A kind of serenity.

During the past few weeks, the closest approximation I've been able to make to serenity has felt too much like the 1938 Kandinsky painting that bears that ideal's name:


There's much more to be said, as always. But for now, I'm marking a place, asserting a plan: I need the tough discipline of poetry; of the long, hard look at the world in a certain kind of essay; of the slow and steady, the unhurriedly contemplative. There's no small irony in the fact that I'm skipping town in order to inaugurate this slowing and stilling, and that I'll undoubtedly spend a long part of the trip southward rocking out to one or another of my favorite playlists, which drive in more senses than one. I'll undoubtedly flip off the "Hell is Real" billboards as I pass them, just for old times' sake. But under the surface flurry, I'll be regrouping, consolidating, sorting and settling. I'll be not entirely unlike this bird (in a picture my father sent to me this morning; he'd been watching this bird sit atop this chimney all morning, and while he and I were on the phone earlier, it returned and he caught it):


The birds here were loud this morning, happily clamoring; we were blessed with a lovelier day than Skokie's gotten, I see. The woodpecker's hollow knock is becoming one of my favorite morning sounds, but I'm guessing it's warm outside based on the number of other chirruping whoops that that knock backed as I awoke.

sources for today's images: 1) EasyArt; 2) my fantabulous father.