It's a New Day

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."



- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Barge Haulers on the Volga - Ilya  Repin, c.1870 -1873
Oil on canvas, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

Whoooeeee. Yesterday was grueling. I felt just like these poor men, tethered together with leather yokes, slogging through clay and mud, dragging barges up and down the coast of the Volga River. 
 
(This painting by Repin is iconic in Russia, and was very provocative for its time. Despite the czarist mentality that hard work for the state was noble, this is a realist's depiction of life at that time, a time when men would work like this merely for a meal a day and a place to sleep at night.)
 
Sheesh. Look at how hopeless and dejected they all look.
 
Okay, in my infinite ability to romanticize my existence, I may have exagerrated how awful my day was.  But I did feel as if I were slogging through mud. That part is exactly right.
 
My friend Steven (of the blog THE GOLDEN FISH) posted an essay by Herman Hesse that expressed it better than I ever could.
 
You can read it  HERE.
 
At odds with everyone including myself yesterday, I decided to go for a very long walk, probably too long for the time of year, as I now have an earache from the cold wind and blisters from hauling the barges  walking the path.
 
As I came around the heavily wooded part of the park, a huge heron lifted up from the ground in front of me and flew right across the path. My camera was in my hand, as usual, and I snapped this picture as he lazily flew around my head.
 
 

 
I took that to mean that tomorrow would be a better day. We can do that, right? We can interpret the signs around us as we see fit to interpret them, can't we? I say yes.
 
So last night, I luxuriated in a hot tub for a very long time (how lucky am I that I have the time to do that at the end of a hard day?) listened to my beloved Chopin, and went to bed. I slept well and had pleasant dreams of being showered with cherry blossoms. Tomorrow has morphed into today.
 
Oh, Yeah. Today is a new day. I'll let you know how it goes.
 
I wish you a day free from tethers, blunders, and absurdities. Carpe diem!
 
Music today is from Michael Bublé, who personifies cool. Oh, yeah, he knows how I feel.  I wish the last two minutes of cheesy banter wasn't at the end, but just go ahead and hit the little stop thingy after the song is over. I've already played it a dozen or so times, and it's still early in the day...Enjoy!