Extending the Airport Runway

(From a painting/writing class I did one evening last week.)

#1 - I memorized a poem by Mary Oliver - Extending the Airport Runway - while doing door knocking for my state legislator tonight.

#2 - I recited the poem to his wife and the couple whose house we were based out of when I returned. I've had/been taking advantage of inserting poetry into the world frequently recently and I am really enjoying it.

#3 - The woman who came to her door happy. She really stood out. When I left her house I thought, "I should have thanked her for being the happiest woman in her neighborhood." I spoke to her 10 seconds and walked away feeling better than when I knocked simply from her smile.

I wrote down her address - thinking maybe I'll send her a card saying something simple like, "Happiness is contagious. Whatever you are doing keep it up. Thank you."

#4 - I got home from door knocking much earlier than I expected so I am going to make a smoothie and curl up with Walden. I am in love with Walden! It's so funny how even though I trusted it would be on my wavelength I never felt any desire to read it previously. Actually I still didn't now. But I went to a walking outdoor play yesterday about the friendship between Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson - names I've known but not much else - and so I requested a book of each of theirs' beforehand. The Emerson book is poems so I've been reading one daily. Walden I was really not expecting to read at all, and in fact I have the new book by a favorite author (Paulo Coelho) from the library which I should read first because I can't renew it, it has a waiting list. However, I read the first page of Walden and I am hooked! It is both insightful and poetic! I am in love with a man born 200 years ago at the moment.

“I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust (27)” Walden Henry David Thoreau

#5 - One house on my route had just a little milkweed out front, I thanked them (for the monarchs).