#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
Morning Brook
“Walking was a means of personal myth making . . . paths run through people as surely as they run through places. . . [according to John Brinckerhoff Jackson] The road offered a journey into the unknown that could end up allowing us to discover who we were. I have long been fascinated by how people understand themselves using landscape by the topographies of self we carry within us, and by the maps we make with which to navigate these interior terrains. We think in metaphors drawn from place, and sometimes those metaphors do not only adorn our thoughts, but actively produce it. . . The two questions we should ask of any strong landscape are these. Firstly, What do I know when I am in this place that I can know nowhere else, and then, vainly, what does this place know of me that I cannot know of myself?”
~ Robert MacFarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot
One of those mornings where I move very slowly, waking up. Stayed up too late reading because I couldn’t go to sleep, and grateful to have this massive, thick, absorbing book that is taking me weeks to get through, in a wonderful way: Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement that Changed Modern Art. I walked into the woods, and it was mild and melted and the river water black and reflecting the bare trees, and dusting of snow over everything. I thought of the ducks my father would take us to feed on the Charles in the winter. Pretty much most of the ice is gone. Cold cheeks, no wind, fresh air. Monday morning, a new week in a new year. I walked and thought through the writing webinars I am leading this week, what we will do. Indoors, I answered e-mails, catching up from the break, and in the afternoon, errands. Strange to be out of the house driving around. Christmas returns, I kept them very quick and simple as I could. I downloaded a new Audible book, as I have finished the Adrienne Rich biography and there is a massive new Sylvia Plath biography, Red Comet, that I downloaded and was quite astonished to discover its length: 14 hours of listening! A long winter of listening hours ahead.