I found a new sit spot. This one is next to a pond as well, but a more sheltered one. I can’t see the construction anymore. People pass by but we’re all here for the same reason.

I notice the wind especially. It is very rainy here, and the weather drastically changes up every few minutes, but the wind has blustered its way to the forefront these past few days. The sun could be shining but the trees are beating against my window, the waves are crashing on the rocks, the seabirds are trying to regain control of their ships. Today is calmer, somehow blue skies, but the wind is still what dominates. What I smell is the fresh scent of leaves carried to me, air off the water, the person’s lunch who sits several hundred meters away, and something still unidentifiable to me. What I feel is the gentle brush of its gusts, not trying to move me but reminding me that I am a presence. My existence in this spot affects the world around me, the wind pushes off me and hits a blade of grass it wouldn’t otherwise have interacted with. I am a disruption, in a neutral sense, to its path otherwise. What I see is the wind pushing the wide variety of greenery around so it dances in the sunlight, insuring each blade gets a moment in the rays. It’s pretty magical. I notice the grass dancing, I notice the naturally uneven lengths and dispersal, I notice how it thrives in exactly this environment and shows off a new facet of its beauty in every condition, I notice how it is cool to the touch and contrasting with the warm sun, I notice how it flows but remains grounded in one place, it reminds me of dolly parton’s wildflowers. I wonder if it has a human caretaker, or exists this way on its own, I wonder what this place means to the others walking by or sitting, and I wonder if it will look this way the whole time I am here. Does it ever dry up, does it ever get too watertrodden by the heavy rains?

 

What I hear is what the wind wants me to, it pushes a ripple through the trees on the other side of the island to touch me, it pulls the call of a nearby bird out of reach of my ears, it lets me sit with the branches of the tree I am under. I hear a changing landscape.

 

I so appreciate noticing these things, and I think I always do notice them, but I don’t give my observations space in my brain or space in my heart or space in my day. I don’t let myself really listen, I’m always passing through. I enjoy, for the time being, being an immovable object that affects the interaction of this foreign environment, and I enjoy letting it affect me.