back to my roots

I can’t help the feeling that something is missing recently. When I was not so very much younger a full moon right before the summer solstice would have been a blossoming of joy, a call to revelry, a rich and surging tide. I would have laughed and danced and drank to foolhardy excess. Run along beaches or trekked up a crease in the map just to see what I’d find at the end of my climb. I think of those things that the midsummer dawn has brought to me over the years, not least of which have been a new place to live, a new career, a new name. And on a distant beach, held between the land, the sea and the sky, I stepped into a circle not knowing what was going to happen next, filled with awen and the bright, clear dawn…

…and this year it has only stirred me enough to blow the dust from my bookjacket. Maybe it is the city I live in or maybe it is the six-day week I work. Maybe I’m just not making time for connection anymore. Like the friend you keep meaning to call and then feel more awkward with each passing day that you don’t.

I know it’s still there. Only the other week I was walking home across the common, hunching my shoulders under the rain when for no other reason than that I felt welcomed, I paused under a sycamore tree. The tree was mature and in full leaf, the broad canopy hung low enough for me to have to duck under. I only stopped a moment, watching a dogwalker or two across the grass, weighing up my wetness to the strength of the rain and my need to get home. Just before I carried on my way, I glanced upwards and saw the dome of leaves I was standing under, the pattern of light and patches of sky shown and hidden by the movement of the boughs. It made me take a breath, to feel a simple beauty and joy that are only a couple of sideways steps away from the route I walk day in and day out. I had a moment or ten of staring and breathing in the green-ness of it all. I don’t even remember if it was still raining after that, but I remember the feeling of being under the tree and the gratitude I felt as I stepped back onto the path.

So no, not missing after all. Just sorely underused and in need of my attention. Waiting for me to look deeper into myself and more closely at the world around me. It would seem that I have some work to do.