Two messages during my morning walkâan awe walk.
What makes it awesome?
Pay attention, notice everything. (And maybe act on it.)
AndâĤ
And at the National Academy of Art, this special exhibition: Paris 1874, The Impressionist Moment.
A celebration of the birth of Impressionism, including the painting that started it all and launched a renegade movement of independentsâĤ
Along with a painting that takes me back to my childhood because a print of it hung on a wall near the side door of my familyâs ranch house all through the 1960sâĤ
Set free to be eight years-old againâand to see everything around me with the wonderment and vision that comes with being eight.
After strolling along the Potomac at Georgetown Waterfront ParkâĤ
âĤI sit upon a bench and, taking it all in, get taken myself by a satori:
An understanding that the rhythm of everything happening around me, people walking their dogs amid a natural setting of birds singing and dancing on a trellis aboveâĤ that it was always meant to be exactly this way; that life and the universe is perfect in every way.
This moves me to feel gratitude. For today, for every day, each new morning. Grateful for family and friends. For all I have been given in life. And most especially for the autumn around me (in my autumn years) on such a glorious afternoon.
Come 5:33, I make my way to Chez Billy Sud, a bistro/wine bar, authentically French, world-class.
The bartender recommends an elixir called Club de Gazon (French for grass): gin, dry vermouth, maraschino liqueur, absinthe, orange bittersâĤ
âĤand during the night, perhaps provoked by this magic potion, a dream produces an awesome idea for a book.