Part II: Day 49: This Morning, This Cool, Rainy June Morning

6 a.m.  It's cool and damp out here, sweater weather for the dog's person, comfort weather for the dog with the thick black fur coat.  We contemplate purple pansies, pink snapdragons, gymnastic squirrels, groundhog mamas and their young, and invite the great blue heron to bring his girlfriend over for our appraisal.  The wind stirs the poplar outside the studio and a branch bows down to us in an unsteady way just as I bowed last night in yoga class in sun salutations with knees slightly bent--cool nights bringing me unusually tight hamstrings--and I say, this is the life I was meant to lead.  We listen, we watch, and I wrap myself in a blanket and drink coffee.  Our dog hates heat and if cool is what she wants, so be it.  I say, I'm in: let's go for summer-lite.  Let there be lettuce and asparagus, let there eventually even be corn and tomatoes, I certainly don't want our farmers to suffer, but if this lovely dog likes a mild cool morning with nary a bug, what's the harm?

We watch the mist swirling above the river and I think I can see fish or creatures imitating them riding the current.  The hammock swings empty in the yard; no one wants to lounge there and read in this weather.  I picture the August me out there with sunglasses and a book and I hope there's an August Zoe too, underneath that hammock swatting flies away.  But hope, Thich Nhat Hanh says, is dangerous.  It makes me forget that the perfect moment is this moment right now.  It makes us chase things we can't see.  It makes us put our happiness in hock. 

And right now the dog is eating, walking, running, playing, cuddling, smiling in her doggy way, and she knows this is her world so of course as the day wakes up and people get to work she will supervise the construction going on across the river--across her river.  Right now the dog is beside me sharing a new day, this Tuesday morning.  This is our moment, and although I want a million more of these I will horde the ones I have by writing about them here and now.

Namaste, gentle reader.  Namaste.