This is what I can do today.

This was my walk.  The pictures are in the exact order of the walk.  I saw Colleen when I was about at the stone wall.  She was riding her bicycle and stopped to talk to me.  She had been away for nine months on a sailing trip with her family.  I wasn't walking very quickly and I was wandering from ditch to ditch looking at leaves and seeds and dried out blossoms.  Colleen was looking me up and down as she was asking me how I'd been.  She can tell a lot about how a person is doing by how she's standing, thanks to all of her training with Mr. Iyengar. 
I dreamed about my grandfather last night, with his white hair and his smile.  My white hair is coming in quickly ... but I'm wearing wide colorful headbands and braids so nobody sees it yet. 
The doctor's office called to confirm my appointment for tomorrow morning.  I wrote to Fiona's school asking them to excuse me from auction duties.  I'm going to reduce my obligations.  And that's that.

the pictures

no pictures

Good weekend, no pictures.
Lots of pictures taken but I'm not sure what I want to do with them yet.
We went out on the work boat Friday night.  True and Fiona came with us.  We circumnavigated Indian Island and then went aboard an abandoned schooner for a picnic.  There was a dead finch on deck. 
Fiona got a respirator from Charlie on Saturday and then spent the day doing massive paintings in the back yard.  She worked most of the day.  I did too, but then went back to Rockport Harbor with Charlie thinking we'd take the tin boat across the bay but no.  We went to Beech Hill instead because the tin boat was not to be found.  Cape Cod trip is planned.  And it's very soon.  I'm reading Thoreau's journals now.  Have put Jesmyn Ward aside for my own health. 
Thoreau had tuberculosis and died when he was 44. 
I listened to Walden while I painted in my studio today.  Fiona painted most of the day too.  We had to take a walk to get more paint for her mid-day.  I want the whole two floors of my studio to be set up for painting and book making projects ... but yoga.  I keep feeling like I don't want to teach.  Wonder why?
Oh.  I know why.
Because I still have 45,000 things to learn before I would actually be equipped to teach.
On Tuesday I go to see the surgeon.
I dreamed that I was flying this morning.  I was in another world -- the things I could see and do were not of this world -- but then I became aware of myself and I was back.
I have apple crisp in the oven.
I'll make another one to bring to the cape because Charlie and his parents love apple crisp.
All pink and rosy.  My throat will be fine.

exercise

yoga class, Mississippi drug deaths, and Throeau

Back to yoga class last night.  K.'s teaching so it's all chanting, pranayama and kriyas.  He started class by blowing into a conch shell three times.  No one fainted.  And class ended on time.

I'm half-way through the Jesmyn Ward memoir, The Men We Reaped.  It's all drugs, drunkenness, death and despair.  Her writing is still vibrant in places but it's not like Salvage The Bones. 
Maybe telling the real story doesn't lend itself to poetic phrases as often.  Perhaps she's a bit broken down from all the death in her life.  The pit-bull attack chapter left me feeling sick.

I've been listening to Thoreau's Walden over and over at night.  (I also listen to The Bhagavad-Gita at least once a week.)  I just ordered a copy of Thoreau's journals.  Once I'm done with this Jesmyn Ward book I'm going to settle in with Thoreau for a good, long time.  I'm still planning the walk from Eastham to Provincetown, but now I'm thinking of making a collection of reading and activities for the kids and then taking a trip with the five of us ... to Concord and then to the cape.
That might serve as the antidote to over-use of iPhones.  Maybe?

Rusty's funeral

                       This is what's left blooming around the house today.  I brought a jar of flowers to Rusty's funeral by the stream last night.  He was the Irish Setter who lived next door.  Rusty's person was crying when I saw him out back rinsing off the shovel with the hose.   

I'm going to give up on painting.  Painting is the worst.  What's the point?
No point at all, that's the answer.

I dreamed that Rusty was still hanging around the neighborhood playing with seven other ghost Irish Setters.  I could see them but no one else could.  They looked like they were having a good time -- no arthritis.