~21° and light snow : sunshine and blue skies~
My prompt for today from {
Abbey of the Arts} was to take a contemplative walk outside and ask for a "wild" word from what I encountered.
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While I have become adept at driving through Michigan winters, my favorite way to enjoy them is from the comfort of my living room ~ coffee and book in hand, cat on lap. Warm. Safe. [for more on this, see
Winter by Adam Gopnik]
But the first drink of coffee is that much more delicious when one is chilled to the bone, cheeks flushed from the cold. And one feels that much more alive when having walked through snowflakes, feeling the wonder of them.
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It's Monday and so the garbage truck was winding it's way through my neighborhood. I laughed to myself at this rusty monstrosity ruining my peaceful winter stroll. Because isn't that life? And isn't that what I try so hard to control?
I acknowledge the mess. Wax poetically about the "chaos" of life. Find beauty in the ordinary. But only when I define the limits and maintain my corner of uncluttered comfort (coffee and book in hand and cat on lap).
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Experience, don't observe.
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"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
Henry David Thoreau
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I won't be going to the woods by any means (suburban America is a far cry from being immersed in the elements), but I am going to live more deliberately in the world around me... even when rusty monstrosities threaten to mar my self-indulgent peace.
