In praise of less

Generally, I don't enjoy busy. Effort, yes. Whirlwind busy, not so much.

I've piled up experience after experience, yet some of the best times are the slower times. Sometimes it's watching a sunset on the patio with my cat.We slow blink at each other, content with the moment at hand.

Sometimes it's a spontaneous phone call for a thrown-together picnic at Diana Lake.

It might be a walk to the corner store for ice cream, passing by the old rusting bits of truck, the nodding dandelion. Sitting on the steps down to the high school, another sunset.

It's the slow moments.

My grandson taking me to see how their strawberry plants are doing. A mug of tea with my daughter and building things with magnetic tiles. A game of “ go fish”. Depending on the mood there is triumphant gloating, or solicitous concern.

And there's art. A Pride Month bird, because. The Earworm of two sad songs, because sometimes you need tears. Bruce Cockburn's “Pacing the Cage” and a brand new one from Jesse Welles, “Pilgrim “.

And now the longing to write a morose kind of song. Because sometimes you have to sit with sorrow and sunsets.