#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Lichen and Bark

Strange weather to wake into a wind blowing the apple blossoms like flakes in a squall. But it’s not only apple blossoms, there are snowflakes and flurries and feet growing cold in the muddy woods. Frank builds, all day, the fence around the garden in the chilly wind until it’s done. Today, for the first time, I felt quarantine fatigue. Or, just fatigue. Broke through here and there into gratitude and peace and laughter. I worked on the poems from letters, going through the handwritten letters, taking pictures of ones I haven’t yet put onto my computer. Noticing the way my father tore the envelopes open raggedly. Not with a letter opener. How wonderful, I thought, that so many of them are saved in their canceled stamped envelopes. Today was a tactile experience of the letters. I have been working with images, but today, I smelled them, my fingers touched the silky old paper, fumbled with the envelopes my mother sealed, and my father tore open. I felt flashes of guilt, like, they don’t belong to me, what am I doing? And flashes of clarity: they don’t belong to anyone; sender and receiver are gone from this world and the letters are not, and I am not, and here they are in my hands, to be read, to be experienced by me. Here’s what I felt about the letters today: awe. . . reverence. . . gratitude. . . delight. I might otherwise never have met these two people who fell in love and brought someone like me into this world.