From my apartment window, I watch as the sky purples. I’m not sure if this is a trick of the eye or the light from my apartment reflecting in the glass or the approaching dawn. I wait, hoping time will provide more clues. The sun always rises, the the sky always brightens. It’s nice to have such certainties in life. On my bare calf, I feel the breeze through the open window. It reminds me of pursed lips blowing on a cut or on beads of sweat from a salty shore. It’s a little after 6am. A heavy truck, maybe a street sweeper, rolls by. The breaks squeak. A hydraulic piston releases. It moves on.
This morning I’m thinking about, among other things, two quotes from the poet Mary Oliver: “attention without feeling is only a report” and of writing habits she writes, “It learns quickly what sort of courtship it is going to be. Say you promise to be at your desk in the evenings, from seven to nine. It waits, it watches. If you are reliably there, it begins to show itself — soon it begins to arrive when you do. But if you are only there sometimes and are frequently late or inattentive, it will appear fleetingly, or it will not appear at all.” I wanted to be reliably here this morning, but all I could muster was attention without feeling.
I’m also thinking about how at this time a year ago, I had just started my road trip out west. I spent a few days in Richmond, Virginia before heading into Shenandoah and the Blue Ridge Mountains. I went camping (car camping) for the first time in my life – little blue pop-up tent. I remember the misty gray. I remember getting heartburn because I slept on a slight downward slope and my head was lower than my chest. I remember how the damp got in my bones – the soup I made on my little camp stove, the beer I drank after a long day of hiking. The warmest shower I may have ever taken. The sitting around wishing I had some firewood and not quite knowing how to do any of this camping stuff.
The morning sky has brightened to a slate gray. I’m mentally measuring spaces in my apartment where I might set up the printer that arrived yesterday and where I could squeeze in another bookshelf or a one-drawer filing cabinet/plant stand/shelf combo. I told myself I’d order a rug when I was a little more certain that I’d be able to stay. I think I’m going to be able to stay.