Walking-Waking
Jun. 20th, 2003 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avadYesterday morning I got up early for a change, made a cup of coffee, and in some odd inspiration, decided to take my coffee and WALK to the library in town. Eyeing the cloudy sky and drizzle, I brought my purple Hello Kitty umbrella along (6 bucks, PayLess shoes/kids section!:))and my pink knapsack.
The walk was divine...the smells of wet grass and wet wood/bark and wet pavement tickled all sorts of memories out of the childhood storage boxes of my brain. Was it recess in elementary school I smelled there? Was it sitting on the curb waiting for a schoolbus THERE? Ah, now here I smell walking with my grandmother and grandfather (both now passed on) as a little girl in the Bronx. A pinch of car fumes mixes with a pinch of 13 other smells and the connections in my brain are sparking...ah yes, that combination was This: and a folder is brought out showing me the corresponding memory.
Not just smells but sights of course also. I pass an orchard and farm...the grooves in the earth receding and joining closer in the distance...the colors...the strange light on the rooftops of the buildings...the shapes of trees..I think of Van Gogh...and the desire/need to PAINT that in absolute PRAISE of the poetry of it. the beauty of it... How can you stop? Once the eyes are ON, EVERYTHING is beautiful...the line of the road, the tilt of a branch, a stranger's face.
I walk to the intersection and cross and pass the many migrant workers waiting round the fences at 7-11. Waiting for work..
I am on the ground now too, not speeding by in my car..and so I am amongst them,and we are one, walking towards the bus stop. But I continue on.
I do a dance of 'you first' 'no, You first' with a man mowing the large lawn of the building. I am in no hurry. I wait till he is done, we smile, I move on. InCREDible smells from blossoms on trees mix with the wet grass clippings at my feet....
Eventually I arrive at the library at around 9:30. heh. To find out they don't open until 10. whoops.
Ok, so I walk the grounds a bit, entranced by this MASSIVE tree that seemed to grow the way mud pours....and entranced by the circular colonies of lichen on its trunk...moving in closer to see the details...into the tiny individual circles that comprise it...wanting to go in deeper still.Another lawnmower startles me. I feel self-conscious for a moment and move on.
There is a gazebo area recently built..I wander to it and read the names on the benches...each one dedicated the the memory of someone..quite beautiful. And a miniature rose garden surrounding it. Tiny posts with adorable names of each blossom-to-be on it, near either just soil or the first leaves of a small plant.sweet.
I think of how much love, care, thought,and money went into this beautiful library...and again I think of www.worldlibraries.com and places where a 'library' is so needed and such an unthinkable luxury. How to channel some of the attention of this affluent area to want to sponsor libraries abroad? I sit under the gazebo and write and sketch in my journal...and suddenly it is 10:45. I go inside, find all the books I am looking for,(feel the amazement of that)and take out the video 'Lust for Life' (about Van Gogh)and begin my walk home. Happy.
I so love a slow pace...To spend my days just looking and writing and reading and thinking....to let it build and build and then make art when it demands release/expression, because I just can't help it...
But I have to make peace with my 'other' life, the life of bills to be paid, deadlines to be met,events scheduled,income NEEDED.
It seems we don't get to linger here as ghosts..the closer I want to get to feeling the perspective of human eyes, the more I have to involve myself in the complexities of the game. You could choose to be a silent monk, D. Perhaps the closest to a ghost.But you won't. You want interaction. Love, desire, identity. Not this life. And perhaps next life a tree again?;)
The walk was divine...the smells of wet grass and wet wood/bark and wet pavement tickled all sorts of memories out of the childhood storage boxes of my brain. Was it recess in elementary school I smelled there? Was it sitting on the curb waiting for a schoolbus THERE? Ah, now here I smell walking with my grandmother and grandfather (both now passed on) as a little girl in the Bronx. A pinch of car fumes mixes with a pinch of 13 other smells and the connections in my brain are sparking...ah yes, that combination was This: and a folder is brought out showing me the corresponding memory.
Not just smells but sights of course also. I pass an orchard and farm...the grooves in the earth receding and joining closer in the distance...the colors...the strange light on the rooftops of the buildings...the shapes of trees..I think of Van Gogh...and the desire/need to PAINT that in absolute PRAISE of the poetry of it. the beauty of it... How can you stop? Once the eyes are ON, EVERYTHING is beautiful...the line of the road, the tilt of a branch, a stranger's face.
I walk to the intersection and cross and pass the many migrant workers waiting round the fences at 7-11. Waiting for work..
I am on the ground now too, not speeding by in my car..and so I am amongst them,and we are one, walking towards the bus stop. But I continue on.
I do a dance of 'you first' 'no, You first' with a man mowing the large lawn of the building. I am in no hurry. I wait till he is done, we smile, I move on. InCREDible smells from blossoms on trees mix with the wet grass clippings at my feet....
Eventually I arrive at the library at around 9:30. heh. To find out they don't open until 10. whoops.
Ok, so I walk the grounds a bit, entranced by this MASSIVE tree that seemed to grow the way mud pours....and entranced by the circular colonies of lichen on its trunk...moving in closer to see the details...into the tiny individual circles that comprise it...wanting to go in deeper still.Another lawnmower startles me. I feel self-conscious for a moment and move on.
There is a gazebo area recently built..I wander to it and read the names on the benches...each one dedicated the the memory of someone..quite beautiful. And a miniature rose garden surrounding it. Tiny posts with adorable names of each blossom-to-be on it, near either just soil or the first leaves of a small plant.sweet.
I think of how much love, care, thought,and money went into this beautiful library...and again I think of www.worldlibraries.com and places where a 'library' is so needed and such an unthinkable luxury. How to channel some of the attention of this affluent area to want to sponsor libraries abroad? I sit under the gazebo and write and sketch in my journal...and suddenly it is 10:45. I go inside, find all the books I am looking for,(feel the amazement of that)and take out the video 'Lust for Life' (about Van Gogh)and begin my walk home. Happy.
I so love a slow pace...To spend my days just looking and writing and reading and thinking....to let it build and build and then make art when it demands release/expression, because I just can't help it...
But I have to make peace with my 'other' life, the life of bills to be paid, deadlines to be met,events scheduled,income NEEDED.
It seems we don't get to linger here as ghosts..the closer I want to get to feeling the perspective of human eyes, the more I have to involve myself in the complexities of the game. You could choose to be a silent monk, D. Perhaps the closest to a ghost.But you won't. You want interaction. Love, desire, identity. Not this life. And perhaps next life a tree again?;)
