This weekend I did some searching, went about my long weekend doing regular activities and some not so regular, attempting to note when I felt 'full' or when I felt calm and smooth minded, observed when I felt bliss for seconds or extended amounts of time.
I traveled into the great outdoors this weekend, became immersed. I surrounded myself with people I knew. I tried to establish a sense of 'home' in my surroundings, where muggy air met red clay, where mountaintops met charcoaled gray skies, where Alabama's county roads led somewhere.
I can account to three instances where I felt something, for even just a few seconds.
Instance One: The air feels like spring, balmy, calming before night time rain, and the sun rays reach to the corner of my left eye, and it's beam like an extended brush stroke, my tender skin felt exposed, pulled. I'm driving down bending, spiraling roads, fingertips on steering wheel. light touch on pedals, humming along to Sondre Lerche's "Virtue and Wine" song, friend by my side, twirling her wrist out the open window. I feel careless, youthful, memorable. With each twist and turn, dip, and crest of lake and golf course, of blown stop signs, and of gusty air, the song lyrics pick up with "virtue and wine cannot help you swim / Pain and sorrow must come/ if you go / It´s the chemistry and the things we should´nt do/ I am nothing without you" and I think as we ascend the highway ramp, of the people I love and the people I've left....massive trucks rattle my CR-V as we pick up speed and road noise on the flat interstate. I blast the music, allow my damp showered hair to air dry, and feel like I'm going somewhere, feel like I'm getting somewhere and that calms me.
Instance Two: I'm at 'my haven' which happens to be my mentor of sorts, the older sister I never had's barn and again, the air is balmy. The barn is quiet on the Sunday afternoon, shady and echoing of our voices. I groom my horse's coat while talking with Heather about this and that, every day things, ideas on religion. We both speculate and revist our ideas of heaven and hell and fundamentalist Christians and people who think they have it all figured out at my age and how people think they have it all figured out at hers (early thirties). We talk of a close friend's father who was diagnosed with lung cancer, unexpectantly.
"It's funny," she says, leaning on her muck fork while I bridle my impatient mare, "it's like when you tell God your plans, he laughs at you."
And I ponder the unexpected, the unreal, the spirtual world. What we must face in inconvienent times, and how we go about trudging through the muddle of it all.
We ride after this, jump actually, over poles held up by standards. I'm teaching her newest pony, Starlight, how to jump, and the pony gives me an eventful, wild ride. The last jump combination though, went so smoothly, so effortlessly, so light weight, so soft compared to the charging and rushing performances we had dealt with before. It was like once I had calmed down, and anticipated less, she responded, and mellowed out. I share this with Heather. She says it's all in the breathing. I cool the poor pony out by walking through the fields, and I try breathing deeply. I don't feel silly.
Instance Three: I'm at Palisades Park with some close friends. Keep in mind that I am dreadfully afraid of heights. Rock-climbing on a sixty foot cliff nicknamed Nevernever Land on a chilly, drizzly morning probably wasn't the best choice for my nerves and effort to find calm. I attempted to seek it though, looked out over Oneonta, the rising foot hills pinned with skeletal trees, and carved with rocky faces. The quaint cobblestone and wooden cabins and gazebos kept me distacted with a pioneer-type asthetic fantasy..the vistation to seemingly natural living, surrounded by nothing but cliffs and meadows below, leaning farmhouses and weathered barns warmed my insides. I was relaxing. We climbed down the mountain and set up top-ropes, put on harnesses and scaled the face (I with much difficulty and aprehension...quite frankly I am a total and complete beast when it comes to heights) until the sky released buckets full of rain, and I rapelled down the sixty footer, water soaking my t-shirt, my hair, running down my legs and hands and filling my shoes. Dangling a few feet from the ground I reach for the damp dirt with pointed toes. I feel weightless. My friend finally 'drops' me and I sink down into the mud. He unhooks me, and we scurry under a rock overlip, shivering, grasping onto each other for warmth and listening to the rain tap on fallen leaves, watch puddles form on boulders, watch clouds churn for hours. It's a relief to not only be on the ground, but to sit, and meditate with a silent partner.
I feel like I realized a bit more this weekend, drank up my experiences, sought to find inner peace...I'm just wondering if it's something to purposefully seek. I fear I'm trying to hard...time will tell.
I traveled into the great outdoors this weekend, became immersed. I surrounded myself with people I knew. I tried to establish a sense of 'home' in my surroundings, where muggy air met red clay, where mountaintops met charcoaled gray skies, where Alabama's county roads led somewhere.
I can account to three instances where I felt something, for even just a few seconds.
Instance One: The air feels like spring, balmy, calming before night time rain, and the sun rays reach to the corner of my left eye, and it's beam like an extended brush stroke, my tender skin felt exposed, pulled. I'm driving down bending, spiraling roads, fingertips on steering wheel. light touch on pedals, humming along to Sondre Lerche's "Virtue and Wine" song, friend by my side, twirling her wrist out the open window. I feel careless, youthful, memorable. With each twist and turn, dip, and crest of lake and golf course, of blown stop signs, and of gusty air, the song lyrics pick up with "virtue and wine cannot help you swim / Pain and sorrow must come/ if you go / It´s the chemistry and the things we should´nt do/ I am nothing without you" and I think as we ascend the highway ramp, of the people I love and the people I've left....massive trucks rattle my CR-V as we pick up speed and road noise on the flat interstate. I blast the music, allow my damp showered hair to air dry, and feel like I'm going somewhere, feel like I'm getting somewhere and that calms me.
Instance Two: I'm at 'my haven' which happens to be my mentor of sorts, the older sister I never had's barn and again, the air is balmy. The barn is quiet on the Sunday afternoon, shady and echoing of our voices. I groom my horse's coat while talking with Heather about this and that, every day things, ideas on religion. We both speculate and revist our ideas of heaven and hell and fundamentalist Christians and people who think they have it all figured out at my age and how people think they have it all figured out at hers (early thirties). We talk of a close friend's father who was diagnosed with lung cancer, unexpectantly.
"It's funny," she says, leaning on her muck fork while I bridle my impatient mare, "it's like when you tell God your plans, he laughs at you."
And I ponder the unexpected, the unreal, the spirtual world. What we must face in inconvienent times, and how we go about trudging through the muddle of it all.
We ride after this, jump actually, over poles held up by standards. I'm teaching her newest pony, Starlight, how to jump, and the pony gives me an eventful, wild ride. The last jump combination though, went so smoothly, so effortlessly, so light weight, so soft compared to the charging and rushing performances we had dealt with before. It was like once I had calmed down, and anticipated less, she responded, and mellowed out. I share this with Heather. She says it's all in the breathing. I cool the poor pony out by walking through the fields, and I try breathing deeply. I don't feel silly.
Instance Three: I'm at Palisades Park with some close friends. Keep in mind that I am dreadfully afraid of heights. Rock-climbing on a sixty foot cliff nicknamed Nevernever Land on a chilly, drizzly morning probably wasn't the best choice for my nerves and effort to find calm. I attempted to seek it though, looked out over Oneonta, the rising foot hills pinned with skeletal trees, and carved with rocky faces. The quaint cobblestone and wooden cabins and gazebos kept me distacted with a pioneer-type asthetic fantasy..the vistation to seemingly natural living, surrounded by nothing but cliffs and meadows below, leaning farmhouses and weathered barns warmed my insides. I was relaxing. We climbed down the mountain and set up top-ropes, put on harnesses and scaled the face (I with much difficulty and aprehension...quite frankly I am a total and complete beast when it comes to heights) until the sky released buckets full of rain, and I rapelled down the sixty footer, water soaking my t-shirt, my hair, running down my legs and hands and filling my shoes. Dangling a few feet from the ground I reach for the damp dirt with pointed toes. I feel weightless. My friend finally 'drops' me and I sink down into the mud. He unhooks me, and we scurry under a rock overlip, shivering, grasping onto each other for warmth and listening to the rain tap on fallen leaves, watch puddles form on boulders, watch clouds churn for hours. It's a relief to not only be on the ground, but to sit, and meditate with a silent partner.
I feel like I realized a bit more this weekend, drank up my experiences, sought to find inner peace...I'm just wondering if it's something to purposefully seek. I fear I'm trying to hard...time will tell.
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