and apples, but because he forgot his morning wishes. in the offering of so much to choose from, he lost his purpose. this can happen to me again and again in any given day, if i let it. i can get SO distracted, believe me.

the key is to pull back, re-collect, remember your morning wishes, and continue.

so right now i'm having a cup of tea and esme's clambering up the back of my chair - now she's decided to curl up on the desk. (she likes to snooze and squint under the lamp.)

tonight we are taking the train to montreal, to see joanna newsom (at a vintage theatre that used to be a ukrainian synagogue - i'm so excited!), and stay with friends for a few days and return home just in time for thanksgiving. i think i need a little getaway, with leaves falling on cobblestone streets and amazing music and friends and food and maybe just a little bit of shopping ;)

have a great weekend, everyone :)