Gently falling rain, but protected by the oak once again this campervan morning. Not only providing protection, but the soundtrack to the morning, as droplets fall on leaf and branch and in turn onto the ground. The pitter patter of rain on leave and soil. Grass, leaf, branch and ground glisten with moisture. The author Douglas Coupland writes
"I have always considered the rain to be healing-a blanket-the comfort of a friend."
The rain feels like that this morning. It’s not heavy, drenching or even really wet, it does feel like a healing blanket. The sound almost mesmerising, it almost begs you to listen, and the gentle moisture feels healing.
A persistent Cockerel cries, Robin song in the ash calls out and is replied to from somewhere in the distant grey light of morning. I can hear either crow or magpies out of sight in conversation. The cloud is heavy, dark and threatening and the morning light reflects that. There are a few rumbles, but I sense that they are from unseen passing aeroplanes. Suburbia slow to waken, it’s Friyay and the day is about to unfold. Steeling myself for challenges ahead today, whilst trying to remain fixed in the moment. More geese pass overhead, adding to the exodus from yesterday. I must be under their flight path or something. The usual, or what has become usual gull cries. Nature putting on a display once more, though different from yesterday. Anne Lamont in her book ‘Bird by Bird’ talks of writing making people pay attention. And these morning writings bring me to pay attention to the world around me, light, nature, weather, sounds, actions, reactions, conversations, clouds, birds and the changing shape of all of it as time passes. I sit as Rebecca Solnit once wrote,
“ Collaborating with chance “.
Getting lost in it, time standing still, the senses awash with my surroundings.
In Walden, Thoreau wrote ;
“ Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realise where we are and the infinite extent of our relations “
This morning is just that, paying attention to the immediate world around me, lost in the here and now, collaborating with chance. Lovely days people.
“ The transitions whereby you cease to be who you are “.
Rebecca Solnit.
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