Skyward Reading
Skyward Reading
A scene of quiet reading reclaimed from abundant April
The last weeks of the semester do not yield easily to quiet states.
There seem to be more people on campus all of a sudden. Maybe faculty are spending more time walking from meeting to meeting between buildings. Maybe students with spotty attendance are showing up to see what they can make of the final weeks. Passing periods are busy, parking spaces harder to find.
Engineers at the dam above town release more water every few days, so that down here in the city, the river rises in its banks, lapping at low points of the biking path. The current runs strong and cold. Dangerous April.
Beside the greenbelt, Canada geese have found places above the water line for their nests. Males glower at passers-by. A lone goose invades the turf of a mating pair, and the consequent shouting match resounds between the concrete walls under a bridge. Peckish April.
At my office overlooking the library quad, I prop books open with assorted gear. A stapler bestrides the book about attention that I assigned to the first-year students and two or three of them read. A heavy anthology sits open to a writer I’m considering for a final reflection assignment; that book and an old mouse pad prop open the novel that the after-lunch class is finishing this week. My hand rests on a notebook as I watch an elevator ascend the crane behind the library where a new dorm is going up. Distracted April.
Attention flits: River, geese, crane, assignments. I look down at my checklist again to remember where I left off. Abundant April.
Pools of quiet are as necessary to my well-being as yoga to some people, coffee to others.
I realize I’ve been drifting toward one for several minutes.
Makeshift bookmarks hold my pages so that I can close the books. I stack them to the side; close the class folders, too.
I have two desks — or rather, a desk and a small table — sitting at right angles to each other. The table stands in front of the window. I move everything to the desk and clear the tabletop. An empty table is like a pool of quiet: undemanding, generative.
My eyes drift up over the table to a path of aerial cobblestones. Forms within a form, shifting. I unhitch my mind from labor first, then curiosity, then language. I am adrift.
And so I remain.
The clouds move but I do not.
Forms spill into forms.
Light tumbles into shadow-places. Shadow jostles light.
Sounds pass in the hall.
I offer breath to the wordless sky.
*
Presently, it is time to return.
To time I return.
My wristwatch confirms, it is time.
*
I gather what I need for the last class of the day and look once more out the window before I go. Already, the shapes have changed.
*
Wherever I go, I try to find an angle of light, a nook of inactivity, a pool of quiet waiting to bestow gifts, regardless of the surrounding din.
You too?
“She Persisted” - The first female columnist in America weathered a dark time.
“Duckling Rescue” - How the kids of the neighborhood saved (last year’s) Mothers’ Day
“Mothers are Dragons” - The quiet joy of writing with my daughter (a guest post from novelist Evelyn Skye)
Your Turn
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Do you have a favorite way to take a quiet break during the day?
Do you have a time of day when a quiet break is most essential?
Do you read things beside books?
I welcome your opinion about which way to tilt with a post I’m working on. Believe it or not, all the titles below are related! Let me know in the poll if one has more interest for you than the others. You can say more in the comments. Thank you for reading this far and sharing your opinion!
A beautiful post, Tara! I like the idea of pools of quiet.
After lunch is the best time for a quiet break.
Tara, when I need a break at work I get up from my desk and walk around what is more or less a quad but on a military base instead of a college. Lots of trees, squirrels, birds, and some benches to sit on if so desired. At home I usually go out on my back patio. We have a porch swing and I will sit there and watch my dog play or the birds dig around in the grass for worms.
I usually need a break mid-afternoon.
The only things I read besides books are articles on Substack publications. Maybe once a week I will put up a news website to keep update on world events. I subscribe to one magazine that arrives quarterly. Too many books out there for me to read much else!