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Three days of solitude

6/29/2021

I am in the middle of three days of complete solitude, which means no plans to see anyone. Right now I am sitting outside in the shade. It is hot but I notice a blue sky and feel a soft breeze. Yes, I will take a walk. And maybe I will chat with someone along the way.
Three days of solitude sounds like a movie or book title. An artist could make something of it; someone arrives to disrupt, a telephone call changes everything;, the main character disrupts her own solitude, or, three days of solitude prevails.
I’m doing my usual email correspondence, and my husband is with me—both fair game. Something from outside could disrupt me, and of course I could sabotage the three days. But I don’t have to do that. And yet, being an ADHD kind of person, it is always possible that I might just get up and unwittingly do something social. But I think not, because getting up a moving around what I need to do; it’s the social that disrupts my solitude, not my own physical activity. I’m on the alert.

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Winter wood is ready

6/27/2021

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Grown grandchildren can make life simple and stress free. Our college age grandson came for the weekend, and besides be great company, he got us ready for winter. So easy. It went like this. At 6:30 granddad called to arrange for a cord of wood to be delivered. He expected to get an answering machine, but no, our usual wood guy was up and ready. An hour and a half later he arrived with a truck full of wood cut to fit our wood stove. Three hours later, voila—ALL STACKED. Winter stress alleviated!

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I don't blog for an audience

6/25/2021

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A friend emailed asking me if I was the Bobbi Fisher he came across while searching the internet for reviews on a book about Georgio Vasari. I responded that it was probably from my blog (only to find out that he had read something I had put on Goodreads). “I didn’t know you wrote a blog,” he wrote back.
I’ve always been aware that people discover my blog through random google searches, but I’ve never seriously considered who is actually reading what I write. Strange as it may seem, I post, release it to the universe, and immediately forget about those on the receiving end.
I’m not trying to develop a large audience, or really any audience at all. I’m not trying to make money or offer any service that might have a monetary attachment to it. I don’t advertise, and for the past five years I haven’t told anyone about the blog. So, when I ask myself why I keep blogging, no practical or even sensible answer comes up.
Although my posts have slacked off, I don’t want to stop, and recently I’ve pondered a shift in purpose—no, not a shift, but an add on. No longer do I go to the cottage by the sea, but I still long for the silence, solitude, and simplicity that I found there, and which I am now finding at home. The add on might be about finding a monastic life right here in this house.

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Grateful for family and friends

6/13/2021

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Another rare day in June. In a positive way, chipmunks are taking over our wildlife sanctuary; family will be here during the week. Camp Fisher will be open, culminating in a mini family reunion of cousins.
I am prepared to step into my extroverted way of being, always balanced, of course, with times for solitude. The newly tidied Angel Room, with pictures and wall hangings finally added, will offer me the solace I always long for. Again, I am reminded that I don’t feel lonely in solitude because I am not alone. Every morning I can honestly express gratitude for family and friends.

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Listen to the silence

6/8/2021

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We seem to be living in our own wildlife sanctuary. Grey, the fox, the hawk, birds, chipmunks and squirrels, and yesterday morning, a doe and her very young fawn. They were lawn statues for quite a while until the mama noticed my movement in the window; off they went.
These sentient beings need to be on the alert; it’s a matter of life and death. And yet, here I am on this humid day, being very restful and attending to Rumi’s advise: Listen to the silence. It has so much to say.
For years I’ve loved that suggestion because it implies that in listening to the silence, I don’t have to do anything. I know that’s true, but it’s only lately that I have practiced the advice. I don’t have to be active all the time. Neither do you. Try sitting in the silence. It has so much to say.

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Grieving our resident squirrel

6/4/2021

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We are grieving the loss of one of our resident squirrels, but are coming to terms with natural needs and ways of the neighborhood hawk. Yesterday, less than a foot from the sunroom window, on our patio furniture sat a red-tailed hawk, clawing the pachysandra. That is, until he came up with a grey-tailed squirrel, which he then carried ten feet onto the blue-stone. I watched the squirrel’s tail slowly stop moving until it came to a dead stop. The hawk then dragged the corpse to the grass to begin (and finish) his meal. As he flew away, all I could see that remained was some fur.
Before I got out there to examine the remains, our lawn service had mowed and cleared the patio. Later the day I saw NO evidence of the meal. I like to give the hawk some credit for being a good kindergartener who knows how to clean up his own mess!

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Blogging: It all about love

6/3/2021

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I go back and forth on whether to keep this blog going, or give it a final bow. For twelve years I have been faithful to it, offering a daily quote during my cottage days, and after that, a quote every other day. That routine I love and want to keep up. So, for this moment at least, I shall do so. My longing and commitment to silence, solitude, and simplicity remains strong, and feels pretty much hardwired. To continue to write about it calls for some kind of shift, but I don’t know what that might be. So, in keeping with what I have always done, I share my thinking with you.
There is no external need to keep posting. I’m not trying to make money or even gather a following. Neither of those have ever been my goal. So, I tell myself, post whenever you want and leave it at that. And yet, to my few followers who do check in to see how things are going with me, I feel an obligation to keep a presence.
   This is how I see it. Blogs are not personal journals. Rather they are a public offerings of what is personally important that the blogger wants to share. Why share? I’ve always liked sharing what I have done and what is important in my life, and I’ve always appreciated learning about the life experience of others. The books that I wrote for teachers, in which I described what I did in my classroom and why I did it, are examples of this. In Very Grateful: The Story of My Hundred Year Old Mother and Me, I told about how my mother and I experienced the last two years of her life together.
                       *****
   Writing all of that has helped. Writing always does. Now that I think about it, my blogs are really a cleaned up version of a personal journal. Truth be told, I blog more for ME than for you. It’s all about me, so the expression goes, and shamefully I admit that to be true. But in blogging about me, I hope you can absorb what I share into it’s all about you, so that in blogging about me and you, we both can admit that it’s all about love.  I gotta keep at it.

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Three days of solitude

Winter wood is ready

I don't blog for an audience

Grateful for family and friends

Listen to the silence

Grieving our resident squirrel

Blogging: It all about love

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