By Saralina Love • 17 June 2021, Thursday
Dear Friendlies,
Today I’m sweating — uh, glistening — in a thin two-layered summer dress with brown polka dotted patterns in a sea of tan. Who’s idea was it to wear a pretty dress to the park for a walk and picnic and work sesh?
Uh, mine, I guess.
Gotta lerk pertay while walking. Not for anyone else, just for me. Makes me happeh putting on a dress. I feel like a spring flurr joining the living as the sun warms my petals to open with her ascension in the ecliptic. Plus, the feeling of the air blowing around your legs and all around your body is so electrifying
Hence, the petals are opening, open. They are open. Yes, the flower is officially blooming — not just a bud; not just a clasped pair of hands avoiding confrontation with the scary, cold, shuttered world in heart and mind as well as body. The bud has wintered for far too long. Let’s not say for how long. Not now, anyway. We’ll speak of that another day. Another, year.
And, I set here amongst the heavy leaves watching the gentle current of life rolling through the lake water before me. Across is the newly descended eagle couple’s home. They picked the most remote point on the lake farthest from any of the human trails and close to the water’s edge. I watch them circle riding the invisible hand upon which they soar and land sometimes deep amongst the branches and other times exposing their clear white feathered heads on a barren tree lit by the setting sun against the contrasting surrounding vast green flooph.
I am calm. I am calm as soon as I step out and into the nourishing moistened air loved by the creatures and plants of this place. I have found my place. It’s a place of friendliness and joy, camaraderie and connection. I’m grateful. The blue heron parent just alit nearby about 15 feet away from me with the quietest rustle from the dried leaves beneath, and then froze to watch and hide from the tethered pit bull walking by. Her nest of babies are just to my right about 100 yards up in the tree which leans over the water. I forgot what kind of tree it is. I hear the babies sqwocking now. Dinner time for all of us. They are big babies. Big butted flooph balls with not as long a neck as their papa and mawma. One baby was lunch money for the eagles months ago. Two remain in their big nest. When the sun is going down, you can look up at them, their bulbous bodies and long skinny necks, legs and treacherous beaks outlined black against the setting light. Their pretty blue can be seen from the other direction when they are wading in the lake near and far when the warmth solar rays brings out their cool steel azure coat.
Dinner won over just a bit ago. I had to join the rest of my fellow folk here. To write or eat, that is the question. If only someone could feed me while I write? Any volunteers? Seriously, I would do it for you. Feeding others is one of life’s greatest joys, well, especially when the one you are nourishing is healthy. Feeding someone who can’t feed themselves because of illness is a different story — still sacred and can be just as playful and sweet, but, if you’re human, the taint of sorrow can cloud the flow of ecstasy. But, who knows, perhaps, no, absolutely, we can choose rapture even and especially in the well of grief. This is a special kind of hero, though, who can do this. We’ll maybe talk about that later, too.
The mosquitoes came to join me at dinner time, too. All shapes and sizes of tiny flyers came to partake — of something, me or my array of lettuces? No one seemed to bite, though — me nor my leaves. I’ll let you know later if this is true or not their tiny vampiric straws can be imperceptible rapists until their silent welts of malicious enzymes appear. Their injections are rejected by my rallying immune system.
I enjoyed my sprigs from my local organic farm. I receive a bushel too big for one each mid-week.
Oooo, the nearby owls are having a field day right behind me twenty feet up the hill. They just started hooting up a storm. Why, I do not know. A dog too close, someone stole someone’s food, a soundless pounce that went wrong with too many interlopers? An unwanted kiss or selfish eater? Who knows. Babies must be hungry up there, too. It is high summer after all. Mawmas and papas still feeding their young grown but staying close still not ready for full on independence. Who is? Are we ever fully ready to be out on our own? The wild animals clearly do a better job — of everything important.
Wow, I packed up as night was falling close to the ground. What gifts came enchanting me.
I breathed in making room for more ecstasy as I walked with my harness of goods ever so slightly lighter from my emptied lunch bin. I came feeling like a trekker in the high snowy alps as if I had hiking poles and a painting easel to boot. Like I was Gauguin traipsing through duned capes to paint his lounging, island nude ladies or, Monet wading through flowered fields to capture his favorite flowered beauties. I was laden with joy carrying my rolled cushioned mat slung over my right shoulder and an extra folded ground cover for a more luxurious camp folding up in an ancient hot pink woven sac made of stiff plastic threads. My leaves, roots and avocado meal had been boxed up inside now clean as a whistle, licked, and my favorite to-go wooden spoon carved with an eyeing doe, my bluetooth portable keyboard — no more two or one thumbed typing for me. My hand hurts from days and nights, months and years of typing while laying down in bed with my two thumbs, and so does my neck! I’m sure I’ll succumb to my thumbs again to type my novellas but, gurl, it does not make my body happy later. Also, necessities in my bag are my trusty cushion-tipped pen to touch my screen rather than my fingers along with a way too heavy five inch high metal camera stand with my phone grasper attached to it, all to keep my parts as far away from the darn cell frequencies as possible. Enough of this radiation nonsense, aye? Now I just need to find some of those special eyeglasses which block blue light and a hat, shirt and hoodie which block all the other radiation, and I’ll be set and hot — not the good hot just well-steamed in all those clothes in summer. How to block 5 gee, radio waves and other radiation while it’s 98 degrees out?
I gathered up all my belongings and stood to witness the beauty before me: the opening through the trees onto the lake to the other side where the eagles rest.
So, I packed my not-so-formidable gear up and rose to see through the trees’ opening right in front of me and lo’ and behold. What did I see. Just what i’d come for. I’d surrendered all expectations of treats for some reason and forgotten all about my excitement to see my fellow wild friends after I’d worked a while and then, finally, stopped to eat into dusk. And, lo, those two, that pair of winged ones across the way straight in front of me.
Suddenly I saw the graceful, keen movement across the way, of one, then two of the bald eagles.
As I walked into the deepening dusk along my path back, the eagles began whistling to each other my eyes rolling back in ecstasy hearing their high pitch calls flying across the waters echoing like rippling waves of sunlight. I breathed in more deeply than ever taking in the glory to my ears and basking in the scents of all kinds surrounding me. Diversity at play and the gifts just kept coming.
Standing glee watching them swoop to feast at above-the-water-blind fish. The night must hide the airborne predators from those beneath the sea. The ideal time to hunt. I could see the fishies splashing as they successfully wriggled to freedom again and again trumping darkness’ cover. Then, more tries like a relay of each eagle. One hunter dipped and clenched and must have caught her dusky snack at last — which all took less than a minute — as she rose to her high perch in the field of greenly abyss retreating with her prize. I could see her white head just catching the stolen sun.
What a privilege. Breathing in more of the divine show, I turned departing my own private alcove, the man-made deck jutting out just so over the slanted earth and the waters edge to step on the crumbling single lane paved road which followed the path of the meandering waters curve.
I lied. Earlier I said that the mosquitoes were uninterested in me. They are not-so-innocuous rapists. As I floated toward my destination away from my office paradise and soaring patriotic birds, one shocked me. Ouch! I was in such bliss at the gift of nature tonight, the air, the setting sun, the light blues melding with pinks then reds and oranges burnt, finally, seeping back into blues again this time darker and darker versions.
A little further on my retreat from stillness, I heard some rustling and then some loud honking. It was the blue heron. He’d been at the waters edge further down from where he’d alit earlier near me. I must have startled him for some reason in such a way as to cause him to flee. It took me a few moments to scan myself to find the culprit: the sound of my leather flip flops were not a common thing to his ears. Most wear tennis shoes while hiking and on perusals around lakes. Any other walker would not have roused him from what I’ve seen as he was clearly hidden and unmolested by visitors only fifteen feet away or so. I continued walking but turned my head back to gaze at his barely glowing wings. The last light caught his angular, prehistoric, outstretched wings exposing the inner white feathers you cannot see when he’s standing. He glided above the water just a few feet from the shore under the protection of the canopy of trees harder for the predators to grasp him. His ancient laws in place for survival for himself, his mate and his young. Another deep breath I inhaled full of awe at another precious site so close. So near. So beautiful.
I remembered that the park ranger would be waiting at the gate. I was late. Oooo. Somehow I wasn’t rushed. I felt at ease. I didn’t know why. There was no sense of panic to return and not an ounce of bracing for shame at encountering a hungry ranger who would be pining for his hot, home cooked meal from which us stragglers were keeping him. Nope, not a morsel of guilt. There must be a reason. I’m conscious of being on time and not keeping people. All I felt was just gratitude. Overflowing, brimming, emanating orgasmic peace.
And in that lucid grace, something made me turn my head ever so slightly as I curled around the lakes’ inlet. My eyes saw some greater gift. The one I’d longed for. The one I especially appreciate. My friend the beaver! He made himself seen, in the water this time instead of up on the coast munching away at his “sunset salad” as I call it. It was later now and he was heading home. Just catching that little lingering light on his bristly, thick fur and on his dark eyes. I saw him seeing me. He was swimming this way along the water line not far from the edge. I stopped, my mouth open. Still, quiet with absolute glee. I met his eyes, mine must have been lit, too, ever so slightly by the dimming light but enough to catch my own glaze.
We don’t think about being seen when we are so consumed by seeing. But, he certainly observes his humans and I am no different. As I stood there agog, my heart opening like a school girl — did mine ever do that? I don’t remember that but, you know that saying none-the-less — the fragrance of my heart must have touched him for he banked toward me right to the waters edge where I stood calm as a cucumber, peaceful as a potato, beautiful as a beaver; He was dear. We looked at each other just a mere eight feet away sharing a moment of communion. He, then, swam slowly on, oh, so calmly, gently waving his tale side to side or up and down — like a dolphin? — and I watched him his body barely visible under the water more clear then than in the day for some reason. I could see his wide, flat tail beneath the water moving though I couldn’t quite make out which way it moved. He was so peaceful. He didn’t rush. He was just so at peace trusting his safety in his territory unfettered by the humans who walked there who let the laws of peace reign in this place for once.
I stood watching him until I couldn’t see him any longer without stretching to see more, I turned back homeward feeling slightly more aware of the time than before. Wow, another sacred gift. Another encounter, and so close, with wild nature.
I am nature, too, with some wild in there somewhere. But, sadly domesticated by the conditioning in my upbringing and 1000s of years of webbed generations taught to be told what to do and how to act and how to submit rather than be wild and protect that very holy wildness. I am more wild than most, people tell me, at least, and less wild than others, I tell myself.
Right now I’m parked, unable to return to four walls, so pleased with the night open air, the infiniteness of the outdoors. You know, there are no walls when we are outside? Did you ever think of that? There are no horizontal barriers. You can just keep going. You can just keep walking, keep soaring, keep dancing, keep singing, keep flying, keep running. Nothing stops you.
You can climb, dive, roll, slide and hike and never ever stop going except by your own volition. Outdoors we are free. We are like the wind. We can be like the wind. We can ride her, too, and be guided by her. She can talk to us and sing to us and can move with us along her ways. We can sing to her, too, and she always listens.
We are the wind. We are the creatures who run through the woods. We are the weavers who swim in the waters. We are the flyers, too, who take their breath unbounded. We, too, are them. We, too, have their feathers and hooves and tales and scales and fur and foliage. We, too, are nature.
We, too, are home amongst the wall-lessness of natural nature’s unending schematic on our spinning globe. We, too, are spinning. We, too, are hurling through space at a speed we cannot comprehend. We, too, are at peace inside our own realms.
We, too, are enjoying our havens we call home. We, too, are beautiful. We, too, are perfect expressions. We, too, are wondrous to behold. We, too, are enjoyable to watch and witness in our own natural habitat.
We, too, are sweet and curious.
We, too, will run to escape danger.
We, too, will stand up and fight if we must though most of that has been punished out of us.
So, we must go back to where we came from: the Wild — to remember from whence we came — to remember who we really are.
Do you remember who you really are?
Do you rouse yourself to defend your imprisonment or do you rise to protect your freedom?
You tell me.
I am listening.
All my love!
I am with you.
10:22 p.m. Nashvegus, Tennessee
copyright 2021 Sarah West
aka Saralina Love & Sarah West Love
I haven’t changed my name “legally” yet. I don’t belong to their lawlessness anyway so does it matter? So do I copyright with the “legal” name given to me or, my name given to me by my loved ones whom I found later on and chosen by me to don for all?
Saralina Love aka Sarah West Love 