Grace in Small Things – 54

Looking at the comments on my last post, I feel so humbled and grateful to each of you…the ones who left supportive and encouraging comments and, for that matter, to those out there who did not comment but who are with me in spirit on this crazy journey called life.

There are way more than five and the difference you make in my world is anything but small.

Today was a hard one. I left work feeling defeated, fragile, ready to give up. Your words lift me and hold me up.

Calling

Lately I have been hearing a calling. It is not that recent a calling, but the voice is getting louder.

I am 45 and realize that if I am ever going to answer the call of my heart, I need to start before too much longer. It is not too late.

But I am scared.

I am not ready to talk about it in detail.

I am afraid of failing.

I have never tried anything until I was sure I could succeed. The old me…the perfectionist me…didn’t take those sorts of chances.

I am scared.

Everywhere I turn, the messages are coming at me. When Sylvain and I watched Neil Young Heart of Gold, all I could hear were the hopes and regrets and gratefulness of someone who is entering the last part of life.

This morning I listened to Brother IZ’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and it screamed to me about dreams…deferring them or pursuing them.

I visited Elspeth’s blog and it said “How does one become a butterfly?” she asked pensively. “You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.” - Trina Paulus -

I visited Cassaundra’s blog and it said: “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” – E.E. Cummings

My dinner guest last night brought me a pot of red tulips still tight in bud. This morning they are by the sunny window beginning slowly to open to the light.

I am praying fervently every day for guidance and for courage. I do not know how to do this, I only know I cannot continue to pretend I don’t hear.

Grace in Small Things – 53

• Cooking up a meal for my friend.
• Long, slender, twisty organic carrots.
• Using dried mint from Sylvain’s (last summer’s) herb garden.
• A boyfriend who offers to bring gluten-free desserts to my door from way across town, even though he is not staying for dinner.
• Wearing my vintage apron.

Grace in Small Things – 52

• That rising early has become habit rather than struggle. In the darkest days of my depression, sleeping in meant till noon. Now sleeping in means not getting up till 7:30 or 8:00.
• That the Peregrine Falcons have returned to the Ambassador Bridge. These guys were captive bred and released to help bring the species out of endangered status.
• Tonight from 8:30 to 9:30 is Earth Hour, a way for people all over the planet to cast their vote for Mother Earth.
• That one of my neighbours is a Bald Eagle. She spends her days around the lake and roosts in the woods behind me. Thank you, Rachel Carson, for helping this species come back from the brink of extinction.
• Watching the orange ball of fire climb from the hazy horizon between sky and water from my yoga mat.

Looking Back and Ahead

My Joy Rebel mission for this week is to look back on my blog to one year ago and see where I was, what I was blogging about and where I want to go over the coming year.

One year ago I was reading about the mysticism of everyday life and blogging about chaos theory and that pesky little devil I call ego, the mini-me inside my head who thinks there is an entity separate from the rest of the world whose name is Kelly. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

I was living with four other people and watching my ego go crazy every day, using that as practice material as much as possible.

I was new to insurance claims and happy to be employed in a town with a high unemployment rate.

So, hmmm. Not a lot has changed.  In a way this is good. I have found a lineage of Buddhist teachers whose way of pointing the way resonates with me.  I have gone deeper into mindfulness practice and have made a stronger commitment to daily meditation practice.

Physically I am in a different place, … my own space where I have lots of quiet time every day.

I have survived a whole winter of occasional blues and anxiety using diet, exercise and mindfulness instead of the wine or pills on which I once would have relied.

My world has just recently opened up tremendously. The loneliness and isolation I felt due to not yet having found members of ‘my tribe’ in this city have lifted completely. First I found Windsor Meditation Group, then I met E about the same time I met J.

Now there are people to invite into my home and people inviting me into their homes.

Even though I consider myself predominately introverted, I do recognize that after a couple of hours talking to a girlfriend, I feel more sane. Without friendships, my world becomes tiny and closed and neurotic.

And what do I see for the coming 12 months? I don’t know. I do know that I feel something brewing. There is a shift taking place as we speak. I am going to ride that shift and see where it takes me.

Grace in Small Things – 51

• Very different dreams of late, none of the old stuck patterns, all affirming of my current path…dreams where I am driving my own car (instead of in the back seat, going backward or without car and missing a bus), dreams where the animals are well fed and in communion with me.
• A single pre-sunrise beam of light that painted a swath of pink and orange and white straight up from the horizon through various layers of clouds and contrails. So rapt was I that I had to stand up from my meditation mat and stare in awe, mouth agape, until the blinding orange sun peeped over the horizon.
• Reaching for one tool after another this morning to deal with some anxiety about going to work and finding peace when I realized I did not have to make the anxiety go away. I just had to hold it tenderly in mindful awareness.
• A neighbour calling out, “Hey, Kel, you comin’ up?” and holding the elevator doors while I closed my mail box. Ah, the rewards of making a point to get to know my neighbours’ names!
• Taking myself out to a film tonight.

Grace in Small Things – 50

• Out of bed in time to watch the sun rise TWO weekend days in a row…body and mind finally seem to be in sync on this one.
• Being served a delicious brunch by a new friend (goat cheese! portobellos! balsamic! roasted red peppers!) and spending a few hours getting to know one another better.
• Enough energy to do my grocery shopping and to cook up a huge batch of ratatouille… oh, how happy I am when I am in the kitchen surrounded by bowls of chopped this and sliced that, smaller bowls holding the little mountains of spices and herbs that have been measured out, something sautéing on the stove, the smells filling the apartment.
• Sunshine.
• A good talk with Sylvain that brought us closer.

Grace in Small Things – 49

• Rising at dawn on a Saturday and spending longer than usual in meditation.
• Having my laundry washed, dried, folded and put away by nine thirty.
• The sun coming out in the evening after snow this morning, enticing me to spend some time with my book on “my” park bench.
• The way the setting sun illuminates the edges of the blades of grass.
• Enough quiet time in my day to read my neighbour’s little book “My Sicilian Roots” cover to cover.

Grace in Small Things – 48

Grace # 1: broccoli

Grace #2: the fact that–in these rough economic times–I have a job.

Grace #3: Finding a new teacher in Sogyal Rinpoche, whose book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying is guiding me, nourishing me and supporting me on the path.

Grace #4: a friend has invited me to have brunch at her place this weekend.

Grace #5: is something that happened at work that I can’t explain here without rousing my ego and undoing it.  It made me think of this parable. It goes something like… a monk lived by himself and the family next door had a beautiful young daughter. The daughter became pregnant by her secret lover and–not wanting to admit to her affair or reveal her boyfriend’s identity–claimed that the monk had taken advantage of her. Enraged, the family brings the illegitimate baby to the monk, saying, “Here, you raise him.” The monk makes no attempt to set the record straight, but takes the baby, saying “as you say.”  The monk loves and educates the child for 10 years. Then one day the truth comes to light and the family realizes the child is not the monk’s. They want the boy back. They come to his door and demand that he return the boy. “As you say,” says the monk, turning over the boy.

Willing

Mornings are another opportunity for me to try out these teachings. Over and over I set the alarm for a nice early hour. I retire early enough so that I’ve had 7 or 8 hours of sleep by the time the bell rings. And yet when the alarm buzzes, I roll over and hit snooze a zillion times. My body begs me to get up, it does not want any more sleep. My muscles beg me to rise and stretch. But I don’t.  This is one STUBBORN habitual rut.

Once I’m up, I’m FINE.  What is it with me and transitions from one state to another?

So for a few months now I’ve just been aware of this pattern. I’ve followed the teachings and simply rejoiced in the seeing of the pattern, rejoiced in the knowing that I’m recognizing but not quite making it to the “renounce” or “refrain” step. I’ve done a good job not judging. I’ve been loving and kind toward myself, keeping a curious posture, wondering when the breakthrough would come, and how.

Then I found this WILLING process on the Live Mindfully blog. Oh, people, this is good stuff. I had already been working with Pema’s three Rs and Jack Kornfield’s RAIN steps. But this! It somehow fills in something that was missing for me. I got out the magic markers and wrote the 7 steps out on a piece of Bristol board. The two steps that help me the most are Welcoming and Loving.

Welcoming = This refers to our openness to experience. Experiential avoidance increases distress, since experiences cannot be erased once they have occurred. This is not passive acceptance, but a deliberate choosing of this very experience, pleasant or unpleasant.

Ok, I’m sorry, but that is REVOLUTIONARY.

I have certain kinds of experiences that I will avoid at all cost. I mean I will pay you any amount of money if you will go through that particular experience on my behalf and spare my having to.

But wait! If death is certain and the hour of death is certain…what is the most important thing?

There is nothing but nothing I value more in this life than getting over my fear of living it… ANY part of it.  What makes it so juicy is that these parts of me are sooooo recalcitrant, it’s unreal.

But when I practice mindfulness using these tools, and if I do it consistently day in and day out for weeks and months on end… well, I’m here to tell you… a door eventually opens to another reality.

There is quite a leap of faith required.

All my cells are programmed to flee from experience X. So I have to read that sentence “Experiential Avoidance increases distress….” and I have to believe it on faith. Then act as if.

What I am discovering is that these circumstances that are difficult are the ones that have the potential for transcendence hidden in them.  I can’t remember which of Pema’s teachers she was talking about at the time, but she told about one of them who said he actually looked forward to new difficult circumstances as opportunities to train and to uncover new layers where he was still stuck, areas that still needed work.

…

Step 4, the second L, LOVING = Being loving means accepting what is as it is. We could call this taking good care of the experience. “Loving exactly what is” is non-striving in nature, and it is the essential condition of intimacy.

When I think of it that way, it makes it sound as if the Beloved is inviting me to become a more intimate lover! As if in groaning and rolling over, I am slighting my beloved…. a Beloved who is waiting for me at the door of the dance, hand outstretched. What am I waiting for? This is my LIFE!

This morning and every morning for the past ten or so days I have risen and turned on the shower without giving my crazy head time to argue. Then I have sat on my yoga mat in front of the balcony doors overlooking the water. I have rung the little bell Sheila gave me 3 weeks ago, and I have sat in silence with focus on my breath.

Then I have gone into the world, gone to my menial little job and practiced welcoming each and every moment of that workday, the pleasant and the unpleasant, as if I had chosen it all.

Be Grateful to Everyone

These past two weeks I have been conducting an experiment in mindfulness and shenpa work at work. Some very juicy stuff has presented itself as material with which to practice. It is a situation to which I could easily react in the same way I have always reacted my whole life. It is a situation that is very, very difficult to respond to mindfully. And so it is ripe with opportunity, a potential doorway to another reality.

Today’s Lojong card reads on the front: [13] Be grateful to everyone.

On the back it says: COMMENTARY – Others will always show you exactly where you are stuck. They say or do something and you automatically get hooked into a familiar way of reacting–shutting down, speeding up, or getting all worked up. When you react in the habitual way, with anger, greed, and so forth, it gives you a chance to see your patterns and work with them honestly and compassionately. Without others provoking yo, you remain ignorant of your painful habits and cannot train in transforming them into the path of awakening.

Over the past two weeks, I have discovered a truth so deep in these teachings, I cannot convey it in words. It can only be lived, not described.

I started by cultivating the tiniest ounce of compassion for the other person, the one whose behaviour was making me want to flinch and hide and avoid. Before I knew it, I was seeing clearly for the first time that this other person is a perfectionist.  Oh, how I know the taste of that disease! Suddenly I was filled to the brim with empathy for her plight. I know the unease that is driving her, the anxiety that she is attempting to flee by trying to make everything perfect all the time, by trying to control every aspect of everything down to the last detail.

Prajna! Like rain clouds parting after a storm.  I saw it.  This situation at work was not about me. It was about someone else’s pain.  My ego mind had made it about me, but that was a falsehood. Both our minds were creating fiction. She could continue to react to the fiction her head was manufacturing, but I could choose to  stop doing the same!

I don’t have to be at the mercy of any illusions or delusions. I can wake from the dream into my beautiful, shimmering present moment where everything is just as it should be.

Grace in Small Things – 47

Because there were at least five small things full of Grace in yesterday’s posts. As for today…

• Feeling bouyed on all sides by strong, effective teachings from masters whose love comes to me through time and across space via the written word.
• Dwelling all week and all last week in a peace so steady, I dare not speak of it.
• Skipping meditation group tonight because of a social function in my building, because I hold getting to know my neighbours to be just that important.
• That when I told Mr. Fazio how much I had enjoyed reading his “My Sicilian Roots” story spread over the last two newsletters, he offered to go back to his condo to get the whole book for me to read…all 31 pages with photos. I accepted and will be reading his autobiography over the next days.
• Finding this blog.

Mystical Steppenwolf

From page 34:

My regret was for the present day, for all the countless hours and days that I lost in mere passivity and that brought me nothing, not even the shocks of awakening. But, thank God, there were exceptions…. I set myself to recall the last of these experiences. It was at a concert of lovely old music. After two or three notes of the piano the door was opened of a sudden to the other world. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defences and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart. It did not last very long, a quarter of an hour perhaps; but it returned to me in a dream at night, and since, through all the barren days, I caught a glimpse of it now and then.

Dead Goethe speaking to Harry Haller, page 111:

“You take the old Goethe much too seriously, my young friend. you should not take old people who are already dead seriously. It does them injustice. We immortals do not like things to be taken seriously. We like joking. Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. …  Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.”

page 128, describing Hermine:

…she seemed to know more of life than is known to the wisest of the wise. It might be the highest wisdom or the merest alertness. It is certain in any case that life is quite disarmed by the gift to live so entirely in the present, to treasure with such eager care every flower by the wayside and the light that plays on every passing moment.

p. 149

Oh, the devil, he made one sick, this Herr Haller! And yet I clung to him all the same, or to the mask of him that was already falling away, clung to his coquetting with the spiritual, to his bourgeois horror of the disorderly and accidental (to which death, too, belonged) ….

p. 174 Hermine and Harry, Hermine speaking first:

“Time and the world, money and power belong to the small people and the shallow people. To the rest, to the real men belongs nothing. Nothing but death.”

“Nothing else?”

“Yes, eternity.”

“You mean a name, and fame with posterity?”

“No, Steppenwolf, not fame. Has that any value? And do you think taht all true and real men have been famous and known to posterity?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then it isn’t fame. Fame exists in that sense only for the schoolmasters. No, it isn’t fame. It is what I call eternity. The pious call it the kingdom of God. I say to myself: all we who ask too much and have a dimension too many could not contrive to live at all if there were not another air to breathe outside the air of this world, if there were not eternity at the back of time; and this is the kingdom of truth.”

Mozart to Haller, page 242.

“Just listen, you poor creature, listen without either pathos or mockery, while far away behind the veil of this hopelessly idiotic and ridiculous apparatus the form of this divine music passes by. Pay attention and you will learn something. Observe how this crazy funnel apparently does the most stupid, the most useless and the most damnable thing in the world. It takes hold of some music played where you please, without distinction, stupid and coarse, lamentably distorted, to boot, and chucks it into space to land where it has no business to be; and yet after all this it cannot destroy the original spirit of the music; it can only demonstrate its own senseless mechanism, it inane meddling and marring. Listen, then, you poor thing. Listen well. You have need of it. And now you hear not only a Handel who, disfigured by radio, is, all the same, in this most ghastly of disguises still divine; you hear as well and you observe, most worthy sir, a most admirable symbol of al life. When you listen to radio you are a witness of the eerlasting war between idea and appearance, between time and eternity, between the human and the divine. Exactly, my dear sir, as the radio for ten minutes together projects the most lovely music without regard into the most impossible places, into respectable drawing rooms and attics and into the midst of chattering, guzzling, yawning and sleeping listeners, and exactly as it strips this music of its sensuous beauty, spoils and scratches and beslimes it and yet cannot altogether destroy its spirit, just so does life, the so-called reality, deal with the sublime picture-play  of the world and make a hurley-burley of it. It makes its unappetizing tone–slime of the most magic orchestral music. Everywhere it obstrudes its mechanism, its activity, its dreary exigencies and vanity between the ideal and the real, between orchestra and ear. All life is so, my child, and we must let it be so; …”

A Letter Finds Me in the Park

It had taken me six weeks to read Steppenwolf in 30-minute installments, since I eat my lunch with a coworker first and then open the book after we are done eating and she disappears with her book. A translucent rainbow of sticky markers protrudes from the pages, marking passages I want to share with you.

The last pages, I felt, should be savoured in private. I brought the faded old paperback home with me yesterday. It was the first day mild enough for sitting outdoors with a book, so after a quick phone chat with Sylvain, I headed down to the park adjacent to my building. Sylvain said a letter had come for me to his house, and he would bring it to me.

“I’ll be near the swing set,” I told him, but added that he could bring the letter on Wednesday, no need for a special trip.

As I had expected, the ending of the book was powerful. I had to set the scruffy little paperback aside more than once to wipe tears and take in the power of the moment, the richness of every detail of the world around me. Direct contact. I feel the wooden bench under my bum. There’s a robin just three feet in front of me; she must think I’m part of the bench, I’m so still. I smell the earth awakening.

Sylvain came up the Ganatchio Trail and found me. He pulled an envelope out of his jacket.  Seeing that I was basking in a special moment alone, he left again.

The envelope contained a card from my childhood friend Mary who now lives in Illinois. I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten a letter from her before, though we exchange emails now and then since reconnecting last year. In addition to the beautiful art card, there was a magnet with a painting and the Joseph Conrad quote, “the human heart is vast enough to contain all the world.”

It was one of those moments when everything becomes slightly dream-like. My world was mimicking the surreal world of Hesse’s novel. Letters delivered to park benches, indeed.

I picked up my book again and read until it grew too cool out. Pulling my sweater around me and tucking the book under my arm, I headed back to the apartment. There I brewed a cup of spice tea and curled up in the club chair to read the last pages of the last chapter.

When I was finished, I sat for a long while watching the light fade from the eastern sky. I wiped my eyes again, blew my nose.

Then I booted up my laptop to read emails and blogs for a short while before turning in.

There in among the bold subject lines of 17 new messages was one that jumped out at me: “Finding Hesse.” It was a blog comment on my Jan. 27 post from an old high school acquaintance I have not heard from in 26 years. He had apparently been Googling his own name and found the blog post about finding Steppenwolf in the book exchange stack in the laundry room, remembering that he had encouraged me to read Hesse at that time.

One of the other comments on that post was from Mary, who uncharacteristically delurked to express her surprise at seeing Eddie’s name there.

Grace in Small Things – 43, 44, 45

• Sitting in my comfy chair by the window sipping organic, fair trade Licorice Spice tea from a hand-thrown mug.
• Putting up my How to Build Community poster from Syracuse Cultural Workers.
• A romantic dinner out with my sweetie.
• Risotto con funghi, even better the day after.
• Being coaxed on an outing to Point Pelee today.
• Sitting in meditation in front of the OPEN eastward-facing patio doors and feeling the morning sun on my skin.
• Discovering a wonderful used book store in Windsor and spending as long as I wanted wandering from room to room.
• When the book you need next finds you.
• A trip with my friend E to Ann Arbor Friday to be in the company of other seekers.
• Being able to go to bed as early as I please, because I’m the boss of me.
• My brother’s 44th birthday today…pretty good for a kid the doc predicted would not live to age 4.
• Being able to see wild swans from my window.
• Taking my bikie in for a SPRING tune up. Woo hoo!
• Being able to talk to Sylvain about mindfulness practice and knowing he gets it.
• See photo.

Grace in Small Things – 42

First he was going to surprise me with tickets. Because that’s what cool, thoughtful boyfriends do, you know. But then he thought to ask me if I would like to see Leonard Cohen at the Fox Theatre (an elegant old opera house) in May. I said no because a) I’ve only recently come to his music and b) I just don’t pay that kind of money to go to concerts. Somehow I’m still stuck in this point in the distant past when one could see CSN&Y for $10, bring a lawn chair.

But then Daisy sent the link to this NYT review of a concert, which blew me away. Plus I thought about Patti Digh’s essay Go See the Tiny Ninjas. There was only one thing to do. (No, Leonard Cohen is nothing like a tiny ninja, but you know what I mean.)

I asked Sylvain if it was too late to change my mind.

Today I got this email from best boyfriend ever:

Success!!

We will be seeing Leonard Cohen live on Saturday May 9^th at 8pm at the Fox theatre in Detroit.

Section F5, Row H. It’s a little on the side, but its main floor and only 8 rows back!!

Eeeep!!

Well, that’s three things Grace wiggled its way into.

=====

This week I have been magically transported to some mysterious place of power and secret peace.

I had an amazing insight into someone else that allowed me to shift from a place of fretting and resenting to a place of compassion and forgiveness.

I feel set free.

Pema’s teachings really do work. Thank you Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, her teachers.

Dhamma Talk 2

On the way to Dawn’s house, J asked me how I was feeling about doing tonight’s talk.

“Better than last week, though I felt good about it last week, too.”

She asked me what had me feeling better about it. I was feeling more in that Flow space…a good place to be when you’re going to teach about aligning more and more with the Wisdom aspect of ourselves.

Almost everyone who was crowded into Dawn’s living room for last week’s dhamma talk came back for the second half of my delivery of material from Pema Chodron’s “Getting Unstuck” CDs.

Tonight felt easier, lighter, more fun. Instead of sitting in the Mama-san chair, I chose the floor and gave the chair to someone else. I made up fewer index cards to keep myself on track, leaving more space for the things that wanted to find voice spontaneously…both from me and from the group.

After the dhamma hour, we stretched and chatted a bit before settling back down for the meditation part. The time flew by. Instead of getting antsy by the end, I was disappointed that the gong rang so soon.

Afterwards, Y asked me to write down the name of the short video clip I had recommended. “Go to YouTube and put in ‘Thich Nhat Hanh anger,’ ” I said as I spelled it out on the back of the envelope she had pulled from her purse. She was first in line to borrow the CD set, which now belongs to the WMG library.

I went down the short staircase to the foyer to put my shoes on and peeked back into the room through the spindles of the stairs. J was giving L a hug and her phone number. Beautiful Y was talking to  M with the doe eyes. They were deciding which of them would take the CDs home first, each one being gracious about it, offering to let the other have them first.

I helped A with his boots.

In the car, J told me she really had enjoyed the talk. She had felt engaged the whole time, she said.

When I got home, Sylvain and I spoke briefly by phone. He told me how much the mindfulness teachings that I’ve shared with him helped him during the scariest days when he didn’t know if he would be going under the knife for cancer excision the following week.

And then I talked to the fading daisy in the jam jar by the window. And kissed her, telling her how sorry I was that she had been cut and killed for floristry, but that I hoped she knew that her presence had blessed my life for a fleeting time. Then I kissed her papery petals as lightly as I could.

Grace in Small Things – 40

• Being reminded (O, thank you, Brandi) that there are forms of movement I love…just when I was ready to resign myself to the sedentary inertia I had dubbed in my mind “bookworm syndrome.”
• Being informed that our supervisor might be on the war path with me in her sites tomorrow, and staying perfectly calm thanks to all the good teachings that have soaked into me of late.
• The mist-enshrouded moon rising over the water.
• A skillet of cornbread fresh out of the oven.
• A single purple Gerber daisy in a jam jar by the window, still perky this many days after Valentine’s Day.

Grace in Small Things – 39

• Attending Mass with S; Fr Tom’s words always touch me in some good way.
• Seeing my neighbour N at Mass. I got to introduce him to S. He looked so happy around all his church friends, not at all the way he looks when I run into him around my building.
• Watching Leonard Cohen – I’m Your Man with my sweetie. The lyrics and poems he writes could only be written by a mystic.
• That while he was out running errands today, my sweetie found SIDEWALK chalk!
• Two squirrels chasing each other across the lawn this morning. It put a smile on my face and gave me energy to start my day.

Grace in Small Things – 38

• Getting a claim in an envelope with a sparkly heart sticker on it. Yes, policyholder vacationing in NV, the claims examiner did notice and it did make her day brighter.
• That Sacred Harp news & announcements time was interrupted by a dire request from a woman who just absolutely had to have my aunt Catherine’s corn casserole recipe.
• Seeing the first arrived Red-winged Blackbirds staking out mating territory in the rushes. Spring really IS coming.
• More spill-over into my own life from presenting material from Ani Pema’s “Getting Unstuck” talks: on waking and not feeling like getting out of bed, I found myself saying “that’s why it’s called LEARNING to stay.”
• Rising early enough three or four times this week to have more time for meditation seated before the view of the rising sun followed by a leisurely cup of coffee before heading off to work.