Immature specimens

A visit to Sunken Gardens, and other fragments of thought & being for 2024

I wish I had something pithy to write about for the end/beginning of the year. Instead, I’ll proclaim—I am still here, and share a few thoughts that have been on my mind. I’ve been practicing “being present” and this list is what I’ve got:

• Gotta sort the shed. Bb got a new bike for Christmas and it needs somewhere to be. Still waiting for when “the present” moves me to begin this task!

• I am 1.5 weeks into a 2.5 week vacation. I am a swirl of sentence fragments, green tea, kale, flax and citrus, with a distinct lack of caffeine. Arguably a healthier concoction than two weeks ago, and proud of it. I hope you have had some time to rest as well.

• Yesterday I did a five mile run and when I came back inside, Mark said it hadn’t look like I’d been. Indeed, I looked in the mirror and was barely sweating. I am intrigued to be in the thick of a process/transformation I cannot feel but that others see. The 60 degree weather helps.

• I’m awaiting my very first pair of glasses (for screens), and a full glaucoma work-up. Mark and I squeezed in eye exams the last day before our holiday began and I got this disheartening news. Apparently I’ll always be a glaucoma suspect (even if I don’t have full-on glaucoma), due to my large optic nerve cupping. So I’m processing that and have a new excuse for avoiding pushups.

• PSA: Schedule that eye doctor appointment!

• We visited Sunken Gardens in St. Pete for Mark’s birthday last weekend. Why is it that plants endlessly inspire me? I am propagating succulents, the native-to-Florida pepperomia, roses, and imagining what our little piece of land might look like in the future with mature specimens. I like the idea of furry cacti, a bromeliad garden, and towering ponytail palms.

Lovely botanical garden in central St. Pete, an old Florida tourists stop. Recommend!

• This year I wish to grant myself the space I need to be alone. I require time to restore myself, to process other people, to give them the space in my head I feel they deserve. The early mornings are giving me this now, and I’m grateful.

• I wonder sometimes what my dad would be doing with his life right now. I wonder what poems he might have written if he had taken better care of his body and his mind. He died 11.5 years ago. Sometimes this one body seems not enough to live all the lives we want to live.

• I am proud of my mother. She works really hard to take care of her body and mind, to express herself in ways she knows how, to try and be a part of things. I hope the world is gentle with her this year.

• I wonder sometimes about collective responsibility. I think a lot about our community in Lake Mary, what things should be here that aren’t.

• It was foggy this morning on the lake, beautiful thick fog. It obscured the fact of a stranger clearing the wild land next to the creek that Mom and I walk by every day, where last year we saw the dinosaur birds mid-migration. It softens our entry to 2024.

And that is all the randomness you will get from me this morning. Happy new year, friends. Let us decide to love it, before we even see it!

xo
cassie.