This morning's magnificent view.
Sometimes in a summer morning…I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a reverie, amidst the pines and hickories and sumacs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness. Thoreau
Oh, to be like Thoreau and sit all morning in undisturbed solitude and stillness watching nature unfold in front of me. This morning I tried my own version of being in the moment, but as always I found it extremely difficult. No, lets face it, I flunked, in spite of a magnificent view from my cottage “deck”, and no immediate demands from anyone.
My attempt at Thoreau’s rapt reverie went something like this. I began by looking at the clouds, breathing in, breathing out, thinking cloud…cloud…cloud, more or less as a mantra. Fine for a moment, but my eyes didn’t (couldn’t ?) sustain the gaze. Rather they flitted about the entire vista, and before I knew it, they had darted from clouds to the water, to the mergansers, to a sea gull and then back to clouds. Once those eyes started flitting about, my mind wasn’t far behind.
Practice, practice, practice, I tell myself. For the next few days I’m going to practice being in the moment with the clouds, the waves, the gulls.. The challenge is to breath in and out along with my new friends. I have a long way to go before I pass Concentration 101, but I'm determined to stick with the course.