This week is kind of...free. I'll call that a foreign form of bliss. Between now and the New Year, I want to soak in the gift of simplicity. Run from the Christmas excess. Return to the things and places that make us feel at rest. I took a piece of wood from this beach on a road trip, and it's now on a shelf in my kitchen. It made the car smell like beach-stank for a good hundred miles, but every time I look at, it reminds me of good company and good music. Simplicity always wins.
So on this simple afternoon, I found a few lines from Walt Whitman that make me thankful for...well, language.
"Wash the gum from your eyes and dress yourselves with the dazzle of the light.
Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
to jump off into the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout!
and laughingly dash with your hair"
Reminds me why we're so drawn to writing, reading. It takes us to a place we haven't been for awhile and fills our thoughts with noble words.
And sometimes they are words we really need to hear.
More of that this year for all of us, friends.
Coquille Point. Oregon.