Rainy morning.....

[fajrdrako]

Aliya cancelled our yoga session this morning - I got her phone call just before as I was leaving the apartment. This left me with an unclaimed hour before work. Options: go back to bed, read some slash, go to the fitness club, go for a walk....

I remembered Deepak Chopra's advice for spirituality and happiness: to go and look, every day, on a large body of water.

It's been a while. My apartment is thirty feet from the Rideau Canal, and it's water, but I don't think I'd call the canal 'large', even though it is pretty wide in my part of the Glebe. Ditto for the fishpond beside it. (Or is it a frog pond?)

So I took a little extra ramble on my way to work, and followed the canal as far Rideau Street, where I had to go up the steps and then down the steps on the other side of the street, beside the Photographic Museum. I'd never been down there before. The steps led to a palatial terrace (I was having vague fantasies of Maxfield Parrish) which in turn led to Major's Hill Park. I wandered the top of the cliffs by the water, looking down the Ottawa River. Enough water for anyone, there. I've read that by volume of water the Ottawa is one of the biggest in the world, but surely it can't compare to the Mississippi, the Amazon, or the Fraser?

The clock on the Peace Tower chimed at 7.30. In the rain, it was hauntingly beautiful. The Library of Parliament is invisible under elaborate scaffolding, and has been for some time. I wonder how long that will last.

It continued to rain. I passed seven hiking soldiers in fatigues; the one in the rear grinned and said 'good morning'. I passed a number of runners: because of the rain, it was wet T-shirt day.

I went to the fitness club, and read an Esperanto textbook on a cycling machine for 20 minutes. It was fun. There were numerous people on numerous machines, some watching the televisions, some listening to music - why do so few people read on those things? I plan to be fluent and fit if it kills me.

One sentence I had to translate cracked me up: "His pencil is thick and short, but yours is long and thin." I hope the clearn-mind-police weren't watching.

By the time I left the club it had stopped raining and the sun was coming out - with thick, humid air. I went to the Byward market, but not many places were open yet. The world begins after 8 a.m. There were no raspberries out at my favourite booth, so I bought plums for breakfast instead.

Then to work, to write this. There's construction going on here, too: they're building a photocopier room across from my office, and a liquor room upstairs by the bar, and the City is tearing up water mains right outside my window. Right outside. Noisily. Inches from my desk. This would be even more annoying if the guys working on the project weren't cute.

Comments

[squashed.livejournal.com]

This would be even more annoying if the guys working on the project weren't cute.

*cackle*

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

And I have a front row seat!

Sadly, they aren't all cute. But enough of them are to make it worthwhile.

[rivier.livejournal.com]

Thank you: I loved reading this... felt like I was walking right there along with you in the rain.

I'm really not doing enough of that. Sometimes, I walk from work to the homeward station in London - it takes just an hour. London has many things I deeply love, but there's also too much grot and it sweats and stinks in the summer. I moved 2 hours' commute away so that I could get more of the green and beutiful landscape into my life. But now I never seem to scrape together enough time to do that bit of the equation.

You're inspiring me to get out there and just take an hour to savour it all, some time this weekend. Not 7 a.m., though, ye Gods! ::squeaking:: Earlybird!

Speaking of which, how is the birdlet doing? Getting louder?

And mmm, hee, workman eye candy!

...ponder...

You know, I think Lex really needs to get some building work done down at Castle Luthor. To exorcise all traces of Helen, maybe? And naturally, he'll need to arrange for Clark to get a casual-labourer job on the work gang, to earn spare cash in the vacation.

Nothing porny about that, is there?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

7 a.m. is scary. It is. Trust me.

Hope you brought your vicarious virtual umbrella - I didn't. I did wear my waterproof Gore-tex jacket, but now I have to carry the thing around with me all day. Ugh.

I used to love walking when I lived in London. Some routes were better than others, but there were so many fascinating places to see en route that I never tired of it. Time is always the factor, though. Walking time was time I couldn't spend studying or going to plays.

I love your idea of Clark as workman at Castle Luthor! Now, the idea isn't porny in itself, but I'm sure that with a little application of the imagination it could be made so....

On Contemplating a Large Body of Water

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

Standing outside my back door, bare feet warmed by the paving stone just off my porch step, watching the surrounding trees' branches move fluidly within the growing wind... looking straight up, I am gazing upon a large body of water: the sky, preparing to thunderstorm upon me. As the storm moves overtop and the rain slowly starts, I remain dry -- first, the drops are only here and there, and I hear them strike my porch roof but do not feel any, and then, as the rain increases, the breeze is blowing from the other side of the house, so I am in a sleeve of protection, standing there under the shadow of the house -- the rain falls just a few inches in front of my nose and toes. The air, right then, which I felt (and such a delicious feel it had, as I put my arms out to the sides and stretched and wiggled my fingers through it!) was dense, damp, almost like the feel of fog, but this air was transparent. As the rain moved overtop my little town, and thus overtop my little house as well, I stepped back onto the porch as the rain began to hit me... but not right away. What a lovely experience. The thunder continues, as I write this.

Re: On Contemplating a Large Body of Water

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

How lovely! We've had no thunderstorms lately. I wonder why not?