No such thing as a new beginning, but perhaps a turning, a point on the spiral to take in the view.
This morning I woke late to the wind. The sun was up and the sky a flat white. The crows who fly their morning route already in the neighbor’s tree. Or circling above it, actually. It was as though my peering out the balcony door set the world in motion this morning. The holly hedge swaying out of tact with itself. The little evergreen shaking like a shaman. The wind playing the earth like a pan flute.
Still playing. Outside. And in here – happy to be at the old desk with a cup of salted coffee, Leonard on the rug, his eyes closing slowly against the bright light of the desk lamp. The rosemary oil warming this tiny space.
This. This is what I want for the new year. The reality of these mornings. The soft sighs that are caesurae in the noise of reckless thoughts. A cleared space after meditation, where the random images find attention. Find meaning for whatever reason it is necessary. Maybe this is the only way to connect to the world: one small, grasped fact at a time – set deliberately in a context, like sand from the beach, scattered from a running shoe onto the floor in front of the door on a Sunday afternoon – given meaning.
In this way, noticing is an act of creativity. Noticing makes up a creative life. What else is it to go through life? Like running through a carnival on a sugar high.
I’ll refrain from extending the metaphor, but it is all there.
From the sounds, to the straw on the ground, to the bearded woman’s smile. The dizzying tea-cups, and the cousin who leans too far out during the mechanism’s downward slope to push the drama past the retching point.
Oh, there now. Look. I did it anyway.
All this wonder still here but it is different now, after so many years.
Now, consciously watching the clock.
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