Cold Morning...

This morning was the first cold morning of the year. In fact, it was the first of the coming season where I regretted not wearing socks. And almost immediately thereafter realized that I wished I had remembered to pack my cufflinks. For the record, a shirt that requires cufflinks really cannot be worn normally. It caused me to roll up the sleeves and feel a little silly.

So I started my day, feeling silly and tired, and drove, and drove, and drove until I was able to sit in my own chair, and prepare to sleep in my own bed again.

Today/tonight, I want to share the words of others because they do such a find job capturing where the moment.

First a poem, from my poem-sharing friend...

Enough

by Jeffrey Harrison

It's a gift, this cloudless November morning

warm enough for you to walk without a jacket

along your favorite path. The rhythmic shushing

of your feet through fallen leaves should be

enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises you

when you catch yourself telling off your boss

for a decade of accumulated injustices,

all the things you've never said circling inside you.

It's the rising wind that pulls you out of it,

and you look up to see a cloud of leaves

swirling in sunlight, flickering against the blue

and rising above the treetops, as if the whole day

were sighing, Let it go, let it go,

for this moment at least, let it all go.

The second comes from my friend Addison's brief memoir of her recent trip to Italy...

In “Eat, Pray, Love,” an Italian friend of Gilbert’s observes that Italians are much better at “il bel far niente” — “the beauty of doing nothing” — than their American counterparts. I’ve been thinking about this concept a lot since I’ve been home. Italians may be very adept at doing nothing, but they are never careless. Every bite is thoughtful, every greeting heartfelt and every gift from nature cherished. And that’s the relationship I’ve been thinking about since I’ve been home — the one between caring and carefree. And that’s a relationship I want to get right.

I loved the idea of the beauty of doing nothing... such a wonderful concept. An even better goal for the weekend...