Day 2. Routine

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Before January began I knew that routine, ritual, would be my path to discovery. That I would get up at the same time, start my practice the same way– uncover the unknown in the painfully familiar.

I am still dumbfounded by the attack yesterday on the city in which I have spent so much of my life. And when I scrolled through my various feeds, I saw all the things I always see in the wake of senseless violence– we are deeply saddened by, our thoughts and our prayers, it is with heavy hearts. This, too, is routine.

But does it help? Does it carry us to newness or trap us in complacency? I cannot say. Perhaps sometimes we need routines to carry us through to some brighter future and sometimes they keep us stuck. Perhaps there is some version of the serenity prayer in them: God grant me the serenity to defy the routines that do not produce beauty, the courage to use the routines that do, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Day 2 and I am already feeling a bit stuck. The roseate spoonbill of today’s painting is flying over a methodical pattern– my hope that this ritual of daily painting and writing will be the ground upon which I find new heights.

So today, though more wary of it than I was at the start, I invoked routine:

Welcome, Routine.

by which the coffee gets made

the dogs fed

the floor swept

the muse beckoned

the paint applied

in your

sameness, sameness, sameness–

like a metronome–

Take me someplace

else

Denise Hopkins

January 2, 2025