Day 2210: My thoughts

My thoughts, as usual, are going many places.  I’m so glad I have a place to put my thoughts.

Here’s a thought: Perhaps if I didn’t have this blog to express my thoughts, I would need a journal like that one.

Some more thoughts:

• The non-expendable, valuable, and extremely appreciated poet Mary Oliver died two days ago.
• Decades ago, a thoughtful therapist shared this Mary Oliver poem with me:

Wild Geese

by Mary Oliver

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 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.

• That poem is good for my thoughts, feelings, imagination, body, and soul.
• My thoughts are with all who knew and loved Mary Oliver.
• Yesterday, my thoughts went many places, but kept returning to Mary Oliver.

My thought is that it’s time to share my other photos from yesterday.

My thought is that “Family/Friends” and “Vacation/Travel” are what many people enjoy most about winter, which leads to my next two photos showing Vacation/Travel with Family/Friends:

My thoughts, like my phone, go everywhere with me:

My thoughts tell me that you can click on any of those photos if you think you want to see them more clearly.

My thoughts are that this …

… is a sign about what music to include in today’s post.

My thoughts are returning to Mary Oliver, so I’m also including this:

My thoughts now turn to your thoughts, which I hope you express below.

My thoughts are full of gratitude for all who helped me create today’s post and — of course! — YOU.

Day 523: A Day in My Life

Woke up, got out of bed,

Saw a cat there at the head,

Found my way downstairs, and had a bite,

Looking up, I thought I might be late.

Found my coat but not a hat,

Made my car in seconds flat.

Found my way up there and saw these things:

 

 

Somebody spoke …

When Death Comes – A Poem by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

~ Mary Oliver ~

And I went into a dream.

Thanks to the Beatles, to Mary Oliver, to the Longwood Medical Area of Boston (including Children’s Hospital, where I spent many days in my life), to my workplace, and to all the participants at the Northeast Society for Group Psychotherapy’s yearly 3-day conference in Boston (for which I arrived five hours early, yesterday). Many thanks to you, especially,  for glancing and observing, on this day in your life.