Sunday morning: sun and fog battling outside of my window, puppies asleep in the kitchen, my list of tasks and projects growing ever longer. I’m doing none of the things I “should” be doing, though I’ve done some of the things I’ve wanted to do. Balance, I know, is key, yet Sundays seem made for something sweeter.
This morning, I’m thinking of poems I have loved. This one, in particular, by e.e. cummings:
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
And I’m thinking of traveling, thinking of where I will go next, and when that might happen. Several years ago, I spent about two weeks in Amsterdam in early fall, right around this time of year, and it was magical: bike rides late at night, fog and chill that insulated my temporary world from the rest of my real world. I’d like to be there now.
My office is warming up; sun filtering through my window tells me that the fog lost the battle. It’s time to get this day started, I suppose, finding something productive in the midst of the shoulds and the wants laid out before me. If you could hear my voice in your ear this morning, it would be a whisper: Happy Sunday to you.
The Wandering Introvert 