Small Liberties

A sly grief, twining up through the blue sky and the sudden maple blossom. Another trick of age has come upon me: I squint, now, at moments of irritation or perplexity. Wrinkle my nose, in that wonderfully expressive, nonsensical English phrase. I catch myself doing it, and in the moment the fact that I turn sixty in a few days becomes suddenly explicable. Inevitable.

Still the wind is fresh, and the crows climb up to play in the gusts, and there's a fine sunlight, laid on with a hasty brush. It will do, I suppose. I suppose it must. I walk up to where Burnside Street bridges the freeway to have a look at the mountain. Pure white and larger than usual, as though someone over on the far side had carelessly elbowed it, shoved it closer.

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Home. Stew in the crockpot: done for now. I'll leave it to simmer overnight. In the morning I'll add some broccoli, portion it out into containers. Lunch for us for the next five days.

Dark flows in now. I'll wash up at some point, do the dishes, call it a night. 

That which is impossible to thee is not impossible to me: I shall save my word in all things and I shall make all things well.

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Small liberties: taking transit instead of driving, and not having to trouble about my car -- I don't need to remember where it is, or track how the parking fees might be tallying, or worry about going out of range of it: none of that. I'm free. But I am so small, now, the wind could blow me away. An eddy might blow me aboard the train, or sweep me off again.

Good night!