Strong and black

I just brewed a batch of "defiantly strong coffee". This is the road I've chosen for myself this morning. Maybe it's due to my declining testosterone levels, but has anyone else noticed how over-the-top and embarrassingly douchey advertising directed at males has become?  

That's me finding something to complain about. See? It's familiar. It's my groove. To be pissed off and separate. 

I remember dreaming of an ever expanding circle. Stay with that. Don't get distracted. 

This morning with the curtains open I saw the sun arrive. Then the squirrels. And then the birds. I heard a bird singing. I'd nearly forgotten how much I missed the sound of that. In that moment, I realized how much better things are in the presence of birdsong. Immediately I could not help but feel pain imagining its absence again. How I cling to what's beautiful and how I suffer in imagining the loss of it. Non-attachment, I'm told. I struggle with that. 

Grief is love's shadow, I think. If you love, if you take beauty into your heart, you will certainly suffer greatly for it. Your heart will be torn to shreds, sooner or later, when all that remains is absence and memory. That's the price. That's the other side of love. Maybe you can avoid that kind of suffering by not attaching, but then won't you suffer the pain of not becoming? Love is a ripening, but it doesn't stop there. What ripens also rots. It's nature. It can only be denied or accepted. Acceptance is the only road that leads anywhere. Let me know when you get there. 

I'm not saying you shouldn't do it - as if there was a choice in the matter. I'm saying I think you should. I'm saying I think I would, again. Yes, you'll burn. That's a given. But it's the only thing I know worth burning for. 

I'm going to walk in the sunshine today. I have hours.

The afternoon was colder and grayer than the morning promised with the temperature just above freezing. I stayed out on the trails all afternoon. A perfect day for a long walk at a leisurely pace. I wasn't cold nor did I overheat. Just right. 

First, I walked out to the eagle's nest. The trail was firm and dry this time. Much of the brown swamp water had a wrinkled film of ice on its surface. Ducks were out on sections of open water. My presence made some of them sound the alarm, and then all of them decided to relocate around the bend and out of my field of view. I was listening to the soft call of a mourning dove as I walked up the trail. When I got too close it stopped calling out. The swamp, which covered the trail the last time I was out here, had receded like the tide allowing me to keep traveling North. 

I stopped to eat a snack in a field bordering a small pond. Three pair of Canada geese were on the water. Some were preening their feathers while the others upended themselves to feed below the surface. When I got up to leave, one or two of them honked an alarm. A pair of nervous ducks flew away. If only I were invisible to them, I thought. Man, the destroyer of worlds.

Later, the trail crossed a dirt road. I wasn't sure where exactly the road led but I chose a direction and set out anyway. I stopped to explore an old stone cellar hole off to the side of the road. I was enjoying myself and the day very much and thought the only thing I'd change would be to somehow make my presence acceptable to wildlife. It would be nice to walk among them without provoking alarm and flight. I stepped back out onto the dirt road and looked directly into the eyes of a Barred owl. It was exactly the same color as the oak tree beside it and nearly indistinguishable from it except that it blinked its eyes every few seconds. I don't think we were twenty feet apart. The owl was not at all alarmed by my presence. I stood still and spoke to it. We stared and blinked at one another until I began to feel like I was intruding and continued on my way. The owl just watched me go. 

I don't think there's anything I like better these days than walking, being quiet, and listening. Quiet has become my favorite word. Quiet, the word and the state of being, feels and sounds sensual to me now. Almost erotic.