Thursday, February 20, 2014





In the early moments of the new morning, the sounds of the world awakening can be enough to make it worth leaving warm sheets and dreamy dreams. Life-poems are all around. To notice them, is to give them names and let them be carried off on moth wings.

We need places--spaces--for noticings. There is so much that we miss. People tell me that they like to be busy. And on certain days, that voice is my own. But, busyness for the sake of killing time (what an interesting phrase) or for the sake preventing boredom makes me sad.

I wonder if we've forgotten how to be present where we are. Sometimes, I think busyness is a subtly seeping illness that gradually takes us from intentional to task-driven and methodical... without any of the present-tense nature of living.

I want to learn from the elderly gentleman who sits on his porch with his hat and his wrinkles listening, watching, thinking, smiling, soaking in his surroundings. No teller-of-time is attached to his wrist and his only milestone comes with the mail carrier who passes by N. Sunnyside Avenue at eleven-something o'clock each day. He has nowhere to be to prevent him from being exactly where he is on a Thursday morning, and this is not a sad circumstance to him. There is something beautiful in his ritual and being.

I want to learn from little Lyra Moon as she pours over tattered pages of a beloved picture book from her great aunt's childhood. Finding new things to see in each illustration, hearing the story again and again until she has the words memorized, without even trying; she is present. Feeling the worn pages, noticing a torn corner, holding the edges gingerly in her hands, the book taking up all the space in her tiny, 3-year-old lap; she is in no hurry.

While the world still needs love, it also needs simplicity and quietude. Time away from smart phones, laptops and video games. Time where we can hear ourselves think and listen to the thoughts of others. Time to create beautiful things, make lasting memories, engage in storytelling. And, time to stand still to drink it all in.

Time to see what might await us in these lands.


maybe there is a home inside myself, in these lands
© kimberly k. taylor-pestell, all rights reserved



1 comments:

Bryan said...

I couldn't agree with the last paragraph more. Well said!