Hi, Tara, the compilation looks great and the server was so busy I couldn't see it for a while. Kudos! The last email I got from you ended "nuts and bolts". Did I perhaps miss another one sent after that?
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!
Both of your quiet spaces sound wonderful! I love the sense of space and order and intention on a campus: military, medical, civic, scholastic - it doesn’t have to be a university. There’s quiet in a well-designed array of shade trees and benches.
Today I’m going to “read” student faces to assess the energy. :-)
So interesting, Tara, because I've literally just been writing about my version of 'pools of quiet' (using a different metaphor - that of pockets, rather than pools) - due to publish tomorrow. The alignment is (as always!) fascinating to me. And right here in Yorkshire, UK, I too am watching the Canada geese as they await the hatching of their young. On my regular canal-side walk, I've counted 25 nests in a single 5 mile stretch. The canal itself, for them, is a pool of quiet, a place of waiting and, certainly for the females, of contemplation.
I find I'm not so 'good' at daily breaks - or at least, I haven't been. For me, it's more seasonal, perhaps a week at a time, a month at a time. That said, most of my mornings are sacred, filled with silence and meditative calm, which is a ground of support for the rest of the day. I'm fortunate in having such flexibility and a relative lack of responsibility (no kids to wake from slumber and wave off on their day). So perhaps the pool of quiet then means that I'm less in need for the rest of the day...
We share a very durable wavelength! 😂 I saw my first three goslings last Thursday. Our river is anything but quiet. At the shallow edges, you wouldn't suspect such a fierce current so near. I suspect your quiet mornings do a great deal of good. I am back to living with an alarm clock now (though the body usually knows) to get the kids off early, but the years without one were golden. Those will come again. Writing first thing in the morning is the best.
Here's to the years without the alarm clock (and first thing in the morning writing). It will come and, in the meantime, those mornings, I'm sure, contain their own special kind of beauty.
"The alignment is (as always!) fascinating to me." Isn't it, though? Maybe you and Tara have a particular tendency here, but I notice it time and again. Yesterday, the theme - not mine but with three others - was earworms. LOL!
Today, I've just watched the "Osprey Cam" made available through my work. The nest is occupied, first, by a Canada goose pair, whose goslings leave, just 1-2 days after hatching, by leaping off the platform. It looks as though they would surely die when they strike ground, but no. Off they go to make room for the Osprey pair, who are now calling the same nest home.
I love this, Elizabeth. Thank you. It speaks to the powerful yet invisible gossamer web that holds us--those resonances of ideas that 'coincidentally' show up to remind us of our interconnectedness. I love that you have an 'osprey cam' through your work. How magical. And how magical to witness creatures sharing that same nest.
I'm glad my world brought goslings instead of earworms! Whew! I feel lucky. An osprey hatch sounds fun to watch. This reminds me of one of my activities during the pandemic. When the kids were home full time, I used to browse zoos and aquariums to find animal cams that we could watch, since we were online so much. At least this was an activity I could encourage. I found some adorable critters that way. Then we decided it was time to get cats, and zoo cams became less important.
I need quiet pools for sure! I raised three children, and it was almost never quiet. Now that they are grown, I avoid and then relish quiet. Not sure why, but there seems to be an aversion to quiet before doing it.
I wonder if family life increases the yearning for quiet - all that daily jostle. I find I sometimes fill time with trivialities before I realize it’s time for a quiet break. May our aversions and trivialities shrink! :-)
What a gorgeous post! It gave me a wonderful little pool of quiet by proxy. You also took me back to my undergrad spring days, in the best way. I remember a spring full of Shakespeare and cherry blossoms and big ideas and sunny young love.
You've inspired me to find/make a pool of quiet on the day stretching ahead.
Glad you enjoyed it, Rita! The spring blossoms are everywhere on our campus right now, with soon-to-be graduates posing for pictures by the river or in front of buildings. We're seeing more caps and gowns and cameras every day. :-) I hope you find that pool of quiet.
I could sit there all day, Tara. Or that's what I think when I'm buzzing about doing anything but noticing the clouds. Thank you for the gentle reminder to move gently. And goslings! I just shared a bit of noteworthiness from my own morning in response to Creativity Thesaurus below. Loving the synergies.
Your wish came true here! As it happened, I was at a farm event all day yesterday, under the bluest sky with the most scrumptious clouds. So, having cake while eating it too...or something like that?! 😁 Hope you got to take in a little cloud-time, too, Tara.
Gorgeous! Thank you for sharing the image of your day. I had a busy schedule yesterday, but in the middle, I got to ride my bike from place to place on a beautiful spring day and enjoy a delicious lunch with a friend. Given where we are in the school term, it was a day of lovely clouds and fresh, tree-scrubbed air.
Tara, I love those changing cloud forms — and this post asked me to pause and reflect in a way I needed to. You ask about my own preference for finding quiet moments: ideally, on most mornings, I read a print book with my first book of coffee, looking out the window at the sunrise. But it's rarely that ideal, and sometimes I have to force myself for a walk at the end of the afternoon. I'm experimenting at the moment with an art project to bring a different kind of quiet, one not connected to screens or devices. I'll be writing more about that myself :-)
Martha, I look forward to hearing about the art project. You make a good point that most mornings may not follow the ideal pattern, but I appreciate having memories of the ideal mornings even with things go off with more of a bang - and hope for the next one.
Do you have a favorite way to take a quiet break during the day?
I have been actively spending more time in my hammock in 2024. My goal is two hours per week, and it really helps me decompress after work.
Do you have a time of day when a quiet break is most essential?
Mostly if I have consumed a lot of media that day and I am overstimulated. But that can happen on any day.
Do you read things beside books?
I read magazines more than books actually. One of the last holdouts lol. I read The Economist, Foreign Affairs, and the occasional New Yorker if I happen to have been near a Barnes and Noble.
Thank you, Carissa. These short scenes are also calming to write. Dogs have the best habit of stopping their humans every few steps to enjoy the green things and the play of light, don't they?
You are almost through April, hang in there buddy!
I need my quiet time in the morning (and ideally in the evening and everything in between🤣). I can go a couple of days without it but any longer and I definitely don’t feel like myself.
Thank you! I'm hangin'. 😂 I hear you about quiet time all day, every day. Sometimes it feels like that would be just the thing, but of course, I'd miss all the activity if I weren't in the middle of it. C'est la vie. Into the breach!
Yes! I wondered if I would see some creative answers about reading material. If I can read clouds, you definitely can read soap bottles. I'm thinking about reading the grass later this afternoon, if it warms up like the forecasters predict. Maybe around 3:05. That's lull-time for me, too, unless I have a class scheduled, and then the crash comes after. I hope you get some quality couch time today! :-)
I look to the sky and I’m lucky to be surrounded by water, so the ocean usually gets my quiet zen attention—even when it’s tempestuous and the whitecaps are frothing with the wind. It changes moment by moment.
Pebble writing looks surprisingly popular. Substack is magical for helping us find people just as quirky as ourselves! 🤪
I love watching the ocean. I think if I lived within sight of it, I would become effectively catatonic, just staring. I hope you get to do lots of staring.
Yes, me too. Such an evocative description of the need for, the making space for, and the sinking into quiet. I love these pools. You’ve given me another metaphor to use as I notice and step into the places of pause in my own life.
Yes - sinking into! It's delicious. I'm headed over the Rachel Connor's Creativity Thesaurus next to read about "pockets" of quiet. We were writing from a similar vibe this week.
Thank you, Laura. I'll try to DM you through Substack so we can swap emails that might work.
Hi, Tara, the compilation looks great and the server was so busy I couldn't see it for a while. Kudos! The last email I got from you ended "nuts and bolts". Did I perhaps miss another one sent after that?
Possibly. Been hopping to get finishing touches in order. I'll have a better sense of what we have after tomorrow.
Oh, yes, I bet you are super busy. I love the sub-headings, etc. But where's Margaret Atwood and a bunch of other writers?
You'll have to ask them. :-)
I'm not there, for example. No clue why not, LOL.
I did not see the email. Try again? Or DM?
A beautiful post, Tara! I like the idea of pools of quiet.
After lunch is the best time for a quiet break.
Thank you, Jeffrey! I love a lull in that after-lunch time, too.
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!
Both of your quiet spaces sound wonderful! I love the sense of space and order and intention on a campus: military, medical, civic, scholastic - it doesn’t have to be a university. There’s quiet in a well-designed array of shade trees and benches.
Today I’m going to “read” student faces to assess the energy. :-)
So interesting, Tara, because I've literally just been writing about my version of 'pools of quiet' (using a different metaphor - that of pockets, rather than pools) - due to publish tomorrow. The alignment is (as always!) fascinating to me. And right here in Yorkshire, UK, I too am watching the Canada geese as they await the hatching of their young. On my regular canal-side walk, I've counted 25 nests in a single 5 mile stretch. The canal itself, for them, is a pool of quiet, a place of waiting and, certainly for the females, of contemplation.
I find I'm not so 'good' at daily breaks - or at least, I haven't been. For me, it's more seasonal, perhaps a week at a time, a month at a time. That said, most of my mornings are sacred, filled with silence and meditative calm, which is a ground of support for the rest of the day. I'm fortunate in having such flexibility and a relative lack of responsibility (no kids to wake from slumber and wave off on their day). So perhaps the pool of quiet then means that I'm less in need for the rest of the day...
We share a very durable wavelength! 😂 I saw my first three goslings last Thursday. Our river is anything but quiet. At the shallow edges, you wouldn't suspect such a fierce current so near. I suspect your quiet mornings do a great deal of good. I am back to living with an alarm clock now (though the body usually knows) to get the kids off early, but the years without one were golden. Those will come again. Writing first thing in the morning is the best.
Here's to the years without the alarm clock (and first thing in the morning writing). It will come and, in the meantime, those mornings, I'm sure, contain their own special kind of beauty.
Yes, they do have a beauty of their own. ❤️
"The alignment is (as always!) fascinating to me." Isn't it, though? Maybe you and Tara have a particular tendency here, but I notice it time and again. Yesterday, the theme - not mine but with three others - was earworms. LOL!
Today, I've just watched the "Osprey Cam" made available through my work. The nest is occupied, first, by a Canada goose pair, whose goslings leave, just 1-2 days after hatching, by leaping off the platform. It looks as though they would surely die when they strike ground, but no. Off they go to make room for the Osprey pair, who are now calling the same nest home.
I love this, Elizabeth. Thank you. It speaks to the powerful yet invisible gossamer web that holds us--those resonances of ideas that 'coincidentally' show up to remind us of our interconnectedness. I love that you have an 'osprey cam' through your work. How magical. And how magical to witness creatures sharing that same nest.
I'm glad my world brought goslings instead of earworms! Whew! I feel lucky. An osprey hatch sounds fun to watch. This reminds me of one of my activities during the pandemic. When the kids were home full time, I used to browse zoos and aquariums to find animal cams that we could watch, since we were online so much. At least this was an activity I could encourage. I found some adorable critters that way. Then we decided it was time to get cats, and zoo cams became less important.
I need quiet pools for sure! I raised three children, and it was almost never quiet. Now that they are grown, I avoid and then relish quiet. Not sure why, but there seems to be an aversion to quiet before doing it.
I wonder if family life increases the yearning for quiet - all that daily jostle. I find I sometimes fill time with trivialities before I realize it’s time for a quiet break. May our aversions and trivialities shrink! :-)
It read so nicely, peace and quiet. Yet here's some soothing Czech punk of the early 90's ...
https://liborsoural.substack.com/p/the-solar-plexus-chakra
Thank you, Libor. It's hard to imagine a better contrast. "Soothing" is just right. 😂
I know what you mean, but life is full of paradoxes ... contradictions.
And if there is humor in them - even better. :-)
Absolutely! Phun has a lot of puns, err, buns. It's always better to laugh than cry.
https://liborsoural.substack.com/p/paradise-lost-the-die-is-cast
https://liborsoural.substack.com/p/jumping-off-the-same-bridge
What a gorgeous post! It gave me a wonderful little pool of quiet by proxy. You also took me back to my undergrad spring days, in the best way. I remember a spring full of Shakespeare and cherry blossoms and big ideas and sunny young love.
You've inspired me to find/make a pool of quiet on the day stretching ahead.
Glad you enjoyed it, Rita! The spring blossoms are everywhere on our campus right now, with soon-to-be graduates posing for pictures by the river or in front of buildings. We're seeing more caps and gowns and cameras every day. :-) I hope you find that pool of quiet.
I could sit there all day, Tara. Or that's what I think when I'm buzzing about doing anything but noticing the clouds. Thank you for the gentle reminder to move gently. And goslings! I just shared a bit of noteworthiness from my own morning in response to Creativity Thesaurus below. Loving the synergies.
I wish long stretches of time with clouds for both of us today! And if not long stretches, at least little snatches.
Your wish came true here! As it happened, I was at a farm event all day yesterday, under the bluest sky with the most scrumptious clouds. So, having cake while eating it too...or something like that?! 😁 Hope you got to take in a little cloud-time, too, Tara.
Gorgeous! Thank you for sharing the image of your day. I had a busy schedule yesterday, but in the middle, I got to ride my bike from place to place on a beautiful spring day and enjoy a delicious lunch with a friend. Given where we are in the school term, it was a day of lovely clouds and fresh, tree-scrubbed air.
Tara, I love those changing cloud forms — and this post asked me to pause and reflect in a way I needed to. You ask about my own preference for finding quiet moments: ideally, on most mornings, I read a print book with my first book of coffee, looking out the window at the sunrise. But it's rarely that ideal, and sometimes I have to force myself for a walk at the end of the afternoon. I'm experimenting at the moment with an art project to bring a different kind of quiet, one not connected to screens or devices. I'll be writing more about that myself :-)
Martha, I look forward to hearing about the art project. You make a good point that most mornings may not follow the ideal pattern, but I appreciate having memories of the ideal mornings even with things go off with more of a bang - and hope for the next one.
Do you have a favorite way to take a quiet break during the day?
I have been actively spending more time in my hammock in 2024. My goal is two hours per week, and it really helps me decompress after work.
Do you have a time of day when a quiet break is most essential?
Mostly if I have consumed a lot of media that day and I am overstimulated. But that can happen on any day.
Do you read things beside books?
I read magazines more than books actually. One of the last holdouts lol. I read The Economist, Foreign Affairs, and the occasional New Yorker if I happen to have been near a Barnes and Noble.
You had me at "hammock." 😂 Quiet time hanging from a tree is the best. I still like reading print magazines, too.
Lovely post. I felt calmer reading it.
I love walking my dog and enjoying nature.
Thank you, Carissa. These short scenes are also calming to write. Dogs have the best habit of stopping their humans every few steps to enjoy the green things and the play of light, don't they?
❤️❤️❤️
You are almost through April, hang in there buddy!
I need my quiet time in the morning (and ideally in the evening and everything in between🤣). I can go a couple of days without it but any longer and I definitely don’t feel like myself.
Thank you! I'm hangin'. 😂 I hear you about quiet time all day, every day. Sometimes it feels like that would be just the thing, but of course, I'd miss all the activity if I weren't in the middle of it. C'est la vie. Into the breach!
Do you have a favorite way to take a quiet break during the day? --> couch with dogs
Do you have a time of day when a quiet break is most essential? --> 3:05PM
Do you read things beside books? --> Soap bottles, longform journalism, garfield
Yes! I wondered if I would see some creative answers about reading material. If I can read clouds, you definitely can read soap bottles. I'm thinking about reading the grass later this afternoon, if it warms up like the forecasters predict. Maybe around 3:05. That's lull-time for me, too, unless I have a class scheduled, and then the crash comes after. I hope you get some quality couch time today! :-)
I want to know how a pebble writes. ☝️😜
I look to the sky and I’m lucky to be surrounded by water, so the ocean usually gets my quiet zen attention—even when it’s tempestuous and the whitecaps are frothing with the wind. It changes moment by moment.
Pebble writing looks surprisingly popular. Substack is magical for helping us find people just as quirky as ourselves! 🤪
I love watching the ocean. I think if I lived within sight of it, I would become effectively catatonic, just staring. I hope you get to do lots of staring.
Yes, me too. Such an evocative description of the need for, the making space for, and the sinking into quiet. I love these pools. You’ve given me another metaphor to use as I notice and step into the places of pause in my own life.
Yes - sinking into! It's delicious. I'm headed over the Rachel Connor's Creativity Thesaurus next to read about "pockets" of quiet. We were writing from a similar vibe this week.
Sinking and dropping into are definitely themes for me this week.