Month: March 2024

In the days following writing about my granddaughter’s wonder, an image came back to me with some insistence – a memory from over 14 years ago.  It was a moment for me not unlike the moment in the rain for her.

The Venetian Lagoon in Autumn

 

The island of Burano recedes and melts behind us.

The sun on its way to the horizon becomes a pink smear.

Sounds of others on the boat muffle, and the lagoon

becomes soft, saturated, milky blue luminescence –

barely a distinction between sea and sky.

Time thins and stretches.

A galleon seems to float in the distant haze.

I stand as if stunned – empty of knowing.

What is this light?

Six months into this world, her eyes widen and fix on the sight of heavy rain falling in front of her.  What is this?  No aversion.  No fear.  No wanting.  No romanticising.  Just silent, open-eyed wonder and curiosity.  It lasts for many minutes – until a passing, very jazzy looking umbrella distracts her gaze.  What is that?  Can you remember this way of seeing?  Can I?

Over the years I have spent many hours in a silent meditation hall to maybe find this again.  Sometimes it has almost been there.  Open again to the amazement of this world.  Not the human techno world, but Gaia – the world of earth, air, sunshine, rain – of the fleshy, swirling, squirming, thrusting, pouring nature of it all impressing on my body and senses.

Sometimes, I find myself looking at the eyes of another – at the face of another with its unique marks, wrinkles, shadows, colours, expressions.  Sometimes I look in the mirror at my own.  The eyes – the face – seem full of the unknown.  Can the aging I am experiencing bring back my wonder and curiosity?

I feel full of longing to share my love of Gaia with this little being – and, especially, to experience over and over again her wonder and curiosity at it all.