a fragrance of May

The crush and scuff of her Crocs on the uneven grassy path, lumpy with clover permeate her attention.  Birds are sounding but only a blackbird is recognised, the others remaining comfortably anonymous. The way meanders alongside a froth of  hawthorn and lacy remnants of cow parsley which render into the unmoving day a cloud of invisible, musty, bittersweetness. Gradually the sense of Miss Haversham arises, walking between ranks of overgrown hedges and topiary, rustling in tucks and folds of ageing silk and trailing such a scent as this. Eyes unseeing she does not look down and see the daisies like little pops of innocence at her feet.

floating

The warm water allows her limbs to float so that all weight dissappears together with the clarity of where her body begins and ends. Now it is just the sense of identity floating in awareness that pops from time to time like the tiny fragrant bubbles that are piled in drifts over the surface of the water’s warmth.

the mover who is standing

The verticality of the space is unknowingly held by the mover who is standing. A solitary pylon in a changing landscape of movement, gesture and stillness. Unseen, save for an inner witness, the mover is adjusting imperceptibly around a fragmented knee that seeks to find ease among aching collagen threads. This discomfort notwithstanding, the impulse is to stand, to stand for a long time, just upright and silent and still.

bird song

The threads of thinking are loosening and small contractions in the tissues are felt to soften. A mingling of the bodymind with the space around the sitting retains a certain intimacy of ownership. Bird song then appears from a tree across the street, evoking the warm spring sun on the pale pavement and the green garden beyond. The listener listens while the weave of a fine muslin blows gently through the experience.

on speaking

The quietness of the room swells with an unrelenting will and the voice that is hers becomes simultaneously alien and distant. Sounds form percussive patterns of meaning; intonations and dynamics their collective agreement. The voice, unowned now, is blended into the immediacy of experiencing.

threshold

Coming to sitting, each vertebra ascends and rolls into place across the tomb of an unspoken narrative. Eyelids break and then a cushioned sigh as the the interim place between moving and witnessing fades.

a long circle

Coloured cushions mark the circle, here and there accompanied by a shawl or blanket in a fallen pile of woven wool. A few sit, eyes soft with the seeing of others moving their deep stories.  One is met by another and a short striking contact unfolds through which the face of the first grows lighter, awoken somehow, eyes still closed. The second, in awareness of this change or in ignorance, moves on and the first is left, uncertain, unknowing.

on being quiet

The acquisition of silence brings with it the tension of sitting still. The slightest unguarded movement of her thoughts or body reveals this silence for the conflict that it is. In the shift of recognition the grip of focus is loosened and an ordinary silience rushes the cells, like an unrequited love fulfilled.

tracks

If thinking is movement, then not thinking is stillness, she reasons, but the concept of thinking and not thinking are both equally thoughts of themselves. She repeats this falteringly, following the words like tracks in the mud. The shift from thinking to not thinking, she continues, the shift from movement to stillness so sought, is absolutely not what it appears to be. Smiling, everything vanishes save for the cold damp windy walking of the day.

standing

Take off your shoes, show me your feet, bare on the holy ground of your experience. Look down at mine and see me standing lightly, see the honesty of my toes, the unsung hope of these arches. Lean your weight towards me when you will, and take one step.

Inspired by the words of poet David Whyte recalling a Sunday School story.