And so, I look
Lately, usually a bit after lunch, I’ve been mechanically rolling open the sliding glass door in the back of the house and walking out. The first time I did, I wasn’t sure why I was doing it. My mysterious ignorance so great that, at first, I left the door open behind me. “I’ll only go out to check something,” I thought.
But, of course, there was nothing to check. I was lazily rolling along in an unseen groove.
I walk out into the tropical winter to feel the gentle air brushing against my cheek and calves. The cold outdoor tile greets the soles of my bare feet as I walk to find a spot on the grass. I find one and nestle beneath the tightly clumped bushels of bamboo my mother had planted, which over the years has stretched to be as tall as a two-story house. I lay on my back, feeling the grass against the backs of my ears, and stare up at the bamboo, all swaying in fellowship with the wind.
I watch the smaller clouds fight to exist against it, the wind that is. First, smearing across the ocean of blue and then slowly melting away, wiped out of the sky like a rubbed out smudge. I notice the Monstera plant which has somehow squeezed itself between the roots of a sparse bush outside of our corroding white fence, it’s large leaf pushes up against the fence like a child taunting an animal at the zoo.
Savoring Florida in February, I can’t help but feel that this scene: the wind, the plants, the day, is putting on a performance for whomever will notice. Beckoning to those who would spend some of their precious sliver to admire the silent toil of trillions of little atoms, moving in unconscious concert.
The whole of the Earth is alive and playing hoping someone will look.
And so: I look