This Life, with all its Shades and Shadows

My ongoing quest for simplicity continues through the month of March. Last night was a beautiful night for it.  I worked a full day, then had a smooth commute home, arriving during a beautiful California evening. The sun was shining, there were high wispy white clouds, and the temperature was in the high sixties.  Over the last couple of months, with encouragement from T.R., I've pretty radically simplified my apartment. Not totally radically, I have not yet reached a state of ultimate minimalism - but it has become rather minimalist.  Consequently, it is a simple and attractive place to spend time, especially the living room area.

 

I came in from the commute, changed to a pair of worn blue jeans, and grilled a rib-eye steak, with a spicy pepper rub, and topped it with crumbled bleu cheese, paired it up with a green salad and a pepper-pea dish (really just sautéed bell peppers mixed with sweet peas).  It was an excellent dinner. Following dinner I took a nice rambling walk around the neighborhood and then wandered home.

 

I called my mother and spent some time discussing her medical and health issues (nothing serious, just the generic chat of age, which I am beginning to understand as I age).  Then, I sprawled out on the couch and read selections from "Poetry 180", a collection edited by Billy Collins (a former US Poet Laureate). It is an excellent collection and I highly recommend it.

 

I wrapped up the evening in conversation with T.R., including reading a selected poem from the collection that very much put me in mind of her. The poem is called "White Towels", by Richard Jones.

 

"I have been studying the difference

between solitude and loneliness

Telling the story of my life

To the clean white towels taken

warm from the dryer

I carry them through the house

As though they were my children

Asleep in my arms"

 

I fell asleep last night simply grateful for this life, with all its shades and shadows.