Be Merry

A snowflake in the middle of your palm.

Snowy Feathers

Yesterday morning, I went bird watching in the lovely snowy woods with K. As she pointed out, in doing so we joined the Audubon Scoiety's international Christmas Bird Count. For most of the part we bushwhacked, me in snoe shoes and K on X-country skiis. The time was indeed very well spent. The woods were beautiful and quiet. The snow formations on the bare branches reminded us of all sorts of things - ranging from candy and marsh mellows to shaving cream :)

But really the most gorgeous part of it all was the pervasive softness ... I do not want to refer to it as silence, because there was the hush of the falling snow, the shush of a gentle breeze making the trees shower us with snow, the muffle of the water in the stream, the shuffle of life amidst a scene that loves to hide it behind its thick white silky drapes ... all of those silent sounds and visions cummulatively forming a soft and deep wonder. The evidence of life when it peeped out of the drapes was music to the ears, the chick-a-dee-dee of the chickadees and the chuk-chuk of the woodpeckers, not to mention the regular grid patterns on the tree trunks giving away the art work of so many woodpeckers that inhabit the wintry woods.

Of course winter in all her beauty is pregnant (only slightly so right now, but growing...) with certain negativities that result in my shoveling woes (or should I say scooping woes... the scoop is post-shovel) ... but hey, this might eventually give me those 6-packs I hear so much about!

Seeking freedom... again!

I had gone to bed and not being able to sleep... started listeing to my thoughts. Couldn't not note some of them.

I saw the trailer of 'Brokeback Mountain' online today. Very touching. I am scared of watching the movie. Maybe I won't. That scene in the trailer where he holds the shirt and jacket ... memories flood back, hits too close to home ... enough said, the movie has made its mark on me already.

I was thinking to myself, there can be two kinds of situations (states) related to 'relationships' (the 'R-word' as one of my friends used to say) one is when you are in a fulfiling one, we shall call it the Value state and the other is when you are in a situation of unreciprocated love, a state we shall refer to as the Pain state. Typically people vascillate between these two states, often within the same relationship, sometimes across different relationships.

What happens when you are in neither of those states? Its a strange feeling. Like an untethered boat drifting down the river, at the mercy of the tides ... sometimes gently floating downstream, sometimes being dashed agianst rocks in the rapids. Often such a state is referred to as 'being free.' But in reality, there is no freedom when the boat really is at the mercy of the tides. Just momentary starts and rushes ... wasted energy with no necessary direction. Freedom lies, indeed, in the vascilation between the Value and the Pain. It is the freedom to feel... to feel human, instead of retiring all your faculties that deal with feeling.

While I complain not about my life, I do sometimes long for the pain that once made me wander on grey rainy afternoons aimlessly down wooded trails, uncertain if it was the rain that moistened my cheeks, or if it was the unknown grip wrenching my heart. I dare not seek Value, but yes, I do long for the Pain... it once set me free.