guttitim
“For me, inspiration was simple, immediate: I got it from eating, dancing, talking. I got it from life lived, things touched, from sensuality, from love of life, from our irrefutable connection to the earth.”
Little Birds and Big Mysteries.
There was a woman who woke each day to meditate by the sea. She sat as still as the wind, gently rocking to the rhythm she could hear in the water. A movement upward is quickly followed by an arching wave downward. This woman prayed for understanding. Dear Ocean, she’d say quietly in her body, help me listen.
Children gathered around the woman wherever she walked. She took a bus to and from work, and one morning the engine stalled, and the people were forced to wait while the driver examined how to fix it. The woman had been standing and squatted low to the ground to break the stagnancy. Her back hurt, and the air was stale. She rocked side to side and sang to her heart with her eyes closed. When she opened them, five children had gathered around her. They sat on the floor with their school bags and little hands curled around stuffed animals. The five had formed a circle with the woman and looked up to the caretakers; the children could not have been more than three or four.
‘We’re over here,’ a tall blond woman said from a seat to the left. ‘They wanted to join you; I hope this is ok?’
‘The floor is filthy, but there are some arguments not worth having,’ another woman wearing a purple peacoat said. Two of the five children had dark eyes and creamy brown skin- they belonged to the woman in purple, for she had the same complexion.
The woman looked out at the children and smiled. They smiled back. She pointed to her knees and feet, showing them how she squatted. The kids followed her motion and lifted their little bums from the floor. They smiled at her, eyes meeting at the same level on the crowded bus.
The air was damp and still. The seated passengers flicked through their cell phones. Those standing sighed deeply and leaned their heads against the steamy windows if there was space. A man thought to open the tiny window at his back to allow in a little fresh air. His actions made a ripple through the bus. A baby howled, inside or outside; the woman could not tell.
As passengers popped the windows where they could, the bus was flooded with the cold smell of autumn.
Some time passed before the driver returned. The problem was fixed, and the bus rumbled to life. The children scattered to hold the hands of their parents, and the woman stood upright and held onto the metal bar as the bus rolled down the cobblestone streets.
There are little mysteries everywhere.
Some lessons were tucked in the prisms of light that reflected the woman’s image from the sea. Other secrets she discovered in the probing eyes of each child and those who sought the unknown, like those little birds pecking seeds until they cracked—revealing nourishment.
Photo source.
