Daily Routines

No, not daily GRINDS, daily ROUTINES.  The good, loose order of daily life things. Like: morning coffee and toast, a proper lunch in the early afternoon, times for returning emails, for laundry, for blogging, for cleaning clay tools, for picking kids up from school. Etcetera, etcetera.

My non-negotiable daily routine is a morning walk. Soon as I drop the kids off.  Even in the rain because God knows I'm not made of sugar.  I breathe belly breaths.  Sometimes I take my ipod and sometimes I don't.  I try to clean my brain's house, shake out all the crap.  I leave a trail of detritus behind me - little pieces of mental paper on which are written all my "supposed tos and shoulds and have tos and don't wanna dos". I envision the passing cars ripping right through those little bits.

And then I fill my brain back up, with other things, cleaner things: the dark framework of winter trees against a cold, ceramic blue sky, lacy green lichen on bark, half a pretty walnut, an impossibly red cardinal against a last small pile of snow. 

I return a half hour later, or an hour, maybe even more if there's a considerable amount of crap to shake loose. I empty my pockets.  Here's today's collection:

Check out the piece of wood that looks like a long-billed bird.  And the long twist of vine.  I even love all their shadows.

And then as C.S. Lewis said: "The routine from the walk, and the arrival of tea, should be exactly coincident..."

Read about the daily routines of the likes of painters Gerhard Richter and Jasper Johns at:

http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/daily_routines/artists/

They procrastinate and dilly-dally and lolly-gag just like us.