Every morning, I love the feeling when my bare feet touch the floor. That is when the floor is clean, and M is still asleep. Then I have that quietness to myself. It feels good. As if I could hear time breathing. The morning falls into my lap, fuzzy and soft and cozy. In this apartment, an hour or so after the day breaks, the sun will pour sideways into the windows, creating these slant angles of light and dark.
I love all of that.
The smell of rosemary in the garden. The tomato plant's smell is beautiful, too, but usually, it lurks.
M bought new coffee yesterday - or the day before, I am not sure. He looks after most of the shopping. I live on my computer, in my studio, in my head. The coffee exudes a potent scent of chocolate. It's Vietnamese coffee after all. It has been a while since I last smelled something like that. Suddenly, it seemed exotic. Made me think of the morning in London, when even their worst coffee seemed wonderful, just because they were different.
How eager and hungry I was to experience new things.
Only if it'd be easy to return to those moments in which one can feel so capable of being in awe, of feeling good being alive.
Be less socially exposed, I'd say. This madness of reaching out to people on the internet. It distracts one from the tangible, edible, smellable (is this a word? oh my, it's a word - not as pretty as the thought derived from it) wonders surrounding one.
My work. My work. My work.
Yesterday, I spent most of the day trying to draw a fish. I failed. Another large trunk of the day was spent rearranging the tiny balcony garden. In the evening, I collapsed into a heavy, early, long, thick, dark sleep before the proverbial clock hit ten, or even nine-thirty.
We don't have to feel guilty about all this, do we? I loved it when I drew. I loved it when I dug the soil with my bare hands. We don't have to feel guilty about it.
Productivity should not be the benchmark for a life well-lived. A life well lived needs no benchmark. To each her own.
I wonder if I should start my lessons with ten minutes to listen to each other. To make myself listen to my students, and make them listen to each other. And to make a point: feeling is good, listening is good; we should practice them more. How to link them to the subject of the courses though? What if it starts with 10 minutes telling each other what could be a story - through newspapers, through their daily lives? I like that. Fifteen campfire minutes. Listening to stories. Listening to each other.
I suddenly ran out of things to write. The caffeine just hit my brain and froze me for a minute.