I Love Sundays

The three are still asleep. I have been awake since 6am, attended an early morning online mass, cleaned the house, watered the plants and did a little grocery shopping at Alfamart just besides the subdivision gate. Sundays are relaxed days, supposedly, right?

My goodness, it’s almost the end of January and I only have thirty five pages of slow reading and reacting to the words written in the book called Ten Poems To Open Your Heart. I am no longer used to small prints since I could enlarge the font of the e-books on my tab. Easier to read and helpful to the eyes. I have two pending e-books since December, one is a thriller and the other is a historical novel. I read around five to ten pages at night then I would feel sleepy. I always wake up early though. Living the phrase early to rise and early to bed. Dull, you might say but I am getting used to it. The comfort of silence. Crowded places no longer work for me except at The Medical City Clinic I visit every week.

I love Sundays. Since it is impractical for me to attend Sunday masses (I truly could not understand since I find the confined space too noisy and loud ), I resort to attending masses online since they are clear to my abnormal sense of hearing. I don’t know how long it would take for me to get well.

I want to share with you a line from my favorite author Mary Oliver culled from her book, Devotions. I have a copy of this one, a lovely compilation of most of her poems. A friend gave it to me as a birthday gift a few years ago. I am always careful to turn the pages, it’s hardbound and thick with a pristine white cover.

Beautiful, isn’t it?

Have a blessed and happy Sunday. May you always find joy in what life brings🥰❤💐

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Ten Poems To Open Your Heart

Finally, I am done with the 2022 Goodreads Reading Challenge. Capped it with a historical novel about Scotland and England which I really enjoyed.

A few weeks ago, I told you about the five books given by a friend who spent a month here from Canada. He taught me how to slow read these lovely books. So, I am starting a new journal too.

It’s a book devoted to love, to a loving compassion for others and to a love that embraces this world and the next.

Imagine perusing the words of such famous poets like Mary Oliver, Neruda, Sharon Olds and many others.

Housden says in his eloquent introduction: Great poetry happens when the mind is looking the other way and words fall from the sky to shape a moment that would normally be untranslatable….When the heart opens, we forget ourselves and the world pours in: this world and also the invisible world of meaning that sustains everything that wss and ever shall be.”

How poetic🌷❤️😘

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Take A Bow Mary Oliver….Once Again!

I missed blogging yesterday.

It was cloudy here and it is still cloudy now. I got lazy and just read. What would your  reaction be if you find more books of  one of your favorite authors?  Take a guess. It’s Mary Oliver of course. I finished Felicity in one sitting  and I got so inspired reading. Just started on Blue Iris.  It is a slow read though because I like to imagine those places and things  she described in the book. It is a  rich collection of  poems,  essays, and of Mary Oliver’s classic works on flowers, trees, and plants. When these words uplift the soul, one feels blessed and happy. I am re-posting some poems from her Felicity book.

This one is entitled The Gift.

Be still, my soul, and steadfast.
Earth and heaven both are still watching
though time is draining from the clock
and your walk, that was confident and quick,
has become slow.

So, be slow if you must, but let
the heart still play its true part.
Love still as once you loved, deeply
and without patience. Let God and the world
know you are grateful.That the gift has been given.

Then there is this short one called  Everything.

Everything that was broken has
forgotten its brokenness. I live
now in a sky-house, through every
window the sun. Also your presence.
Our touching, our stories. Earthly
and holy both. How can this be, but
it is. Every day has something in
it whose name is forever.

Got this third one online:

There are still so many lovely words there and I am keeping them deep in my heart. I have seven books of Mary Oliver now including the lovely and thick hardbound copy of Devotions.

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I Take Comfort In Her Words

I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.
It’s like a schoolhouse
of little words,
thousands of words.
First you figure out what each one means by itself,
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
full of moonlight.

Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

Mary Oliver, one of the best poets I ever encountered.

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A Thousand Mornings (Part 6)

For those who don’t read my favorite poet  Mary Oliver, this is a borrowed title from one of her lovely works. A Thousand Mornings is a book of poems, a small volume with a silky cover. Just love rereading it.

The last time I wrote about the same title was at the end of August 2018, almost a year now. So what’s it’s all about? It is a month-ender blog. I usually summarize what happened the past month and what I expect the following month. This time though, June was a bit too silent for me. Don’t get me wrong, I love silence and I love the quiet that each day brings. Just sometimes I think I am becoming a recluse. I am still active though on social media, aware of what is happening around, disappointed, dispirited and discouraged by what is happening in our country. I won’t delve on that though, it is too early to whine.

Except for visits to the doctor and labs, family day the other week for Josef’s birthday, the usual twice a month marketing and weekly grocery shopping, everything was quiet.

A year ago, I wrote these lines on my wall at Facebook and I just saw it on memories:

Time flies too soon and June is rapidly coming to a close. It’s been a lovely month spent reading a lot and gardening despite the heat. I hope the month of July would be kind to my weary bones and aching joints.

Got same wishes for this month  of July, maybe more time to read and complete my Goodread’s Reading Challenge. I’ve been cleaning my e-reader lately, deleting those titles that I have already read. I saved those titles that I want to reread.

I am trying to avoid eating sweets but the other day, Jovy made coffee jelly, mango float and mango panna cotta. Just had a few bites. Yesterday, it was a home-made Fudge brownie for our afternoon snack. I am due for blood-sugar testing anytime soon.  I am just too lazy to go back for more lab tests. Maybe when it stops raining, I will. I am feeling good, thank God.

All night my heart makes its way
however it can over the rough ground
of uncertainties, but only until night
meets and then is overwhelmed by
morning, the light deepening, the
wind easing and just waiting, as I
too wait (and when have I ever been
disappointed?) for redbird to sing” 
― Mary Oliver, A  Thousand Mornings

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Today’s Quote

Another lovely quote from Mary Oliver. Dream, be astonished, be surprised!

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Upstream

And if you’re quite familiar with Mary Oliver’s books, you have probably encountered this lovely and uplifting small hardbound volume  of Upstream. It’s a collection of essays of Mary Oliver that provides anecdotes and meditations, her life as a writer and  as a lover of nature. It was published in October 2016.

Thus the book begins with these words: “In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.” 

Unlike her poetry, these essays paint a fuller picture of how she was as a writer, how her life revolved around those things that ordinarily we wouldn’t even appreciate, turtle eggs and hatchlings, owls, spiders, trees, gulls, sunflowers  and the sea. She touched on such renowned authors like Emerson, Whitman and Poe. Learning something about the lives of these writers made me appreciate their words more.

I began reading this book two years ago but I read the essays in increments preferring the lovely poems in her other books. You could actually read it in just one sitting but imagining those scenes described in the book makes you pause and think about life.

At the end of the book, she gave a short tribute to the place where she lived for fifty years in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She ended her prose with: “I don’t know if I am heading toward heaven or that other, dark place, but I know I have already lived in heaven for fifty years. Thank you, Provincetown”.

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Goodbye, Sweet Friend

I can’t believe this. My favorite author and poet is gone. All these years, I have admired her thoughts and her words.

I’ve been blogging about her since I can remember. I am so lucky to have four of her books,    A Thousand Mornings, New And Selected Poems  Vol. 1, Upstream and one of her latest books, Devotions.  

When I feel so alone, I peruse her poems and I am uplifted. She could write about anything under the sun and when she writes about nature, you feel like you are there communing with her.  When she writes about feelings,  you feel like crying.

Thanks to Getty Images for this lovely photo which I culled from the net.

One of my favorite quotes from her which I have memorized over the years are these words:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Goodbye, sweet friend.

 

 

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This Is Just Too Lovely

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Blessings Abound

Wow, what a blessed day!

I spent a lovely few hours with Odette, a close friend who came over this morning to give me these lovely birthday gifts, the Devotions book of poems by Mary Oliver and my fave author Richard Paul Evans’ book called The Noel Diary. 

She called me up yesterday and she said that she is coming today to visit me. We haven’t seen each other for more than a year  now although we get in touch regularly through Facebook.  We had  lunch here at home and a bit of “kuwentuhan”.

This is the fourth book of Mary Oliver that she gave me. I have several books by Richard Paul Evans but I don’t have this one yet….well, until today. Gosh, what a joy to see her again.

This thick hardbound book of Mary Oliver contains so many of her poems taken from  several of her previously published books.  Can’t wait to read it. It is not that kind of book that you read though just once, it is meant to be savored  and admired. Her words are just so lovely.

It is indeed a blessing to have friends who love the same things that you do.

 

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