The Winds of Change

Bryant Park daffodils - Spring 2005

 Today I caught a whiff of Autumn. It came floating on a breeze from the east, a degree or so cooler that I was expecting for August. It was 6 pm and I was walking along 42nd Street in Manhattan, just outside Bryant Park. I was heading home from work. It's a summer for which I'd made a simple resolution: to enjoy myself the most I could - maybe even the best ever. Instead it is looking like a 'lost summer'. I am working the hardest I have in a long long time, covering for a co-worker on maternity leave, and at the same time dealing with an onslaught of orders for my own division. We landed a huge order for Wal-Mart: 1.2 million units of mens' shorts to be delivered from December this year through May 2011. We have also been contracted to produce another 200,000 shorts for a well-known private label. None of it is a challenge, the challenge is doing it all. A few days ago, I read a post,  Daily Om - The Life of your Dreams which seemed to address my current 'stuck-ness'. Over the past few months, I have been slowly making peace with my Cosmic Dance Partner (the good old CDP). I have felt the wind at my back, and I swear an invisible hand has moved a chess piece or two. This has all made my life a little smoother, not to mention giving me a sense that things are actually working to my benefit. One needs that from time to time. After the Smackdown  I was angry at the Universe, then I got way too busy to keep stirring that pot. Now, I am just doing the day as it presents itself - which included, this morning - putting someone's broken Snapple bottle into the garbage can next to the bus stop. Some things just have your name written on them, especially the ones you almost break your neck tripping over. So this is the nature of the double D ( Destiny & Duty) as it presents itself to me. It seems to be the formula for my life - my particular equation with which I tinker at my peril. Its a long equation, not light-bulbish by any stretch, but maybe there is still room to salvage some elegance in the solution. Change for me may well be borne on many successive breezes, each off by just a degree or so from the one before. Today, I caught a whiff.

The New York Public Library overlooking Bryant Park, NYC - 2007

Photos: mine