I’m
sitting outside, laptop computer on my jeaned thighs. My dog was lazing in a
moist, shaded dirt patch she scratched out of my garden when I wasn’t watching. Our cat was lounging on the newly mown grass, gently licking her
right paw and then her left elbow. They’ve both gone back inside for a
reason I cannot conjure.
From this vantage point in the yard, I can see the
small flowers that have decided to spring up at the bases of two trees:
off-white with lavender veins, bubble gum pink with saffron center, periwinkle
blue, deep impossible yellow, and baby white lilies now fading. The second
shoot of a frail but determinedly growing plant wants to climb a trellis that
no longer stands at the edge of the porch.
This morning I pulled what I hope is the last of the
winter weeds so that all these new as-yet-unidentifiable green sprouting things
can have more room to grow…more space in which to be seen. Even as I bent to do
so, I was called upright again to look overhead at red-tinged finches, mockingbirds
and jays, and several other species whose names I ought to remember but don’t.
I do remember I care about them. I do remember they fill me with something I also cannot name.
A bird has hit the screen on the
dirty east-facing window; bird strikes are increasing in the last few weeks. The
raucous bird antics from seven hours ago – punctuated by a long, clean silence that is
now muddied - have just started up again and it sounds like I’m in a tropical
forest from my past, rather than the near-desert of this arid winter present. I much
prefer being outnumbered by these beautiful singers than by the edgy youth who
are now flooding the streets on their way home from school, adding discordant
strains to the chorus.
It is a peaceful spaciousness over all, though. And
in every moment it changes – the sounds, the beings who are present, the
lighting and shadows, the way in which the air moves around me as breezes come
and go; even the petals on the flowers open and close in cycles.
Sometimes I forget that I can bring my writing
outside, that what I experience out here is at least as powerful, as honest, as
unfettered as what I might produce inside at my desk. The practice of writing out in the landscape trounces writing about the landscape. I know this. And I forget this.
Sitting out here with the simplest, barest attention,
I re-member: it all changes and there is a limitlessness to what I can experience
as the living things shift in ever-flowing, always-fluid movements.This is a small, simple backyard in the middle of naked-limbed winter in an urban neighborhood that is crowded, noisy, with houses in too-close proximity relying on worn fences that only pretend to be barriers…and yet it can be my private, tiny haven. There is an abundance of natural life - nonhuman activity - that cheers, comforts, calms and motivates me. It informs me. It becomes one with my inner landscape and speaks to my writerly self.
I am inspired to inscribe the words of the earth’s heart - those whispered secrets from the moments, days, weeks at a stretch that I have spent living closer to the earth, on the land. Because I have had those extended times in the wilderness, because I seek solace in the nearby protected natural areas at least several times per week now, I can easily find Nature within myself … even in this urban landscape.
It is the intention of attention, simply that, which brings the outside within and allows me to write the outside onto the page.
I just heard the hummingbird with his chipping-quick call – and in that tiny instant I am escorted back again to my center, home, haven, safety…the beloved within and outside of me.
All blog images created and/or photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted.
