Chapter 118
There are so many subtle blessings dancing the periphery of awareness. The zeitgeist may be fear and trepidation, but the eternal dance continues unabated. When I listen, watch, and wait, sometimes a little longer than is comfortable, the universe generally magics up something unanticipated.
I get to spend each day in the company of my beloved parents, despite the many thousands of miles between us. We are graced with the technology to share voice and images, sometimes it’s real patchy and frustrating, sometimes it’s a breeze. However, the important thing is the connection – the profound elemental connection of family and love – that breathes and grows and develops deeper and stronger ties as the days go by. We share the most ridiculous conversations of daily eatings, doings, readings. Who cares what we actually talk about? For much of the time, it’s the shared experience of both hearing another and being able to visualise them and what they are doing, to have sufficient context to paint a background to the life of one’s loved one at the other end of the line that dissolves the physical distance.
It’s been just over a month now. I’ve been here… bedding in, unravelling, stretching, twisting, spreading my roots. Lungs, limbs, being, all expanding. Like a series of deeper and deeper breaths, stretching, muscles releasing, fibres lengthening, cells relaxing and a Morphean elasticity permeates everything.
I walk from room to room breathing pleasure. I dance down the centre of the rain-slick road twirling a tartan umbrella singing the classic song, before treading softly down the newly-gravelled road that is mine own. This too, brings pleasure, the soft grey mounds and arcs of pebbles and chips of stone that jumble together into a whole. They sink into the earth to their resting places even as my spirit floats through the upper branches of surrounding trees, rides the sap streams through trunks, spreads across the mist-laden vistas beyond my windows. I feel the pressures of the past decade peeling away minute by minute, slippery layer by slick, slightly tacky, occasionally sticky, layer.
My neighbours once again are the four- legged people; deer, moose, fox, mouse, squirrel, the winged folk; robin, crow, sapsucker, finch, grosbeak, jay, nuthatch, chickadee, siskin, hawk, and great grey owls whose impassive gaze drapes across my shoulders with tangible weight, the tall standing ones; wrapped in red and brown or silver and black bark, deeply leafed or thick with needles, the slow stolid souls; the stone people, guardians to the rippling silver constants of rain and river.
I take pleasure in my early morning waking and subsequent return to slumber. In the view from my window of my garden’s green silvered humps, the thickening grasses, tips tilted down, turned in upon themselves for the night. I return a couple of hours later to the same view to find it splashed with light and gold gleaming faces of dandelions opened to the light of a new day. Their cheerful heads are bouncing across swathes of land right now. There are those who respond to such cheerful, simple beauty with poison. Think about that.
Only in the abandonment of much do I find true quiet. Sitting. Listening. Lying between stretched cool cotton or bare skin against sun-drenched silvered wood. Walking woods, hills and muddy dells. Driving empty, half-empty, half- full roads and highways, watching the rising tide of humanity begin to refill the world, feeling the swell of frustrations, angst returning to circulation, despite the enduring and expanding sensation of community, kindness, compassion.
I go through the surreal motions of a ‘socially distanced’ visit with my aging friend. He is demented and understands none of this. He sits confused in a lawn chair as we are ushered around a labyrinthian access route to sit six feet away and talk. I turn on music on my phone and we launch ourselves into ridiculous dance for a few minutes. The sky is blue. The sun still shines. He knows us now & that’s all that matters.
There’s appreciation of contact, of the sight, sound and sensation of others. Preserve and meditate on the blessings that we may be bringing back into circulation. Avoid lingering in the redundant circle of thought that brings you no cheer and no resolution. Take a walk. Take a breath. This journey has infinite surprises, something utterly unexpected around the next corner or the other side of that clump of rocks…
With gratitude and love,
Kat Dancer
bodymudra@gmail.com
www.kat-dancer.com
415.525.2630, ph/txt/wtsp
