Try And Catch Us....
I have just been on Facetime with Athena Jane... She was in a dark in a layby on the A27 and I was on my balcony in the sun. For ‘background music’, we had ‘steel band practice’ - the same bit – over and over. Jane said she thought they improved…!
Every so often I saw a long flash of white light followed by a long flash of red light behind her… It looked unearthly and magical. After awhile I worked out it was cars, first a blur of headlight and then tail light; but it could have been anything…
Suspending assumptions can access our imagination and keep us in touch with what it was like to see everything for the first time. It can re-engage the magic of the child within us, the curious passionate being that is still connected to the wonder and mystery of everything around us, instead of becoming jaded and tired by our journey from birth to death.
It can also be a way of discovering how much we do make assumptions…! It is how we orientate our lives of course; knowing stairs will be solid and can hold our weight as we tramp down them; knowing the day will come and night will leave... These are all ways we make meaning of, and find security as we travel this human journey…
But perhaps we can get too locked into them, and then we are not free and open to the mysteries of this mysterious world, or to limitless possibility…
Also suspending our own assumptions, beliefs and ideas; becoming curious again, means that we will not dismiss our own, or other people’s ideas and thoughts…
I was running down a rocky path today and I felt a hand on my back; I could say it was nothing; my imagination; the wind whipping around in a strange way; but it felt like a hand; It was real to me.
When I told Anadi, he didn’t question that I had felt it, or even show any surprise… He simply said; ‘What did it feel like?’ – ‘It felt reassuring’ I said, ‘’It didn’t feel like it was holding me up, or guiding me; it was just reassuring.’
I have taken from it that I am on the right path…!
Earlier on I had nearly fallen again; the land here is rugged and rocky... I have been doing a lot of work to re-engage my leg to run properly, and so there is a mixture in my stride of renewed confidence and surefootedness, coupled with a need to concentrate hard and tiredness too….
I tripped again…! Downhill again….!
I saw the rocks coming towards me, and I somehow managed to save myself... I skipped, jumped and ran myself out of the fall…
But it shocked me and once I was firmly on both feet, standing up - I sat down on the grassy bank and cried…!
There was a moment when I was in mid air, none of my body touching the land, everything suspended and in some ways it was a very still moment… But - I didn’t want to hit those hard rocks again…!
The space was also felt like a metaphor for the vulnerability within me, the free fall Anadi and I are in; the possibility, as with anything new that is untried and untested, of crashing on the rocks below…
So I had a cry and Anadi sat beside me; and I said weepily ‘I think it just accessed my vulnerability – I feel all shaky… but it feels a good thing to find it inside me and release it too…
I felt better in a few minutes - after a cry and sit down - and we ran onto our beautiful beach, no dog joined us to walk today, so on we ran - up on up to the top of the cactus land and the horses that roam free - then back to pigeon island along the beach; where we encountered another security guard on duty...
‘Are you residents?’
‘No’, we waved and smiled ‘No running on the beach then’ he said and on we ran…
He took no notice, and didnt seem to mind what we did, once he had said his bit...
‘Try and catch us’ Anadi laughed as we ran along the wet sand...
Earlier this morning I had discovered that somehow my blog was not showing on FaceBook and yet I could see it. I imagined that it could not be seen because there was no engagement and I am used to waking up and engaging with my friends…
‘Perhaps I’m dead’ I said to Anadi, ‘And I don’t know I am, like Malcolm Crowe in the film “Sixth Sense…” So I am trying to carry on doing all the things I am used to, like posting my blog and going running…!'
‘If you are dead then so am I’ he laughed.
So… I hope, my friends, that you can read this today!
