“Dreich” is a word which means what it sounds like – dark, dank, dull, dreadful. It describes this wet autumn day.
I love this picture, and the reflection of the sky from the puddle. It reminds me of the Oscar Wilde quote, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” (Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892). At present, we are all in the deep of the dreich, but if we look around, there are fantastic images in the drifting of the leaves, and in the bunching and rolling of the clouds.
Plus, occasionally there’s fancy snails.
My sister has a jacket with these same stripes on it. She is not amused that the snail wore the jacket first.
Two weeks ago, I contacted a friend, via LinkedIn, for her birthday. She wrote me back to tell me that her husband, at the age of thirty-eight, had unexpectedly died two days before, and she’d not known how to reach me. I was in shock, am still raw and bleeding for her. The following week, another school friend wrote to tell me how she was doing in her new city, and offhandedly announced her engagement. Shock again – but the good kind. Yesterday, a classmate from grade school found out that – surprise! – she was going to be a mom again in May. She’s a little panicked at the unexpected, but she is dealing – with courage, and with joy. Fortuna’s wheel continues to turn as out of work friends find jobs, and others find themselves trying to stretch and resize a budget that in nowise will take them through the winter. As we all face the dreich days together, surround yourself with friends and simple pleasures, and tell those whom you love that you do – and how much.
Invictus
by William Ernest Henley
OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Stand tall through the rain and wind. We get knocked down, but we get up again.