1 February 2021: Last night I got the email, the one I have been waiting for since late December: I am getting my first dose of the vaccine on Friday. How to describe this feeling? It is surreal. Combine that with deep relief. A touch of quiet giddiness. A lightness. Gratitude. Luckiness. And, because I am me, a nagging if small sense of guilt that so many are still waiting.
Someone posted this Mary Oliver poem on Twitter today. It connects, I think, to some of my Big Thoughts today, which is also a snow day (no classes).
17 January 2019: How strange that I posted about Mary Oliver yesterday and heard about her death today. So grateful for her life, her work, her gift to us all. Spend some time reading her work. You won't regret it.
16 January 2019: Looking for one Mary Oliver poem led me to this one, a poem that is new to me, but whose title alone is enough to capture my heart and mind.
It also reminded me of one of my favorite parts of Lady Bird: the idea that love and attention are the same.
"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things." --Mary Oliver, "Wild Geese"
