ThoughtsOnAWintersday

 

a beautiful visual moment to savor

 

thoughts on an introspective winter’s day

It is interesting that it takes the experience of the start of the ‘forever sleep’ of one person to awaken another. Following one such event, this question arrived for me. Am I using the days I have left well? Like today for instance. A normal everyday day, but with a difference. It is one of those glorious early winter days. A fresh clear morning followed by a warm sunny day. How do I spend such a day well. Enjoy it? Realising that it is happening? Acknowledging it? I decided to take notice of the seasons and start this exercise by giving these moments of wonder some attention.

The Rain has washed the trees dustless, creating in the green a vibrancy which can be felt. The type of vibrant green just before autumn turns it golden. The sun shines gently warm and the blue of the sky has a soft edge. A seemingly perfect background for the grey thrush, with a song so clear, with a sound so clean, with a melody so charming, with a resonance so wide and overwhelming as to fill up, to the point of the divine, the whole of the moment. A moment of wonder. Drink this moment, hold it close to your heart.

Light and death

Each day contains some magic, all we need to do is open our eyes to it and jump aboard while it passes by. How could we not take notice, How could we deny this. Why else are we here. Ride the beauty of the moment so that, when just before being placed in our own box, we will not feel any ‘regret’. (Regret is and has always been an absolute waste of time. There are so many better ways of using the moment.)

As the other evening a little before sunset. I watched at the edge of a foreign lake while an empty old wooden boat, on fire, floated slowly on the still water mirror. A fisherman cremating his past. A moment filled brimful with poetic content. A sight where, for the moment, nothing else was needed. I hold this moment close to my heart.

Life and dark

As the other morning, the sky the colour of slate, clouds so low the tops of the trees in the forest were invisible. As if the trees were suspended from the clouds. From this grey space huge colourful flowers dropped onto the ground, only to rise again a little later to re-enter that same space of nothingness. Fluttering feeding Rosellas. I held this moment in both hands.

None of this needs any economic rationale or development to be appreciated, rather, it needs a tiny shift in attitude, or a smack in the head such as the death of a dear one, when all of a sudden a few things become clear. As clear as a drop of dew mirroring our dreams, and the immense size of the world filled with moments of wonder. A world so much bigger than our concerns.

Light and death

I take notes from one of my teachers. A big fat white goose, who lives on the pond at the bottom of the garden. After all, when all is said and done, she finishes up in the same place as we all do. How does she spend her day. She floats upon the water with the grace of a galleon. Then banks and performs the most exquisite ballet-like yoga exercises/stretches. While engaged in this, her shape becomes a living kinetic sculpture. She preens endlessly, then tucks her head under her wing, pulls one leg up under her feather skirt and snoozes her inner landscapes into reality. What is its purpose? What is its meaning?

I also take notice from another one of my teachers. I remember four year old Lutea, my creative guardian, in my garden, who, after having struggled to open a long dark dried bean pod, stands there momentarily wondering unbelievingly at the beauty of a set of six polished purple and black beans lined up inside. Surprise. I try to keep my heart open for moments such as these.

 

Life and dark

I wish not ever to say: “I wish I had…….”.

Petrus           

                                                                                   

art@petrusspronk.com