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News and Views on Ageing
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Past Blogs:
2020,
2021:
January,
Febrary and March,
After Dinner
September 23rd
I walked down the road from the refectory to the field
where this evening Belted Galloways graze
along with their calves. These gentle animals, with their
thick coats, short legs and deep dark eyes look up
momentarily to watch my intrusion before returning
to the grass. One older calf breaks away from the
group to come closer and we looked into each
other's eyes, each a mystery to the other yet with so
much in common.
Then on down to the Dart as dusk falls and sounds fall away, the trees are still, the river seems to have slowed down and two ducks appear to be gently drifting downstream.
Leaning against a beech on the waters edge I felt held, at home in myself. I got to thinking about loneliness, how when we realise our commonality with our world we have companions, intimacy and joy for the asking.
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Autumn by the River Dart
September 6th
Sitting by the river yesterday I reflected on autumn, mine as well as the countryside's. I don't feel the cold of winter yet but know it is coming, right now both the year and I are in a time of harvesting and letting go.
I watched how the trees just release their leaves, some falling on the forest floor where they nurture the smaller and invisible creatures of the earth. Other leaves drop silently into the water and are gently taken down stream towards the ocean. They travel in the company of, but untangled from, their fellows.
We humans join the river just the once but the tree holds the wisdom of many autumns and appears to have no trouble in letting go. We find that much harder and expend too much of our energy trying to flow upstream.
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Slowing Down, Dartington Estate
July 14th
Ivermee's Inverse Vision Law states that the quantiy and quality of experience is inversely proportional to speed. So unless we slow down what we see, hear, touch and feel becomes limited.
When we view existence as a journey or series of journeys then the ends or goals become fairly unimportant. And, like it or not, we are all headed for the same destination! Naturally, there are times when we need to travel speedily but modern life has turned speed into an apparent necessity yet slowing things down is important for our emotional and mental well being. Life around us requires that we slow down so it can be acknowledged and appreciated, that we take time to stroll, to stop, to acknowledge the uniqueness of this moment of time in this particular place.
Why go to the trouble to erect a bird feeder in the garden if we don't take time to sit and watch the birds coming to feed. When we do take time it's possible to become engrossed in their behaviour, how one specie reacts to another, to begin to detect their presence in the hedge before the birds show themselves, the way the blackbird tilts it head sideways to look at me with a strong sense of eye contact. And that's just one bird feeder in one garden. We begin to see how much there is to see!
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