Lightly child, lightly

~ Live & Learn

Don’t you wish they would stop,
all the thoughts swirling around in your head,
bees in a hive, dancers tapping their way across the stage.
I should rake the leaves in the carport, buy Christmas lights.
Was there really life on Mars? What will I cook for dinner?
I walk up the driveway, put out the garbage bins…
Does the car need oil, again? There’s a hole in the ozone
the size of Texas, and everything seems to be speeding up.

Come, let’s stand by the window and look out
at the light on the field. Let’s watch how
the clouds cover the sun, and almost nothing
stirs in the grass.

~ Danusha Lameris, from “Thinking” from The Moons of August

Notes:

  • Poem – Thank you Karl @ Mindfulbalance.  Photo: Moon gazing at Max Patch, North Carolina by Paolo Nacpil
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

32 thoughts on “Lightly child, lightly”

        2. Late August —
          This is the plum season, the nights
          blue and distended, the moon
          hazed, this is the season of peaches

          with their lush lobed bulbs
          that glow in the dusk, apples
          that drop and rot
          sweetly, their brown skins veined as glands

          No more the shrill voices
          that cried Need Need
          from the cold pond, bladed
          and urgent as new grass

          Now it is the crickets
          that say Ripe Ripe
          slurred in the darkness, while the plums

          dripping on the lawn outside
          our window, burst
          with a sound like thick syrup
          muffled and slow

          The air is still
          warm, flesh moves over
          flesh, there is no

          hurry

          — Margaret Atwood, “Late August” in Selected Poems, 1965-1975 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1987) (via nemophilies)

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  3. This poem perfectly captures that ‘stuck on fast forward’ feeling I get some days. So much information streaming in, so many ‘to-dos’, such pressure to do more, go longer. But nature will rein you in and calm you down…IF you allow it.

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    1. So true. Feel all of this. Your thoughts remind me of:

      Being a monk in the world means, for me, choosing to live contemplatively in resistance to the demand for speed, to live mindfully and with intention instead of rushing through life, to savor my experience rather than consume it, and to remember that my self-worth is not defined by how much I do or achieve, and so I am called to make time for simply being.

      At the heart of contemplative prayer is an encounter with the Holy One who mystics like John of the Cross tell us dwells in our hearts as a “living flame of love”. Contemplative living is about relationship and extending that infinite source of compassion within us to self, others, and creation.

      ~Christine Valters Paintner, Monk in the World Reflection by Christine (Silence and Solitude) (Abbey of the Art, August 10, 2019)

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  5. read this with the circus theme music playing … oy! Something that helps me is to NOT read or watch TV in bed. I get ready for bed, get in, turn off the light and zzzzzzzz. Love to read in bed but if I do … or watch TV … I’m up for hours – flip flopping like a fish on the dock, augh!

    fun post!
    MJ

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          1. Hell… I know we are both doing these with way too much expertise. There is always the get up and go for a walk… I try to avoid the computer or TV and reading a book can help.
            Yeah. I got nuthin’

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  7. Sometimes we really need to shut off the world just for a short time, and enjoy a calm mind. Maybe that’s what meditation is all about. I’ve never tried it, but being in a big field in Montana all by myself brings me close to that.

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  8. We all have this to look forward to, tonight…the full moon, even-though the sturgeon is dwindling… “August’s full moon is called the Full Sturgeon Moon, after the primitive fish that used to be abundant in North America’s lakes and rivers during the summer months. Having remained mostly unchanged since the earliest fossil records, sturgeons are ancient living fossils that can grow up until 3.5 meters long, or as long as two adult humans stacked on top of each other. Nowadays, however, it’s almost impossible to see a sturgeon during the Full Sturgeon Moon. While they used to thrive, sturgeons are now considered the single most critically endangered group of species on earth…August 15 2019 8:29 am EDT”
    https://www.moongiant.com/fullmoon/august/

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  9. Danusha Lameris words from 1971’s “Thinking” from “The Moons of August” is interesting…People today still have the stress of every day life…and a person’s “Individual” thoughts which are allowed to be playing on loop…repeatedly consuming, blocking the Flow of Peace, Rest and Joy…
    His second paragraph changes voice to “more than one person” also taking place during day”light” hours…taking a breather along side another (who perhaps is aware of the stressful burden the above individual is under), changing focus to nature …gives opportunity to refresh…and the individual learns that another lends supportive strength just by standing alongside breathing in the beauty of the light of day…

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  10. We see Mighty Sturgeon every year…they are so large…some of my family have laid on a wooden bridge and reached into the shallow water of a display pond that is feed by river water to pet them…they seem to welcome the contact…

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