Under the Weather

Literally and figuratively.

Our sunny 80 degree Monday suddenly turned into a rather chilly and rainy Wednesday, probably nature’s reminder that summer is nearly over and fall is at hand.

I also started coming down with a cold late Tuesday afternoon, probably the result of Kel’s two weeks in pre-school and the cold he passed on to Kylan, who, in turn, seems to have passed it on to me.

I spend most of Wednesday lying in bed, trying to recover so that I can babysit Leal on Friday. I might be tempted to say I couldn’t do it if I thought it would help to avoid passing the cold on to her, but since I was holding her a good part of Sunday I expect it’s far too late to worry about that.

I did have to cancel this week’s Refuge walk, but I’ll try to schedule two next week on Monday and Friday.

I still have a couple of books on Buddhism I’m trying to finish, and Mary Oliver’s Owls and Other Fantasies, Levertov’s Selected Poems, and Hesse’s Siddhartha wait next to my computer, but I really don’t think it’s fair to a book to read it while you’re sick.

Although I’m no longer attending school or teaching, I don’t read nearly as much in the summer as I do in the winter. Maybe the fact that I’ve read as much as I have can be accounted for by the fact that I’ve spent most of my life in the Pacific Northwest where the cloudy, rainy winters lend themselves well to indoor activities. Somehow it just doesn’t seem right to waste sunny days inside reading. God only knows what I might have turned out like if I’d spent my life growing up in Texas.

Anyhow, they’ll be a slight lag in blog entries, as I’m seldom able to come up with anything worth reading without a couple days lead time, which probably also explains why I’m always late to blog conversations.

5 thoughts on “Under the Weather”

  1. Oh my gosh. The day he is complaining about turned out to be sunny and 70 by afternoon! And it’s going to be up in the 80’s again for the next few days. Summer isn’t quite over yet!

  2. Hope you get some rest and feel better soon.
    Certain books are better read when we are not feeling well because we can be “moved” in a way we might not be otherwise. That is my experience. Recently I read PARADISE by Toni Morrison. That is a book that I found nearly impossible to read until I didn’t feel well, and only then was I able to read it. Did I ever mention the small book of poems called THE STREAM AND THE SAPPHIRE by Denise Levertov?

    p. 46
    when, though your soul felt darkened, heavy, worthless,
    yet God, you discovered, never abandoned you but walked
    at your side keeping pace as comrades had
    on the long hard roads of war.

    p. 47
    Joyful , absorbed
    you ‘practiced the presence of God’ as a musician
    practices hour after hour his art:
    ‘A stone before the carver,’
    you ‘entered into yourself.’

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