To These Small Pleasures

There is so much to celebrate today. I felt it as I was on the near-empty train coming into work, reading Raymond Carver's poems. I could see it on the rain doused street of Vanderbilt Avenue, on my way to work, the strange warm air felt like spring. I was wearing my red shoes and no socks. I didn't need an umbrella, the rain already gone.

Then I came into work and found the announcement that my friends Alia and Sarah have welcomed their first born, a beautiful girl named Sofi! She was born on Valentine's Day in Auckland, New Zealand--not a bad way to begin life. First of all, it is summertime there and then you are born on a day of love. I am wishing the three of them many days of warmth and love.

Then the good will continued with a surprise gift of Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run 30th Anniversary Edition. So I sit in an office high above midtwon manhattan and hear "Have a little faith, there is magic in the night..." and my heart is pulled outside, beyond all standing circumstances and into the belief in the unknown.

I have a feeling about things lately--like I'm okay, I don't have to outrun anything. I am on a boat, with no need to hurry or push the river. This doesn't mean my heart doesn't yearn, it just means I am afloat, and that is enough. Spring is here in February--which is either a gift or a curse, depending on how you look at it. In a few days we're scheduled for snow showers again--but why dread those days, when it is 60 degrees and the air is soft and there is new life in the world RIGHT NOW?.

"We are new arrivals/to these small pleasures./.../Today, my heart, like the front door,/ stands open for the first time in months."
-Raymond Carver