"Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me." - Thoreau

I've been having trouble settling down enough lately to write an entry. I can’t seem to keep my mind on anything. I’ve been up since early this morning. All the things that I think I need to do, and those things that I think I want to do, and those things that I think I don’t want to do today, especially, keep shuffling around in my mind, and I can’t seem to make any decisions, or take any actions, other than drinking a cup of hot tea, feeding and walking the dog, and write this post. Meanwhile, the day is slipping away.

The above quote is one I came across somewhere in the past day or so, and it’s been on my mind ever since. In trying to track the quote down just now, I came across it embedded within this wonderful excerpt from Walden containing Thoreau’s thoughts on morning, which I’ve read many times before. I also stumbled across a poem called The Inward Morning, also by Thoreau, which is new to me, and seems applicable to mindfulness. Here is the first stanza:

Packed in my mind lie all the clothes
Which outward nature wears,
And in its fashion’s hourly change
It all things else repairs.
In vain I look for change abroad,
And can no difference find,
Till some new ray of peace uncalled
Illumes my inmost mind.

Time to practice mindfulness, to sit in stillness and silence until the mud of confused thinking settles and some clarity and a new ray of peace dawns, and then get on with the day.