I do not have a talent for idleness. Oh, that's not to say that I don't fritter time away on useless pursuits, but most hours of the day (and sometimes, unfortunately, at night) you'll find me doing something.
But today I'm trying to discover the beauty of that act of sluggish languor, so perfectly captured in the phrase dolce far niente (the sweetness of doing nothing).
Of course, there are the cheepers and there is the laundry and, too, trying to figure out how a mouse repeatedly enters our trash bin. (Could it be that the same mouse travels many miles for this one destination -- our garbage? Because we have never had a mouse enter the kitchen bin before and this one seems interested in nothing else but that).
But after a luxuriously late breakfast...
...I ran out of immediate "must dos." I looked out the window and thought of a book that Snowdrop loves, in which a goose and a duck, on the final page, are sitting on a field of grass and looking up at the white clouds drifting by. If they can do it, so can I!
(The photo is out the kitchen window, through the screened porch.)
It's not meditation really. It's lolly-gazing. It's feeling the slowness of time.
Still, I can't do it for long. I make myself a cup of tea and settle in to read.
And then, I indulge in something even better -- a leisurely Skype session with the friends I was to visit in Florida. Honestly, if you cannot travel, what better way to talk than through video chat? Oh, we are a spoiled people!
Late afternoon. It's so rewarding to see the sun now! It wont set until around 5, which is so wonderfully late! Ed and I go out for a walk along the rural roads. We've been discovering the quieter ones just to the south and east of us. It's really true that you miss the detail if you simply drive through them.
I'll leave you with photos from our walk. This is the true winter that I am so used to here, in the northern parts of the country. It's a beautiful winter. At least today, we surely felt it to be so.
(We strayed to a path through the bordering marshlands.)
(Then, back along the road, past farms and fields, past tractors hauling stuff, even in the cold season.)
But today I'm trying to discover the beauty of that act of sluggish languor, so perfectly captured in the phrase dolce far niente (the sweetness of doing nothing).
Of course, there are the cheepers and there is the laundry and, too, trying to figure out how a mouse repeatedly enters our trash bin. (Could it be that the same mouse travels many miles for this one destination -- our garbage? Because we have never had a mouse enter the kitchen bin before and this one seems interested in nothing else but that).
But after a luxuriously late breakfast...
...I ran out of immediate "must dos." I looked out the window and thought of a book that Snowdrop loves, in which a goose and a duck, on the final page, are sitting on a field of grass and looking up at the white clouds drifting by. If they can do it, so can I!
(The photo is out the kitchen window, through the screened porch.)
It's not meditation really. It's lolly-gazing. It's feeling the slowness of time.
Still, I can't do it for long. I make myself a cup of tea and settle in to read.
And then, I indulge in something even better -- a leisurely Skype session with the friends I was to visit in Florida. Honestly, if you cannot travel, what better way to talk than through video chat? Oh, we are a spoiled people!
Late afternoon. It's so rewarding to see the sun now! It wont set until around 5, which is so wonderfully late! Ed and I go out for a walk along the rural roads. We've been discovering the quieter ones just to the south and east of us. It's really true that you miss the detail if you simply drive through them.
I'll leave you with photos from our walk. This is the true winter that I am so used to here, in the northern parts of the country. It's a beautiful winter. At least today, we surely felt it to be so.
(We strayed to a path through the bordering marshlands.)
(Then, back along the road, past farms and fields, past tractors hauling stuff, even in the cold season.)
