Love and Sadness in Everyday Ramblings

Morning, a few days ago. The perspective one sees Mt. Hood through based on the weather is endlessly fascinating to me but here I was plain old happy to see the mountain at all. There is this little jolt of joy on certain days, that oh… we can see the mountain today. Auspicious.

The writing prompt Walt gave us this last week, (even though he is relaxing in Mexico on vacation, or maybe because of that) was… Over the years, and right up to now, what experiences, people, books, movies have enlarged your world?…

I have been busy working on League stuff and teaching and actively procrastinating, so I didn’t reply to the first request and for the first time he sent a second one and I thought, okay, I don’t have time to write a decent throw it in the hopper poem so I will write a short essay.

But what about? The 20 years I lived in San Francisco and specifically worked there were incredible in terms of the cultural diversity I encountered. I met and worked alongside people from the most far-flung places and loved, and was enriched by the perspectives I learned.

Because of both financial limitations of being on my own, and the constraints of my skin condition, which makes travel uncomfortable, (a 15-hour flight would take weeks to recover from) any kind of sustained travel has not been available to me, though I have been a few places; most of my encounters with a bigger world view have been here at home.

Books of course, magazines like Life and National Geographic, television, all that. And listening to everyone I know talk about their travel experiences. I am a good listener in this particular arena, and who doesn’t value that? I have known people, know people, who have been all over the place. One of my favorite guys in the coffee group is going to Southern India in a few days on a photo excursion.

As I was thinking about the topic though I realized that writing here, and on Open Diary before here, is without a doubt, the most sustained and enjoyable way, I have expanded my world. You guys.

Thank you.

What we do here is hard to explain and I don’t often try, but I thought what the heck. I love the simple things we write about, the petty annoyances and the little pleasures, our pets, and our day-to-day life. I feel honored to be a witness to some of the most life changing experiences ever, the losses, the loves, the moves and the sustained (sadly) encounters with profoundly difficult people.

I was changed and buoyed by the support I received here through Mr. Finch’s illness. It made such a huge difference on the many difficult days knowing we were being thought about with love and concern. We talked about what you all were saying.

There is the wittering and the wintering. And the window into Climate Change we are all experiencing across the globe. The shared challenges as the weather gets more extreme.

Anyway, thinking this through has been an exercise in appreciating the gifts of this place and so I am glad for the prompt and for the process of noodling on it.

750 Words (where I write in the mornings) has these metrics of themes one writes about when one posts. Sort of the tone of the writing, the feel, the mood. I check those because somedays I am angry but not aware that I am. It is good information so that I can nip it in the bud in terms of blasting anger inappropriately, oh say during class…

This morning the themes were love and sadness. And that feels right.

Love came first though. Love came first.