After a wonderful walk in the woods, reveling in the tall Firs and ginormous Maples, Sophia and I returned home and let the lush earth hold and support us. It’s hard to believe that is not quite Summer. We’ve had so many warm (hot) days already that it feels like July or August, but it is still only May. I just realized that this Monday is Memorial Day … yeah, I’m kind of slow sometimes. I like slow. I think I already mentioned that ???? in another piece.
Laying on the grass, gazing up at the heavens is such an underappreciated delight. It makes me feel like a kid again, the bike tossed on the grass while I suck cold water out of the garden hose. Life was grand! I rarely wore more than a swimsuit and flipflops and was always in the pool or on my bike.
Small town USA was a good place to grow up. I hardly ever remember my parents locking the doors or worrying about crime. Neighbors smiled and stopped what they were doing just to chat. Sometimes they invite me in for a lemonade. The high school sports fields were one house down at the bottom of our street and teeming with sweaty boys, an adolescent girl’s fantasy. There was little need for television or daydreams.
Today I wondered where that ease goes, why we think we need to grow up, become adults and take on a mantle so serious. It’s not required. It’s possible to make a living without it. In fact, some of the most creative people in the world do. There’s no prison for people who fail to follow the seriosity directions, who toss out the manual for leaving childhood behind, for letting go of childish things. We don’t have to put a stick up our butts and stiffen our upper lips.
We do that to ourselves. We let the fun die, saving it for vacation or retirement and spend what time we pry loose worrying about when we going home or dying too soon. We do it by speeding up, tamping down, containing the joy and only letting it out in small bites.
Well bite that!
Simply being present to each moment is the slow down. It opens up the field of joy, bringing back the ease of childhood, the halcyon days when we hadn’t yet learned to resist life, to fight and scrape, to s.t.r.u.g.g.l.e. with e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. That is the return, the slowdown — becoming childlike again.
Slowing down to the speed of presence, the child reappears.
There is no appropriate bio for Amaya Gayle. She doesn’t exist other than as an expression of Consciousness Itself. Talking about her in biographical terms is a disservice to the truth and to anyone who might be led to believe in such nonsense. None of us exist, not in the way we think. Ideas spring into words. Words flow onto paper and yet no one writes them. They simply appear fully formed. Looking at her you would swear this is a lie. She’s there after all, but honestly, she’s not. Bios normally wax on about accomplishments and beliefs, happenings in time and space. She has never accomplished anything, has no beliefs and like you was never born and will never die. Engage with Amaya at your own risk.
