Day 43, April 28, 2020

Morning Ritual

As long as I can remember, my father has been a morning person. He was always awake before anyone else in the house practicing violin, going fishing, or making breakfast. I was never a morning person growing up. Even in my fishing heyday, it was always a torturous thing to wake up in the predawn air and make my way down to the lake.

I've never asked my father about his mornings, but as I've grown older, I have come to enjoy mornings more. It may have started with when the twins reached middle and high school age and their bus came early, picking them up in Leverett, nearly an hour before school started. After making sure they were awake, packing what meager lunches I could assemble, and facilitating breakfast, I would have a span of time before the grade school bus came. There was enough time to sit at the breakfast table and work on a poem, feed the chickens, and drink a cup of coffee before waking my youngest child. It was a pleasant period of meditation.

This is June Bug.

Years later, I moved to the top of a small mountain in Colrain and my second floor bedroom windows faced east so that each morning I had the full blast of the gorgeous morning sun streaming into my room and rousing me from my slumber. It was a period of solitude for me, and waking up with the sun was a little celebration, a little moment of wonder and joy.

That reminds me of Ireland, where I spent a summer taking classes at Trinity College in Dublin, and then on Fridays I would skip class early and hitchhike across the countryside to seek out sites mentioned in Yeats poems. I carried an old external frame backpack with a car boot sale guitar tied to it. I had a sleeping bag and a tarp. If it rained, I rolled myself in the tarp. At night, I had a little candle lantern, but that gave off little actual light, just some meager illumination. So, for the most part, when it grew dark, I went to sleep. When the sun rose, I woke.

One of my favorite memories was finding a pleasant stream to camp by. There was a grove of trees, and I rested there after a long day of hiking. I ate my cheese sandwich and drank orange flavored drink until the landscape faded into shadow. Among the roots of the trees I unrolled my sleeping bag on my tarp and propped up my head against my backpack as the darkness descended. All night long, the river played tricks on me. I could hear it lapping the shore, playing with sticks, moving stones. In complete darkness one can imagine seeing everything in utter clarity.

Eventually, I was overcome by sleep, and when I finally woke to the chill of dawn and the faint shimmers of motion, at first I could not move. I could not fathom what was happening, and it was only as the light rose to where I could see my feet that I discovered I was surrounded by sheep. A whole flock had gathered sometime in the night on this little oxbow in the river and had kept my dreams company the entire evening.

Another night, I was in a seaside town and thought it would be brilliant to go sleep down on the beach. So at dusk I climbed down the deep stairs at the sea wall and set up camp on the sand. I molded the sand to fit my contours perfectly. The waves caressed my senses like a gossamer cloth, only, they grew louder, and louder. Doubting myself, I sat up and in the darkness could see that the waves were nearly lapping at my feet! I scrambled up and moved all my gear up the beach to a safe distance and settled down again. 

This time, I watched as the water rose up to my perch and I moved yet higher onto the concrete pad at the base of the seawall. Finally safe, I set up camp, and with the determination of an idiot, tried to make myself comfortable on the concrete with only a thin sleeping bag and sandy tarp between me and the hard stone. But of course, the sea rose higher and lapped at the top edges of the concrete pad so that it seemed as if I was stranded at sea. I retreated up the steps to the top of the seawall and watched as the rest of the tide came in and made its way a good twenty feet (is that even possible?) up the seawall. I spent my night sleeping on a bench in a little pedestrian shelter that smelled of urine. 

I guess that story didn't really have anything to do with early mornings except that I barely slept at all, and in the morning wanted to get as far from that little bench as possible. I walked until I found a convenience store where I bought a liter of chocolate milk and drank it all down.

These days I have been waking early too. I end up squandering the time reading the news even though I have ceased to learn anything new in a week or longer. It is almost as if I read to situate myself in this changed world, in the midst of this pandemic. Instead of going downstairs in my bathrobe and playing guitar, I fend off June Bug from her adamant pestering, and I make my way through the New York Times virus coverage, then I move on to NPR, then Apple News. So, by the time my alarm gets close to going off, I am well informed, but also tired. If it is a weekend morning, I may be so tired that I allow myself to fall back asleep, but on a work day I shower and shave, and brush my teeth, and start my day by going downstairs, preparing my breakfast and starting work on a poem.

Take care and have a kind evening,

Leo

The trillium have bloomed!

From Our Friends:

From the Korean American Community Foundation:

A video of the KACF Giving Summit Series: What's Cooking? A conversation with chef, Simon Kim. I'm looking forward to watching... my mouth is already watering. 

From National Geographic:

Kinda common sense for most of us out in Western Ma, but if you are going stir crazy at home with the kiddos, here are some outdoor activities to pass the time: "How getting outside can bring out the explorer in your kid: plus 20 fun activities that will inspire curiosity and self-confidence."

From the UMass Fine Arts Center:

Franklin and the Sawmill River.

A digital version of "Rethinking the Boundaries" by Ponnapa Prakkamakul, a MA based painter and landscape artist.

Today's Online Teaching Tips:

From Anne Wiley:

From the Chronicle of Higher Ed, "What Do Final Exams Mean During a Pandemic?"

From ESRI:

A free course on cartography using ArcGIS Pro!

From the Boston Public Library:

With a BPL card (free for all MA residents), you have access to Lynda.com courses in business, software, technology, and creative skills. If there's something you were hoping to brush up on, or up skill over the summer, this could be a great resource!