"With beauty before me, may I walk 
With beauty behind me, may I walk 
With beauty above me, may I walk
With beauty below me, may I walk
With beauty all around me, may I walk
Wandering on the trail of beauty, may I walk"
-  Navajo: Walking Meditation 

O the gray layers of clouds hung over the river of November. It was a lovely, dripping wet. I overslept. Needed to. But, I had to hurry my walk, and Charlie was discouraged. He did not then know he could count on our real walk later in the day. Poor Charlie. I went to my Thursday morning poetry workshop and was so glad to be there, workshopping great poems. Mine was well received, and I got helpful feedback. It left me feeling very positive and satisfied. After lunch, Charlie got his due. And that’s when I saw the purple edged tree fungus that made me bend close, because I love purple and it’s an unusual color this time of year in these woods. In the late afternoon, I wrote and and sent my monthly newsletter and officially opened my store to share my #NewThisDay greeting cards. [Dear Reader, if you aren’t a subscriber to my monthly newsletter and would like to be, you can subscribe here.] I am listening to a new audiobook, a gorgeous, interesting one: a poetic memoir: The Magical Language of Others, by EJ Koh. From Tin House Press:

A tale of deep bonds to family, place, language―of hard-won selfhood told by a singular, incandescent voice.

The Magical Language of Others is a powerful and aching love story in letters, from mother to daughter. After living in America for over a decade, Eun Ji Koh’s parents return to South Korea for work, leaving fifteen-year-old Eun Ji and her brother behind in California. Overnight, Eun Ji finds herself abandoned and adrift in a world made strange by her mother’s absence. Her mother writes letters, in Korean, over the years seeking forgiveness and love―letters Eun Ji cannot fully understand until she finds them years later hidden in a box.

So, this is morning listening. And nightime reading: A Life Of Georgia O’Keeffe, Roxana Robinson. It’s delicious to be in this phase of being so stimulated by these books, wonderful, comforting distraction from news.