Spring fever?

Blame the rhinovirus

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A little explainer

This posting is going to be a short one. I was forced to spend the week at home, nursing a cold. You’d think this would give me plenty of time to write, since I’m not out catching buses or taking photos. Instead I spend a lot of time napping and staring into space.

I don’t normally have issues with keeping on track, but this week I let myself be distracted, sometimes by TV but mostly by reading.

My pile of library and recently purchased books is higher than ever. Online, I’ve been reading and commenting on some really good Substack entries by others.

• Like one on the power of noticing in finding your voice, by Michelle Dowd.

• Or 93 notes to myself that Jörgen Löwenfeldt wrote while on sick leave himself.

• In A Letter of Cairns and Hidden Drawers, Amy Cowen infuses the mystical into the mundane. She does this every week, and every time I’m surprised and delighted anew.

Meanwhile, the email is backing up again, after a major effort to clean it out last week. You hear me on this? I know you’ve been here too.

It’s harder to concentrate on which emails to boot when you are in distraction mode. Distracted because you are sick.

Spring cold

What I do have stored up are some poems and photos, including this one about being sick.

Spring cold

Misery, thou ain’t my friend,
I only want this cold to end.
A sorry pile of nose wipes, yecch.

How ’bout you let me breathe, okay?
I want to live another day.
Without the coughing, wheezing agony.

Guaifenesin is my friend,
I only want this cold to end.
I made some chicken soup today.

Another day filled with sneezing,
I just don’t see this illness easing.
The only cure—write more!

. . . But I wasn’t able to write as much as I usually do.

Easter week

Due to this cold, I missed all the church services for Holy Week, which ends today, Saturday, with the Great Vigil of Easter. I don’t fancy singing through a mask.

Instead of attending services, I spent time meditating in the Garden of Repose my church set up in its chapel. It replicates the garden where Jesus asked the disciples to watch while he meditated. We are present in shifts in the church’s “garden” overnight from Maundy Thursday to Good Friday.

I wrote this poem while there.

Garden of repose

Riotous peace
Engendered love
Time out of time,
Spirit rest here.

Christ, you infect me,
I resist, but you win.
Bring rest to my soul
In your garden.

Glory to God, to Spirit, to living— 
We know of our death; push it aside.
Instead we explore, explode. Exist
In riotous peace.

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Daffodils

A woman named Alison came over while I was photographing this stand of daffodils in her parking strip in Sunnyside. I said it was a Wordsworthian stand of the flowers, referring to Wordsworth’s famous poem, “I wandered lonely as a cloud.” Most of the daffodils I see in my wanderings are in clumps of two or three.

Daffodils at Southeast Yamhill Street and 39th Avenue. Fran Gardner photo

Alison agrees that more is definitely better when it comes to daffodils. She says she made this large planting so that she—and passers-by—could harvest a few flowers without a noticeable impact on the remaining blooms.

My dandelion

All spring flowers are precious to the universe, even the ones we think are weeds.

Fran Gardner photo

Next week . . .

With the aid of antibiotics, I’m beginning to recover, and I hope to have a big, juicy offering for you next week. One that you can scroll through with joy, reading the parts that look interesting, shrugging “meh” to the other stuff, and savoring the photos.

Here’s where I usually plead for upgrades to paid subscriptions, but (cough, wheeze) it just seems like too much of an ask just now. Maybe later.

Till next time,

Love (with a sneeze),
Fran

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