Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Feeling your own pulse

Whenever I feel I want some fresh air, I open up a page in Thoreau's Journal and breathe. Here's one:

"Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature,—if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you,—know that the morning and the spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse."

Well, where I live there are no bluebirds, but white ibises and a family of sandhill cranes that come looking through my porch door. As to the early morning walk, I stay in bed a few minutes more and imagine I am taking my early morning walk. Imagining comes easier since I am into writing and poetry. The only things that get me moving is either the force of going to work or the curiosity over "what's going on in Writing.com?"

I don't know about the spring of my life, but I consider my life a spring. Yes, a spring from which undetected and sudden surprises keep springing up.

Thus is my pulse. Good thing, I live with a sense of humor, and the morning is about seven hours later.

Sorry, Mr.Thoreau.