“I shall care little for the tastes of this world if the skies are still so glorious. Such expanse and majesty and illuminations, I have never seen, pure air and then such cloud conglomerations.”

Virginia Woolf

There were such glorious conglomerations today as I walked through the big open spaces of the park. The warmth came back with the wind yesterday, and I fought off my depression by taking a walk by the pond into the forest. It was after a short day of office work. I walked and looked into the faces of people who came toward me, sometimes twice as they ran laps on the trails. How little you can tell about people from just one look as you pass. There was a young woman walking dreamily in front of a giggling pack of teenagers. She was definitely with them but also far away in her thoughts. For that moment she walked in such a stately grace, bearing her body with reverence and holding her thoughts in a sacred place, or so it seemed to me. She might just have been tired and spacey for all I know, or thinking she was going to murder her boyfriend who was walking behind her with the gigglers.

The main point I guess is that I could have easily just stayed in my house and done busy things and fallen into a funk because I was tired and grumpy. I am still tired, but I am not  in a funk or grumpy. I feel like I can pull some meaning out of the day.

It is so much nicer when I walk with Mary though. She puts words around our lives as we move, and I can still enjoy the glorious conglomerations and point them out to her, a definite bonus. She is almost done with her nursing class, and on the fine days after work we will be walking somewhere I’m sure.

Now I will leave you with my favorite E. B. White quote just because today seemed to need it:

I get up every morning determined both to change the world and to have one hell of a good time.

Sometimes that makes planning the day difficult. That’s how I want to live every day. Today I was feeling like my life needs more of this.