Back to Winter

Single digit temperatures.  High winds.  A little snow.

After last Sunday's pleasant day, winter roared back.   My week was busy with teaching my regular classes plus four more, subbing for teachers who were either sick or out of town.  Wednesday and Thursday I taught both before work and in the evening, and then finished with an early morning class on Friday.

With a schedule like that, energy focuses around the essentials - getting enough rest - or as much as possible - getting up on time - keeping track of schedule and projects.  Other things fall aside - reading - keeping my class journal up to date - writing blog posts.

Then, the question.  What's the right balance?

Some Sundays I teach two classes in Takoma Park.  The first ends at 2 pm and the second starts at 4.   Usually I just stay there, because to go home between gives me just a little over an hour, bracketed by the driving back and forth.

Those two hours of waiting time allow me to do some reading, update my journal, and settle out of the busy-ness to open up to what is happening around me.

Today I noticed that the planter outside the entrance is tiered, and the highest tier has a decorative concrete wall behind a small holly tree.   The afternoon light angled in past the branches and cast the tree's shadow on the wall right beside it.  As the tree branches danced in the gusty breeze, the shadow tree danced beside it - a monochromatic, high contrast, two-dimensional abstraction, visually more compelling than the tree that made it.