weather wear where

It's cold outside
and my sleeves are long
I can't reach out to stop the ball before it rolls into the street

There's no real tragedy here,
I motion to a car that I am about to cross
and I make it to the other side without a scratch.

Back on the lake it was less predictable.
The dangers weren't as obvious as a moving car.
__

I heard the sounds of animals and calls of birds
Myself, I was unimportant in the midst of it all.
Meaning vulnerable. You are no more important or precious
than the birds whose feathers fill your bedding
or the animals whose fur line your garments and boots.

It's funny though, as I wrap myself in man made nylon
defense against the dusting of water particles blowing like snowflakes in the wind
I am still at the lake, but it is as if I brought the moving car along inside my weekend satchel.

hidden in the landscape...

...the house smelled earthy and moist. From the inside you could see out over the lake, vast and open to the unbounded sky, almost forgetting the confinement of your vantage point, embedded into the hillside. Protected by the stones and reinforced wood panels lining the walls. The front and back door led out to two different worlds. One to the enclosed garden and the vista of green grass and wildflowers beyond the cultivated patch, and the other towards the misty lake giving access to the lands beyond via the canoe that was kept down by the wooden dock. It was the most lush season of the year, which meant many days of cloud cover and rain. And the wait for the flowers to bloom from the bright, yellow-green sprouts that emerged boldly from the protection of their own earthy enclose...

An Apology for Idlers

"While others are filling their memory with a lumber of words, one-half of which they will forget before the week be out, your truant may learn some really useful art: to play the fiddle, to know a good cigar, or to speak with ease and opportunity to all varieties of men."

"Perpetual devotion to what man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things."

"There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy."

Robert Louis Stevenson
First published in the Cornhill Magazine, July 1877. Included in Virginibus Puerisque, 1881.