For some obscure reason I keep getting sick which mystifies me after the rude health I enjoyed in my first two years of living sober. Woke up this morining with a croaky voice and what seems to be tonsilitis. But minor annoying sicknesses beat hangovers and alcohol poisoning. I’m glad I’m not suffering with those any longer. And in time I may learn to handle stress better.
I’m hoping that the conflict between North and South Korea has subsided. I’m grateful to live in a place and time that is free of war. For now.
My baby swallows have gone back to their other surrogate mother and I miss them. It is wonderful to feel needed and my grateful friend gave me some irresistible Lindt chocolate.
The catalpa tree is smothered in white flowers and looks as if it is dancing.
Last night I cooked Normandy chicken for friends, with chopped garlic, shallots, button mushrooms, thyme, cream and apple juice. It tasted good even though I was afraid the organic cloudy apple juice would be too sweet.
Some of my closest sober friends are staying sober and enjoying it. Some are not enjoying it but are staying sober anyway.
Gratitude is about what we do as much as what we feel and I have volunteered to help draw up contact numbers for recovering loners out in isolated areas.
The more grateful I feel, the more the gratitude grows. Something the poet Marilyn Nelson has written about.
| Dusting | ||
| by Marilyn Nelson | ||
Thank you for these tiny particles of ocean salt, pearl-necklace viruses, winged protozoans: for the infinite, intricate shapes of submicroscopic living things. For algae spores and fungus spores, bonded by vital mutual genetic cooperation, spreading their inseparable lives from equator to pole. My hand, my arm, make sweeping circles. Dust climbs the ladder of light. For this infernal, endless chore, for these eternal seeds of rain: Thank you. For dust. |
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I am happy for that dust as well. The fine particles of salt that stick to my hair and clothes. My wife tells me that I smell like the ocean. I like that.