Monday morning

This is springtime as I remember it in Michigan. According to my trusty iPhone for temperature is 34 degrees on April 23. Clear crisp air fills my lungs and the road at my left as I walk west is busy.

Today will be a franticday. I took my files home over the weekend for review. My plan was to prepare for today's work. Somehow I took the wrong files.  On the bright side I am so prepared for Thursday and Friday's work. I will need to rush at the start of this morning to prepare for today's work.

There'll be phone calls throughout the day. I have a school board meeting tonight and a number of large financial issues are on the table. The meeting when it convenience will be contentious. It would have been better to get some more sleep last night.  C'est la vie.

The smell of wood smoke clinging

In order to upgrade my health I have been walking about 40 minutes a day. Mostly I walk routes that I have to travel to get to or from the usual and ordinary events of my life. If I am not walking to work or to the library or to the school I have a set route back-and-forth up and down through my neighborhood.

I like the route that I walk, it is comfortable like an old well-worn coat. I tend to walk shortly after sunset. On a clear night like tonight there're pink wispy traces of clouds in lines across the sky. The streets tend to be empty and there is comfort in fact. There is a subtle joy walking for 30 or so minutes on the night like this.

Whether the walk does my body any physical good it definitely does my soul some spiritual good. It gives me a chance to set aside the thoughts that are picking and pulling at my energies. It gives me a chance to lose myself in a larger reality.

Tonight someone must be heating their home with a fire. The air smells of woodsmoke It reminds me of camping in the north woods along the lake shore. It reminds me of an Elton John song called Indian sunset. The smell of the woodsmoke is comforting and pleasant my senses.

Some joys are very simple like the memories come from smells in the evenings air.
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Birthday tomorrow

Every year around this time I begin to make commitments. Tomorrow Friday, April 20 will be my birthday. Much like what happens at New Year's Eve I make promises to myself to change, to improve and to otherwise act in a more
appropriate manner. Alas I am as human as I always have been. Most of the change has never come to fruition.

Still I am an optimist. Maybe this year will be different. I need to lose a little weight. I am walking about an hour a day right now. This is good. It shows somewhat of a commitment toward real change. Every day can be a starting point. People do reinvent themselves. I don't see many of them that our successes in my line of work. Still on occasion there are people have changed and the change is for the better.

Memo to self

Turn off the clicking sound on the iPhone camera.

As i was riding on the bus today I took a picture of the people behind me. It was an articulated bus and I was standing by the first of the two rear doors. When the click noise went off the woman holding the rail on the other side of the door turned around and gave me a dirty look. It seems she thought I was snapping a photo of her ass. Geez.

Bus stop and we are sky blue hopeful

No matter how hard we try in life to be on time if seems that events conspire to slow us down. On Wednesday mornings Secundus has an advanced English course on the campus of Michigan State. this mean that to obtain full credit he must be there butt in seat by 8 AM. This requires a little preplanning. Plans are fallible.

This morning my lethargy combined with secundus's failure finish his paper last night slowed the entire process down. As a result I just sent mom and the lad off without having them drop me at my office.

It gave me the opportunity to walk with my older son for part way to his school. It was sort of like walking with Gary Cooper in an old Western movie. There was a cowboy hat and not a lot of dialogue. Still it was an opportunity I have not had since he had been in grade school. I savored the moment.

Years fly by so fast. It has been a long time since I have access to the sense of time infinite and unending and of potential unlimited. I have traded that for a belief in the expansive capacity of the heart. I may get discouraged. I may get cynical from time to time. But still I believe. A walk with a man in a cowboy hat who still has time for the happiness found in kicking rocks around on his way to school
remindsyou there is hope for the future.

Walking in Light

Over the past week I've been walking the last 10 minutes' distance to work. This has not come about by accident. My cardiologist mentioned that I had gained 10 pounds. He was not pleased. I told him that I have not been feeling well enough for extended walks. He responded by pointing out that it's a very nasty cycle. Do the exercise or lose the ability to do the exercise.

Off I went. I've been walking every day unless the rain is pouring.

Today as I am walking the air temperature is at 34°. That's relatively cold for April. I have my hands stuffed in my pockets. One hand is holding onto a coffee cup trying to make sure it does not spill in my down vest. At least that hand is warm.

As I am walking I am watching the light play off the trees, the bushes, the road surface and the tinted glass of the office building windows. Traveling by car you forget the little pockets of illumination that are hidden along a mile of roadway. You just flash by with no focus on what's around you. Walking the flow of light, the legacy of light is before you at every step.

It can be in a small puddle near a curb cut or it could be in the light playing around bushes at the edge of the property boundary that you see it. There is something of the divine to be captured in the morning's light.