October

It has cooled down enough that I tried on my fall coats. The cream colored trench for scarf and lipstick days, the long red raincoat with the rugged zipper for days when I’m stomping through the city terrain with my eye set like a frame to capture the day’s offerings, and the barn coat that comes out for outings in the hills.

My friend Clare Murray, who is a yoga instructor, was telling me the other day about breathing. She asked me what I thought of the word ‘breath’ as a way to give a theme to her teaching to prospective students. Having a sales pitch kind of idea in my mind, I was telling her that the imperative to ‘breathe’ sounded better, but she did not agree. She explained it to me very well. Clare seeks to guide her students on their quest to find their breath. Not to breathe. Just living means we have succeeded in the quest to breathe. But those who succeed in finding their breath wherever it resides, have really made a very liberating discovery.

In Lyon, we’re getting some rain, and I suppose it would be worth a look into an almanac to see if this fall is going to give me a lot of good rainy days. What? How can you say that, you ask? Listen. My formative years were spent on the hill in Syracuse, New York, a town where the year I turned 18, it rained solidly for 38 days straight during the months of October and November. It was a very harsh year, but it was the year I made my first apple pie. I discovered that when it is raining, you can live. Passion for life will not die in the rain. You must harness the good in it and turn it in a way that it will best serve you.

Today I am trying to find my breath and thinking about the rain and what it means to me now. When it is raining, the light is diffused in such a way that it wraps its long slender fingers around every nook and cranny of detail and brings about delectable opportunities. The cars swish by in waves and the rhythm of the city comes through more clearly. When it is raining a visual kind of awareness sets in. Through muted light I seem to be able to take in an idea, whole.

I look at the crumbs on the floor with determination to do something about them. “Today will be an excellent day for cleaning.” Says Loïc. October rainy days are the time to polish the silver and examine the linens, clean the glass and mirrors and think about having people over. We are far enough into the fall so that people have stories to tell about their new projects, but far enough back from the holiday season yet that great ideas still have room to find their breath. We should very carefully listen to our inner rhythms too.