What You Already Know

So it goes, my dear butterfly. I write to tell you what you already know: I’m still glad to wake up in the morning, and my days, however seemingly ordinary, are full. I have a small cup of coffee, then go out for a walk before sunrise. This is followed by a few stretching and breathing exercises, which I do here in the library while looking out the big front window. Then I have a nice shower, beginning with warm water and ending with cool, not quite cold. A simple, nourishing breakfast. Today it was a big pancake made with whole wheat flour and oats, topped with peanut butter, chia seeds, flax seed meal, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, honey, and a few slices of banana. Thus my fast of approximately twelve hours was broken, and thus I am fortified.

What do I do with myself all day? Now that spring has arrived, I’m spending much if not most of my time outside. It’s always a job to restore order, so to speak, in the yard — weeds, trimming, general cleanup. We’re still overshadowed by the neighbor’s fir trees, and they grow larger every year. The backyard receives only a few peeps of direct sun, enough to grow a few geraniums and impatiens and ferns. The trees bury the house and yard in successive waves of forest material. Without some effort, in a matter of weeks, we would be looking out on a forest floor. The roof and gutters need frequent cleaning. But the shade is welcoming and beautiful, the atmosphere divine, as your puppet-friend wields his rake and ladder.

The garden is in, as I mentioned a few days ago. It was off to a roaring start in sunny warm weather, but now it’s slowed to match a wave of cool rainy days. I did drive in two rugged six-foot stakes yesterday, in anticipation of a large crop of cherry tomatoes — Sun Gold is the variety. It seems to grow well in any kind of weather, and is ahead of the others.

I do still make time for reading — hardly news. My reading is of a very random nature these days. Picture a bumblebee with glasses, bumping its way among flowers. One thing I make a point of during the course of the day, is to look up at least two or three words in three or more dictionaries — one published in the 1920s, another in the 1950s, and one in 1812. For a little extra exercise, I sometimes jump between languages — Spanish, mostly, dictionaries from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

I write, but not much. I find I have little to say these days, that I haven’t said already many times before, and usually in a better fashion. My only regret — to employ a common figure of speech — is that what I say is sometimes interpreted as reflecting certainty on my part. I’m certain about nothing. As you know, I don’t live in certainty. More than ever, if anything, I live from breath to breath. This might need explaining to some people, but not you. And of course such explanations almost always end up wasted.

At the end of the month, as in recent years, we’re going on a family trip. We will be among some very big and very old trees.

And so this is my life, as it currently stands, and walks, and sits, and bends. I would like to have written you sooner, but I kept not feeling the urge. I know you understand. I do think of you daily, and imagine you going about your own life, which I regard as one of beauty: your hands holding a book; potting a plant; arranging things in the yard; your spirit moving about in the old barn.

And the nights? Well, that’s another subject, though perhaps self-evident.

Love always,

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