No Ordinary Day

This morning in the shower, I thought of the verb, “exfoliate,” which means to remove a dead layer of skin, to shed the scales.  Exfoliation reveals the smooth new skin underneath.  You shine afterward.

Some days, I move through the hours as if under gauze.  I’m not seeing into the life of things.   There’s a dead layer I need to come out from under. 

It all seems so ordinary, so basic.  No beauty, no wonder.   With eyes glazed over, I move through my life. 

But then I scrub it down, shine what’s in front of me, and seek out the poem in anything from soap scum to a thunderstorm. As my neighbor said to me a few weeks ago, this daily flair project is a daily poem project.  If poems make the ordinary thing extraordinary, then that’s what I’m doing today and everyday.  I want to see deeply and clearly. 

I’m on the hunt for beauty.

I want to train my daughters in the art of finding the beautiful thing, of naming it, and holding it tight.  We need time to think, to sit outside, and experience our lives. 

Seeing the world upside down.

I tell them we aren’t watching television because we have so much to experience.  I send them outside, and they swing upside down as the sun sets.

The older one takes a rock and crushes acorns to a fine powder. She wants to see inside things. 

Later, I find out acorn powder is a secret ingredient for a recipe she’s making.  I did that as a girl, long before electronics dominated homes.

Crushing acorns

I went outside with nothing to do at all.

I came in, my face shining.

Exfoliated.