walking on water

This morning I went outdoors with the dog while it was still half dark and was enchanted by the dew on the grass:



I thought it looked like I could walk across it on the top of the blades of grass, like walking on water... the drops of dew so shiney they looked like they would support me! :-)

Oddly enough, someone sent me this in e-mail this morning:

Walking on water

~Hazrat Inayat Khan

Very often it is one's outlook which changes a person's whole life. It can turn hell into heaven; it can turn sorrow into joy. When a person looks from a certain point of view, every little pin-prick feels like the point of a sword piercing his heart. If he looks at the same thing from a different point of view, the heart becomes sting-proof. Nothing can touch it. All things which are sent forth at that person as bullets drop down without every having touched him.

What is the meaning of walking upon the water? Life is symbolized as water. There is one person who drowns in the water, there is another who swims in the water, but there is still another who walks upon it. The one who is so sensitive that, after one little pin prick he is unhappy throughout the day and night is the man of the first category. The one who takes and gives back and makes a game of life is the swimmer. He does not mind if he receives one knock, for he derives satisfaction from being able to give two knocks in return. But the one whom nothing can touch is in the world and yet is above the world. He is the one who walks upon the water; life is under his feet, both its joy and its sorrow.


Well, I don't mean to be superficial, but knitting lace is like walking on water....very, very carefully...



This is the Swallowtail Shawl in its inception. I've made a million mistakes already and have tinked as much as I've knitted (tink - to carefully un-knit, stitch by stitch, as opposed to frogging, in which large sections are pulled out at once. If you look closely, you can see my "lifeline", a smooth black yarn that I thread through with a needle, every six rows, so if I mess up the pattern too badly to tink, I don't have to frog back to the beginning, just back to the lifeline... I think the pattern is worth the work and concentration though. The colour and lace design Kicks. Serious. Butt!

I'm not a water-walker yet. Not only do the vicissitudes of life cast me down on a regular basis, but the lace knitting is still a serious and painstaking venture. Maybe when I conquer one, the other will fall into place too.

What I'd love today: I wish I was sitting in the Burdick's Choclate cafe in Harvard square, sipping a dark iced chocolate from a tall glass...