A Dreary December Sunday (No Snow)

7:31 Gray on Gray Morning

Home

Up too early, 6:05, to utter darkness, the sound of NPR, a warming up, forty two degrees at the moment.  It rained some last night and may on and off the rest of the day.  Nothing to see at the moment because of the darkness, no birds, lake, trees, just a few lights off towards Bemus.  I was thinking just last night about how much I enjoy my early mornings, the leisure of them, the time to get settled on the couch, in no hurry, with my coffee, computer, radio and, of course, the lake and sunrise, a favorite time of the day.  But it's too early this morning, I fear, and the darkness, the lack of something to see outside, takes a way from my morning pleasure.  I will just have to be patient and wait for the coming of dawn, the beginning light, it's brightness depending on the cloud cover and the birds, of course.  Their absence reminded me of today's lovely poem from The Writer's Almanac:

Noel

by Linda Pastan

Like a single
ornament,

the red cardinal
on a pine

outside
the window

is our only
decoration,

until
the snow.

Yesterday at 9:00, I had yoga class, a class called Workout for the World.  It's led by a new teacher, a guy with pony tail, in his mid thirties I would  guess, very serious about our class and enthusiastic, which is great.  He's lived in Thailand for some time and is always referring to it, to his study there.  A few guys in class today, in fact, one was my size, amazing.  I was tempted to say to him: "What's it like up there," but I didn't.  We worked on variations of the warrior pose and spent a good twenty minutes on relaxation or Savasana (corpse pose), a form of meditation, at the end of our session.  In this part, we lie on our backs, relaxing, and he takes us through the awareness of every toe, finger, arm, leg, in fact the entire body, slowly, asking is to concentrated on each appendage.  I am not sure what this relaxation exercise is called because I forgot the name he has given it, not Savasana,  but if you pay attention, you are practicing mindfulness.  I found my mind wandering a few times but  I stayed on task fairly well for me.

And that's about it for the day.  Evie is still under the weather, so we both just stayed home and vegged out for the day, watching the terrible story of Newtown on and off during the afternoon.  We are both attracted and repulsed by story, the competition on each network to get the story.  We did see the first bereaved father to speak out about his six year old's death.  He was amazingly forthright and composed; I am not sure why he  felt he had to speak out but he certainly was courageous and strong to have done so.  It  does make me aware of how important it is to speak or communicate with any person who is  grieving, even if it's uncomfortable for you.  Just reaching out is a type of therapy for the grieving.  This tragedy also made me think of the almost everyday deaths of our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, over the past eight or nine years, perhaps because I just finished reading Billy Lynn's Long Half Time Walk.  There deaths are just as terrible, for their families and friends, yet we never get to witness the families or soldiers grieving, as we have for this tragedy.  Perhaps if we did, we would have less wars and fighting.

I did drive to the Lighthouse Grocery early afternoon, quite empty this time of year, for some ground chuck and sour cream, as we were making tacos for dinner.  A couple of hunter's were in the back, weighing the deer they had shot earlier in the day.  I didn't realize it was still deer hunting season.  About 4:00, I took a walk through the campground, walking down to some of the houses on Whitney Bay and back, just under an hour.  I saw only one camper that seemed to be occupied, the glare of the flat screen TV lighting the trailer.

We had our taco dinner and watched some 'trash TV,' a series we had never watched before, a combination of Dallas, Dynasty, and Dexter, a guilty pleasure I must admit.  We laughed as we watched, how silly it was, but we kept watching the next episode.  I won't mention its name for fear of embarrassing someone else who might also have liked it.