Yesterday was the last day of our second summer. Sunlit days and warm temperatures, gave way to clouds and gusts of blustering wind. I had come to feel like that little kid in the beginning of Monster House, riding her tricycle down the street, "LA LA LA LA LA Hello leaves LA LA LA LA Hello house..."
I've enjoyed these quiet days, more than I thought I would. I longed to go out on expedition, and yet walking the path to the back of the property to check on the cows, feeling the sun on my neck as I fed the pig, leaning into Cocoa as I milked her, all of these things turned out to be soothing. I had wanted the calm forces of nature, and trees overhead to quiet some chaotic thinking, and I've found that here, the chaos has quieted.
It's early morning, I have my coffee, Cocoa is lying in the field outside my window, and I have lots to do today. My morning meditations have been leading me into quiet and still places. Places with guiding words that say "wait." That say "listen." That say "turn inwards." That say "turn to the forces of joy." Today was no exception.
While I wish sometimes that the guiding words would say "turn left at the crossroad ahead, proceed four miles, then turn right and go another twelve miles and you will be there," that doesn't seem to be whats happening. Instead, whatever messages are drifting down to me seem to be more along the line of "hold in your breath 'til you come back up in full, hold in your breath 'til you've thought it through you foolish child..."
Anyone know that song? Yeah...that one. You know the one that gets inside you and kind of plagues you and makes you feel like crying and laughing altogether in a coughing burst.
So as the weather turns again, and winter, which had gone off on it's own quiet wandering, circles back around because it has a job to do, I also have a job to do. According to my reading this morning it goes like this: "What you need to know will come. Look for it in your heart, not the world..." or rather..."If you read nothing and wisdom sees your fervor, awareness will sit in your hand like a tamed dove."
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So interesting how we are fed by contrasts. The busy-ness of the mind is soothed by a peaceful environment.
ReplyDeleteI watched a documentary about Jack Kerouac the other night, and I felt a little bad for him in his later years. He'd obvious experienced life very fully and richly and wrote profoundly about it over many years. But somehow, he turned to alcohol, became more and more the fool and discontent, till he finally managed to snuff out his very life, drowning in booze and disappointment, apparently.
And I wonder, for what? Why it all got so tormented, when his writing was such an inspiration and his successes so great. Why couldn't he, like the writer above, find solace and pleasure in life at every next turn?
Or maybe life is a series of compensations, and after so much of a certain track Kerouac was on, then he completed that and pursued another track. I'm not quite sure why so much torment, though, when simple abundance is ready at hand.
--Steve