Chapter 117
Watching the tide of season and calendar slip seamlessly over into June, it feels somewhat surreal. All around me I feel people doing the same, in a peculiar state of suspended animation. There are so many eyes these days, so much seeing is happening. People are watching the world through many apertures old and new. The lure of the office walls and the mall’s lights and well-baited traps are hovering in the shadow of imminent changes and relaxations of rules. Perhaps by the time we meet on this page, people on the roads and at work of all kinds will be more prevalent.
I have moved into my home. I lie under the arching richness, feel the golden warmth of wood enfold me and my bones soften and let go, really let go. This is a first. This liberation of place, time, distance. I am alone, in my own unique space, unfettered. In many ways, I have no idea what to do with this. I float yet again in a kind of limbo – life’s vicissitudes tossing plans to dust, changes spiralling through each day casting lattice dances in my head. Each day a small shift, some new collection of tools or trinkets to house. Or a long walk in the glory of yet another day in which to play. My bones ache. I wonder from what?
Across the planet people pursue their same familiar, yet shrunken lives, interspersed with occasional forays out into a larger ‘normality’.Wehaveforgottentheeasewith which we strode across each day, how we once ‘bestrode the oceans’. My dauntless mother speaks of fear for the first time, the apprehension of the most susceptible finally raising its head as the gentle lifting of the veil begins…
The wild and wonderful crocuses that covered the top of the hill one day were utterly absent a week later. I do not previously recall this disappearing event… wild mauve and golden sentinels, harbingers of the new season, they metamorphose into spiralling silken seed baskets, like elfin beards pointing skyward. So how can a dozen or more just disappear?
Another day, another afternoon of plunging hands deep into the plangent earth. Digging fertile soil from the roots of downed aged trees, their rich black loam wraps its welcoming arms around the fragile roots of young plantings. Spots of colour against browns and greens. Trees are garbed in their novel fuzzy camouflage. Watch and listen to a poplar begin its dance of limpid green unfurling. Taste the movement of fresh leaves, translucent membranes floating as sails to scud through skyscape, between cloud waves populating sky tides. Wrap arms around the trunk of a tree, connect down into the earth beneath its roots, listen to the sap shimmy up to the light and warmth. Spring’s rising energy is tangible.
My nose already twitches (and sneezes and streams) with the new awakenings of spring and spores. The joy of sharing our world with myriad biting stinging insects is almost upon us. Armed with nets, citronella, tea tree, thyme, eucalyptus, we can take on the world! The ground is yet so deeply frosted that melting surface water gathers in puddles and pools across the pasture. The waterways are sparkling with the sunlit runoff of the winter. I stop and listen to the sound of running water, hammering woodpeckers and chattering chickadees, the muffled cotton-wool sound of a grey jay’s wings, the subtle sound of water moving… trickling between stems and leaves across the surface of a mossy slope.
There is a new awakening all around. The movement of spring comes hand in hand with the increased movement of people. This year it is all new and fascinating.
With gratitude and love,
Kat Dancer
bodymudra@gmail.com
www.kat-dancer.com
415.525.2630, ph/txt/wtsp
