This is a test to see if sending posts via email works or not. If it does I’ll be happy since this means I will not be tethered to my laptop while traveling. The downside is I’ve no spell checker to rely on so please forgive my mistakes this week.
A festive cup o’ something.
Only when
standing there
will the silence
come upon you.
yesterdays grey
atmospheric
brooding
Lake Windermere
Come here
dawn or
dusk
be still.
I’ve had a couple visiting from Sussex these past days. Yesterday we drove through the center of the Lake District from Kendal up past Lake Windermere to Ambleside (stopping for tea) and then onwards in the gathering gloom to Castlerigg Stone Circle. On a plateau above Keswick with long views in every direction, this has to be the most spectacular setting of any stone circle in Britain. It wasn’t the moment to be there unfortunately however it is a must visit place and dawn would be my preferred time t and dusk is good too. Reminder to self: never again take the single track road off the main north/south A519. It’s called Castle Lane. It might be a short cut but meeting another car head on, as we did, is no fun!
I’d be able to wax on about the Lake District for pages and pages, it was my first love from age 13 when up from the Sussex coast on a school trip. There are so many brilliant sites with fantastic photographs of this area. My snaps give a taste. To know the place you have to go eat it! Breath it. Walk it. And above all, respect it.
The other day I sat with a companion on a bench, this scene stretching out before us. Hardly a remote spot yet in a certain kind of way it is. The sense of remoteness, that’s distanced in time and space, is relative. Relative to what one has become accustomed to through habit or forced by circumstances. I’ve known the utter remoteness of being in the Australian Outback, it was empty, yet full at the same time. Morecambe Bay has a similar feel, especially with the tide out as you see it above. Most of us connect with landscape in this expansive way which for me brings calm and deep pleasure. The bench on the edge of the wide sweep of the Bay was the perfect spot to sit and contemplate out loud the wide sweep of our current lives and the living of them.
Convalescence for example brings a sense of remoteness from the cut and thrust of daily living. It’s a circumstance forced upon one and like it or not resting indoors is required. Being confined to bed and chair can have the walls leaning in and the outside world recede, which is much as one might expect. Obviously getting better doesn’t happen over night and time can hang heavy. For some people however unanticipated benefits open up when sequestered thus. Such times in one’s life, for longer or shorter periods, need not be a matter of straining to get back to normal and for some normal may never come again. Unfortunately. What could be the benefit of enforced remoteness, of having to stay indoors?
I was talking to a chap recently who is recovering from foot surgery. He has spent time while he mended in a garden hut just a few steps away from his home and family. Being in the hut, He said I could have been half way up a mountain it felt that remote. One might wonder at this, I did. Returning to Morecambe Bay for a moment could not the sense of remoteness found in landscape be more about bringing ones inner world back into focus. Bringing with it calm and deep pleasure. A call to contemplate and retreat to perhaps a vastly expanded inner world too? With the thought about the impact of landscape upon us could the remoteness of confinement similarly bring ones inner world back into sharp focus and deepen it? I’d like to think so. In the sense of being drawn within I’d like to think we can be ‘remote’ where ever we are,
For those who feel themselves trapped, restricted, confined and not free to move. The movement within is a worthwhile journey, ‘though not easy.
While out walking this morning I noticed depth in a way I don’t think I’ve appreciated in quite the same intensity. From close up to the sky there is layer upon layer of texture and substance, colour – and the marking of passing time. Add to that input from the rest of the senses and right there is a symphony. I don’t regard myself as one finely attuned to what you might call beauty however I think I’m getting there. Dare I say!
We talk about deepening meditation and that expression has tended to leave me wondering. Just what exactly does that mean? I’d find it quite difficult to put into words depth in connection with meditation. Yet there is no doubt that meditation is profound and well….deep. Sometimes you know and notice and sometimes, most times, not. I guess deepening is noticing the depth, the beauty. And then refraining from naming. And especially refraining from grading meditation. Deep, deeper, deepest! Good or bad, or terrible!
So my last thought on the subject is that beauty is ever-present. And infinitely deep.
I treated myself to egg, chips and beans the other lunchtime at a local cafe. Not something I do that often. The owner of the cafe handed me, an irregular customer, a next years diary. She’d given me a 2012 but I’d missed out on the 2013 unfortunately. Touched by her kindness I took her a pink geranium today, it had her name on it.
Here’s a quote from my 2012 cafe diary, chosen at random.
A peacefulness
follows any decision,
even the
wrong one.
Rita Mae Brown
Yes there is a peace which comes from taking a step and quite often it’s only later one knows if the decision was right or wrong. And sometimes what seems wrong at the time ends up right in the end and vice versa. Life is full of twists and turns and one rarely sees them coming! You could say we write our lives straight with crooked lines.
The photograph has nothing to do with this post. I was just transfixed by the nibbled door!