July 5, 2012 - 6:34pm — Seed
Yesterday morning, I did not plan to do much at the time; I planned to go and get some candles, as I heard that there was someone (alas, I cannot recall their romanized name, only their pictogram and their kindness) offering to summon up some new ones from the annals of history.
Time is never quite time here -- I blink, and the magic about me acts as if it were yesterday... Provided, as so often happens with candles, I remember to do so before yesterday becomes the day before yesterday. So, a stranger reaching even further back, with magic I lack... it is sometimes quite impressive indeed. I met the deer upon the rocks, and he cast them on me, where they sat, waiting for the shift in weather and in light to give them flame...
I'd have gone on my way, if I hadn't have noticed Sage awakening in the distance.
I rushed to meet her, and for a time we twirled about in the flowers where she meditates, light as butterflies, our laughter rising up like flower petals. There's a sort of meditation to motion; the mind lifts and empties in the delight of the body, and everything becomes a momentary snapshot, like an artist's reference of a walk-cycle, an artist's version of a cycle of feeling; frozen in a shutter-click portrait moment. And so it came that we were running over the hills, cycling around...
Until I called for a brief break to catch my breath. Once I'd regained it, I suggested that we do something I'd been putting off for a while: take a walk to see, in careful detail, the forest in the light...
Of planning another poetry scavanger hunt. So we walked, and I considered my options as the fall of the light through the canopy revealed this secret or that, this idea or another; was this odd bed of ferns too obscure? Was this structure or that too obvious? It is all appreciable, all-inspiring, or so it seemed as Sage and I picked our way through it.
We wandered to the ruins, where everything is special, singular, and distinct. Because everything of it was structured and built at first, there comes a distinction to everything granted by history. It is powerful because that power was planned. And then it is ruined, and to the forest, where time is a game we skip through like fields of poppies, ruin is strange and marvelous. The whole thing is an unsolvable mistery, and that calls to me. Our steps were lighter there as we scurried, looking this way and that; at the graves, at the hanging ivy, at the cage; "What do you think of this?" "Oh, oh, look here!" For a minute, in the ruins, we were light and brisk as fawns.
After this, we veered and teetered our way through the old forest. I think she wished for me to take the lead, but... I find it much better to walk beside a friend. I'm no leader; I can be a follower, but more often, I just wish to walk step-in-step with someone. We came at last to the lake, and though through our water-walking venture of the other day, I worked out most of the possibilities for ideas in the area...Still, I'd not deny her some fun around the water. We went to the bridge and played a little under there, in my old dear home. I even tried to show her the deep-river swimming trick my dear, sweet Payton came up with... But Sage only came up, the red washed from her fur, dripping and laughing. So I shook myself off and laughed, too, and we headed upstream to restore that magic, and for a drink and a snack.
And after that, it was time for me to break for the day.
It felt so good to be free, in the company of someone delighted to puzzle out this world with me. It feels like it's been a long time since I reflected on the goodness of a feeling. ...I'll consider these matters further.
