Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

This will be my fourth year doing August Break with Susannah Conway. She describes it this way,

This is a community project that has no real rules — the idea is to simply take a photograph every day for the whole of August. That’s it. Pause, look around you and shoot what you see. Live inside each moment. Pay attention to what’s there. If it’s the summer where you are it’s a lovely way to be present to the moments that will be gone before you know it.

I love how this practice allows me to transition from summer vacation to the beginning of Fall semester and back to work. After four years, it’s familiar and comforting, but also inspiring.

Breakfast

I slept in this morning. Instead of getting up at 5 am, I got up at 6. Eric took the dogs on their walk without me, which is good because I’m trying to rest my foot, hoping it will heal faster.

Putting together my breakfast feels like making an offering. I made the bran muffins yesterday morning, with a recipe from America’s Test Kitchen. The secret is the blackstrap molasses (which the recipe doesn’t call for) and yogurt (which it does). The muffins are soft and sweet, but not too sweet. I add two kinds of berries and some dried plums to the bowl. I pour myself a glass of cold water, (I gave up coffee at the beginning of the summer). This is the same breakfast I’ve been eating for months. I’m like that, prefer a routine, am satisfied for long periods of time with the same thing on repeat. I enjoy the ritual.

Most mornings, I eat at my writing desk. Because I was later than usual this morning, the sound coming through the open window just over my head is the sprinkler rather than the birds. The whole house fan is on so there is a small breeze. I take out my notebook and write today’s date, realizing it’s time to turn my calendar to a new month. The quote for August is from Caroline Myss, “We are the means through which the world changes. When you pray for change, it is you that is going to change, not the world around you.”

Before I eat or write, I meditate. I usually sit for 10 minutes. I might take a few sips of water, eat a berry or two, but mostly I’m just sitting, breathing, relaxing into the morning, into myself. When I’m finished, I open my notebook and start to write, taking breaks between words to eat a few more berries or take a bite of my muffin or drink more water. I write at least three pages, front and back, every day, no matter what.

1. Garden season. We are starting to get tomatoes and have enough zucchini to make all the breads, zucchini and black bean pancakes, and have some left over to share. What we don’t have (like strawberries and peaches or enough cucumbers), we can get from Garden Sweet — upick strawberries this weekend!

2. Eric’s hiking pictures. Especially the ones of the dogs.

3. Sitting down with a good friend I haven’t seen in a long time. If you want to know how much you’ve changed (or haven’t), sit down with someone who knows you really well after not having seen them for two years and talk about what’s been going on.

4. Sitting down with a new friend I’ve never seen. I’m heading to a Containers for Connection: 10 Letters Project event in Denver tomorrow, and I get to meet, have dinner, hang out, and go to the event with my friend Kirsten Akens, who I haven’t yet met face to face. I already adore her though, so can’t wait to tell her to her face.

5. Physical therapy. I have plantar fasciitis in my right foot, so painful, so debilitating even though it’s a relatively small part of your body. I started physical therapy, and even though the dry needling is a level of pain I’ve rarely felt, kept me on the couch with a heating pad all night, it feels better today than it has in months. Plus the cool tape job makes me look like a cyborg.

Bonus joy: teaching yoga, zucchini bread, being able to rest when I need to, soaking in the tub, seeing an end in sight to my current round of illness and injury, pay day, the peaches I’m going to use to make Georgia Peach bread, fresh cucumbers (so good!), the beginnings of a bathroom remodel, being able to afford a bathroom remodel, finding a really good designer to help.