I was sitting on my porch eating a bowl of yogurt for lunch yesterday, but before that I was out for the morning with my friend. We chatted over breakfast and then strolled in the brilliant sunlight and warmth at the botanic gardens. The morning was everything I set out to do: a walk and breathing space in fine company, an openness to create something purely for pleasure (the above photos), and to feel early spring's awakening. Back on my porch, thinking about my morning, I had a moment of stark clarity: this life I've created for myself is a very good life.
Of course there is always work to do. Daily soul chores. They're tougher to chip away at during the solitary cold months, I find. Tucked away in a snowscape yesterday, my friend and I watched a blue jay bathing in a pool of melted snow. Well look at that! If there is a lesson to learn...
Today I will set up in the yard and get to planting vegetable seeds, and even though the trays of potted seeds will come right back inside to borrow artificial light for many more weeks, a new season, new life will be growing which is good enough for me as we live out these last weeks of winter. Soft, velvet tips will begin to appear on branches. In the kitchen the aroma of zested lemon takes on new meaning and a roasted chicken once again goes down the gullet in something of delight instead of the need for warmth and survival. Late weekend afternoons now get a glass of grassy sauvignon blanc because there is more time in the day and because I believe the sighting of nature's chartreuse is worthy of celebration.
My yoga teacher has the most beautiful way of saying things. Although I cannot remember her exact words, she recently said something about lengthening ourselves in our own divine light. The sentiment has stayed with me. Something of what I was thinking on my porch yesterday was about myself stretched in my own light. Owning this good life. Winter, if anything, makes me believe this is true.
"What is important now is to go very slowly; to stop in the middle of the flood; never to press on; to lie back and let the soft subconscious world become populous; not to be urging foam from my lips." -Virginia Woolf
