Category: Humour

The Fragility of Trust & Vulnerability

Potential

I was regaling our little school reunion to one of my friends, and found myself thinking back fondly. My classmates who had arranged the whole affair did a fantastic job. They had booked the whole hotel for our reunion class, and we found ourselves in a position where we meandered in and out of the different hotel rooms, the banquet areas downstairs, and chatting in the hallways and lifts. 

 I was quite surprised how easily we fell into familiar patterns and opened up to each other after all these years. Life had not been kind to many of us at many points in time. The strength of character that builds over time was inspiring to see in many. 

When I asked my father, who was a teacher in the same school, what he thought of folks and where they landed up later in life, he said it was the potential of humankind that drew him to the profession. All the ways in which the children grew in their capabilities, took on responsibilities, navigated changing landscapes and relationships – all with what is given to us. 

In some sad cases, that potential remained unrealized. All the different ways in which we were tested was shared and received with compassion by the kind ones, and some (polite) scorn by the meaner ones. It truly was illuminating to watch the different ways in which we had grown older. 

Vulnerability builds Trust

“Did people really talk about their trials and tribulations and not just thump their chests about their triumphs? “, asked a friend of mine when I was telling her about it, and I laughed. 

I was surprised too, but then I realized that there is a shared space of trust built up during childhood that makes us both open and fragile with each other. Also if you have seen someone drool over their notebook in maths class, or get pulled up for not doing their homework, there is a good chance you tend to take their bragging and suffering with a forgiving air. If you’ve soothed each other through your fears and worries, wouldn’t you be more willing to share your life story with them?

Vulnerability seems to be an important component of trust, and as children, both were easily available, before society conditioned us out of it.

“Trust is a product of vulnerability that grows over time and requires work, attention, and full engagement.” – Brené Brown

That is probably why we were able to laugh at ourselves and embarrass ourselves with equanimity. Life felt suddenly very short and too quick when we looked back on it. There we were,  not children trying to daydream through a boring lesson anymore, but adults who had navigated life to the best of our abilities.

Where did all the time go?

I came back with a renewed sense of shoshin, and regaled the children with tales of our childhood. They rolled their eyes but also indulged me. It is good for them to realize that their parents were not born this way – adults taking care of medical appointments, paying bills, dealing with insurance matters etc. But that we were children who dawdled on their way to class, who were punished for not completing their homework on time, or being silly and laughing for no apparent reason and getting into trouble for it.

That life is over too soon is a rather better complaint to have than the opposite wouldn’t you agree ? That is what I wish for everyone. A chance to look back, smile, feel light , and still be able to smile thinking of tomorrow. 

Rainy Day Reminiscences

Rainy Day Song

I had been for a school reunion a couple of months ago to the Nilgiri Hills. While waiting for another event to start, we found ourselves in a position of waiting. The traffic snarls to and from the school meant going back to our hotel rooms for a much needed rest was out of the question. Instead, this became an afternoon I can look back upon with fondness.

It was Raining. Yes – that was a capital R. Actually, it was Pouring. The kind of rains that made our child selves sing the silly rhyme:

It’s raining,

It’s pouring,

The old man is snoring.

He raised his head, and bumped his head, and couldn’t get up in the morning!

Hey Puddle Puddle!

While we were waiting  for the rains to stop, we were watching the parents and students, past and present, mill around. It was then, that a child, not more than 10-11 years old, strolled past kicking a stone into a puddle as he went. The water from the puddle splashed onto his overlong pants, and this juvenile act brought a smile to my face. The little fellow was probably going to be miserable later with the water dripping into his socks. But then, what is a little misery when you got to see the satisfying plop of a stone land in a puddle? He had a blissfully happy moment and couldn’t hide it. His smile brightened, and the future footballer had a glimmer of hope  as he saw his future scoring a satisfying goal.  He had launched the stone smoothly with his polished shoes, and it had landed exactly where he intended it to.

I looked around and exchanged a look with my friends and siblings with whom I was whiling away the time, and we burst out laughing after the briefest of pauses. The luxury of being happily stuck, without having anywhere else you would rather be, was in itself a blessing. But this little juvenile act sealed the beauty of the moment. 

All things wet and beautiful!

It launched us on several fun conversation threads. Rain, and the love for it, pluviophilia (a lover of rain is called a pluviophile), may have originated for us in the Nilgiris, but it followed us around the globe. I smiled thinking of the children’s books we used to read most often: A Rainy Day Adventure, Spot goes Splash, and so many more rain related adventures. I thought of the simple games of riding through a puddle, and how it has morphed into a drive through a puddle in recent years. Always a splash with the kids. Because they expect maturity when presented with a puddle the size of a pond, an empty footpath, and a car? PFFT.

All of us had rainy day stories and memories, and the afternoon was spent most pleasurably.

The little fellow,  bless him, may never know the mirth and joy he brought to a bunch of middle aged folks that afternoon, but such is life. We never know the light we spread just by being happy. 

Imagined Realities

I read some books over and over again. I confess to being an Anglophile too considering the amount of time spent as a child reading about the English countryside. That love for English literature has not diminished. Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie, P G Wodehouse and Jane Austen may be gone, but the likes of Miss Read, J K Rowling, Jeffrey Archer, Stephen Fry, Gerald Durrell, Alexander McCall Smith and Jacqueline Winspear came in. It is why whenever I set foot in the United Kingdom, I suffer from an acute case of star-struckedness. There is a luminosity to my imagined version of the UK, even if the reality has been different in some cases. 

Scones & Jams

When I first ate a scone, I was a little let down. I’d read about scones and jams for decades, and had envisioned a rather elaborate affair waiting to overwhelm the senses. I remember walking into this little tea place in Oxford, bursting at the seams with excitement, and ordering scones and jams. I already was a little star-struck. I had never in my wildest dreams imagined that I could travel to Oxford, let alone order scones at a local tea-room. 

Imagined Realities

This is why I am always a little nervous when good books are made into movies, or good settings are translated to theme parks. They can be marvelous, or they can fail to live up to one’s imagination. The scones, I am sorry, did not live up my imagination. They were tasty enough – just not what I had imagined. Now, years later, the name ‘scone’ still conjures up misty hillsides and picnic baskets with clotted creams, and cucumber sandwiches, scones and jams, replete with berries and fruit. But I have managed to live with the earthly version being presented to me.

The same thing happened the first time I tasted Butterbeer in Harry Potter World at Universal Studios. I don’t know what I was expecting exactly, but it wasn’t that.

Life can be that way. Teaching you reality in funny ways. Oh well!

I felt the same when I saw the gazania flowers. Don’t get me wrong – I love the vibrant colors and the rather distinct kolam shape gazanias have. But when younger, not having access to the internet etc, the name inspired a rather more mystical and tremendous shape in my mind’s eye. Like the Brahma Kamalam flowers, or the moon-lilies, I dream of under the ocean. If there are such things, I am not sure how much they will love up to my imagined version of them. 

Which brings me to the virtual or artificial intelligence based realities.

AI Realities

Sometimes, as I am writing up a post, I try to imagine the AI generated image my post would produce, and I am, many times, disappointed. Sorry to see that most of the time the AI generated ones are like seeing the real scones after my imagined versions. But they are better than the stick figure atrocities that I was coming up with, so there’s that. 

I wonder how much of life is like that. Imaginations far better than realities. Maybe that is the real reason, humanity seeks to set store by entertainment. We have gone from myths, ballads, novels to movies, soap operas, sports shows, to social media, and short bursts of wisdom. Maybe all of this is really a quest to see how best human imaginations can stretch. Why magic seems to still take a hold of our imaginations. 

PS: I also have to admit that in a post where I am writing about human imagination being far superior and the AI image falling short, this post actually generated an image better than what I was imagining. Really – life can be a teacher with a sense of humor!

What do you think? Where have your imaginations been disappointed by the realities?

“Few people have the imagination for reality”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Significance of Full Moon Names

Mooning About

“Come on! You need a light jacket, but we aren’t going very far.”

“I know we are going to see the moon! But can’t we just for a few minutes and then we can see it from here? Instead of going around the bend, and behind the trees, and through the gap in the houses on that lane?” 

“Yes I know. But if you wait a bit, you’ll see the silver moon, if you come now and dance through everything you just said, we’ll see a golden moon!” I shivered a bit at what was waiting for us at the end of the street. Even though I had just seen it.

“Oh wow!” the words were yanked out of the son’s mouth before he could stop himself. I understood that feeling. A golden full moon on a cool summer evening is truly mesmerizing. 

We stood there for a few moments just drinking in the magic from the golden moonlight. “Want to go for a short walk just looking at the moon?” I asked, and he nodded, not willing to pull his gaze away from the mystical golden orb. So, we meandered through the streets, our necks upturned towards the magic of the skies instead of looking where we were going. 

We entered the house, shining like full moons ourselves, a few minutes later,  flushed with the cool air and the luminous light of the full moon.

“We’ve been mooning about outside. Get it? Get it?” I said to the husband who had a slightly exasperated look on his face.

Oooo wwww ooooo!

“Oooo wwww ooooo!” Werewolf! Full moon tonight!” I said, and the pair of them rolled their eyes.

But that got me thinking, why was the January full moon called the Wolf Moon and the July full moon called the Buck Moon?

It turns out Gemini is just the thing to ask. So, here you go, fellow selenophiles!

Full Moon Trivia

  • January: Wolf Moon, named for the howling of wolves often heard during this cold month.
  • February: Snow Moon, reflecting the heavy snowfall often associated with this month. 
  • March: Worm Moon, named for the earthworms that emerge as the ground thaws.
  • April: Pink Moon, named for the pink wildflowers that bloom in North America.
  • May: Flower Moon, celebrating the blooming of flowers. 
  • June: Strawberry Moon, marking the time of strawberry harvest. 
  • July: Buck Moon, named for the new antlers that begin to grow on male deer. 
  • August: Sturgeon Moon, named for the sturgeon fish that are most readily caught in the Great Lakes. 
  • September: Corn Moon or Harvest Moon, marking the time of corn harvest and the start of the fall harvest season. 
  • October: Hunter’s Moon, a time for hunting before winter sets in. 
  • November: Beaver Moon, when beavers begin to prepare for winter by building dams.
  • December: Cold Moon, reflecting the cold winter temperatures.

The Joys of Library Browsing

Yap Yap, Chat Chat, Chop Chop!

“Enough yapping! Chop! Chop!” I said trying to herd the children out. We had worked hard to carve this time out for ourselves and I was excited. We talked the whole way there. Or rather, they yapped, and I listened. I can’t say I understood- but the number of phrases and words that seem to make no sense seems to increase over time. Age really is a funny thing. It takes everything mutable, garbles it with time, and presents a slightly unintelligible version to you.

“Anyway – excited?”

“Yes Mother!” They chanted. How one phrase can hold both a dutiful and a sarcastic response I don’t know, but that, right there is another thing the young seem to have down. Sigh.

Library Browsing

It seemed like a long time since we’d had a children’s book read-a-thon, and so off we were, to the library. We meandered through the library shelves each of us taking our time, wondering how long it would take us to find things once the reshelving was done.

Library browsing is one of the most under-rated pleasures of the world. We each came back with a stash of books in our hands, and picked out a sunny nook in which to curl up and read for just a few minutes before heading back home to hole up in our home.

If we run out of words – By Felicita Sala

One of my favorite books from this haul happened to be – If we run out of words – By Felicita Sala

Version 1.0.0

It is an innocent earnest worry of a child’s turned into a book. What if you run out of words to speak?

The increasingly exaggerated lengths to which the father would go to find words makes it a sweet story and finishes on a predictable, but heart-tugging phrase that remains unspoken. That is how you bring a smile to the face of children and adults reading the book. Well done Felicita Sala!

When there are words everywhere, words can be swords, pinpricks, thumps just as much as they can be balms of kindness and encouragement. I closed the book, and realized that fears, worries and anxieties come in so many forms. Speaking about them to the ones who matter is the key, says every wise one, but that remains the most difficult thing in the world. For don’t words spoken have to be heard?

The children (one a teenager and the other a young adult) picked up the book, and eloquently summed the book up “Duh! Bruh!”

Why the World Seems Smaller Today

“The Earth feels so small, doesn’t it?” I said it like it was a profound revelation.

The daughter looked up from fiddling on her phone. She briefly glanced out of the window to see where we were. I could almost see the thought process map itself out in her brain. If we are close enough to the destination, she could just nod and not respond. But if there was a while to go, responding did not seem a bad idea. I smiled.

“Calculating, my dear?” I said and gave her impish smile. She shot me a shrewd one back.

Then, with remarkable self control, she said, “What do you mean?”

So, I rambled on about how air travel has made the Earth smaller. “When I was young, airplanes were there, but I never thought I’d get on one, let alone travel to all these exotic places we’ve been to. “

“Mums-ie?” She pulled me back as I zoned out a bit. I laughed and said, “Yes – I mean, probably why reading felt like the best way to travel for all of us. The Voyages of Dr Doolittle, and Gerald’s Durrell’s Corfu series were made all the more entrancing thanks to the limited to slim chance of ever flying. But now – so many of us can go anywhere – with visa and money and flight tickets of course.”

“So .. Earth smaller?”

“Yep!”

“You do have a point. But isn’t that a good thing? Think about colonialism – it was enabled, and many horrendous things were done to the colonies because humans could very easily say – they are very different, and therefore not us. “

“You mean, conscience could be explained away?”

“Yeah…. But now, with education, google translate, and travel, you realize that a human being is a human being with all the range of emotions, flaws and strengths as anyone else, anywhere else. So, it is a better Earth too. Isn’t it?”

I nodded and thought about it. She was right of course, and I enjoyed her perspective.

While the world has become a smaller and more accessible place, it also means that our fortunes and misfortunes travel just as quickly. It was why Covid-19 shut the whole world down. A pandemic that spread so quickly, it stumped all of us: scientists, doctors, government officials, companies.

The way things are changing in the world is alarming too. Air spaces closed twice in the past month over two global events that affected millions – The Iran-Israel situation & The India-Pakistan situation.) When I thought of this, the Earth seemed like a formidable planet of distances indeed.

The daughter unaware of this inner squabbling raised her eyebrows when I said,“Hmm…even so, sometimes everything feels so far away. Must you go now? Can’t you fool around here with us for another few weeks?”

“Uh hm… Yes Mother. I am going tomorrow, but not that faraway – the Earth is small, remember?” , she said, and I laughed weakly.

Exploring Gardening Philosophy: The Joys of Deadheading

“Huh?! Who knew deadheading flowers was a thing?” I said.  I was reading a Miss Read book for the n-th time, and came across the phrase as she took charge of her new garden in the fictional village of Beech Green. I had read the book enough times, but somehow, this time, her thoughts on the flowers in the garden drew my attention. Maybe because I was enjoying the flowers in the gardens myself.

“Do you think I should try that? To get some better blooms in our garden?” I said to the husband. He muttered something which I took to mean yes, and started snoring to avoid further plant-based rants or ramblings. If I didn’t know better, I’d have prodded the man, but I know he literally can sleep, and snore, midway through a sentence that he was speaking.

So, I set about deadheading the little yellow roses off my little shrub that refuses to grow beyond a certain point. After that, I walked around with a pair of scissors and shears, properly and improperly deadheading flowers in and around the garden. Some variety of aster or phlox or daisies did not take kindly to this, and remain sticks pointing out. I think they sometimes give me severe looks when I step out. Roses are more forgiving for all their thorns. The chamomiles are conferring amongst themselves and deciding to see how much of a menace I can be with my garden shears. 

I muse about Ray Bradbury’s quote on gardening in the book, Dandelion Wine, as I flit about on my own in the evenings. The long days give me ample time before sunset. 

Gardening is the best excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are. Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is akin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder.

-Ray Bradbury

These are summertime joys. California is full of flowers in the summer. Even as the sun beats down on your head, you can’t help enjoying the blooms. The huge angel’s trumpet flowers, the large hibiscus and magnolias, or the smaller chamomiles, and aster, they all attract your attention. There is one garden that boasts of all colors and varieties of hydrangeas. I love them. 

So, I bought a beautiful light pink hydrangea after a friend told me they need shade and grow very well. I spent the last few weeks deadheading the hydrangea, and resuscitating the poor plant after it almost died. I did everything the friendly fellow at the store told me to do. Sigh.

It makes me wonder every time I pass by a good garden. Because while I enjoy a good garden, I had thus far strayed from gardening shears and gardening experiments. Now, I have a new respect for Earth magicians. How do they coax the beautiful bounty from the Earth?

 “If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.”

– Buddha (apparently!)

If anyone has bright ideas on easy flowers that grow in pots or in tough soil, please let me know in the comments section. I saw a cheeky post on the internet the other day and drew solace from it. “You are enough!” it said, “That plant should have tried harder!”

Also, does anyone if the philosophers mentioned in the post were also good gardeners? I hope not!

The Joys & Jams of Plum Picking

Feeling Plum?

“Go on! Ask me How I am feeling.”

Eye roll.

“Just ask.”

“Fine! How are you feeling?”

“Plum!”

Then I laughed, and the children exchanged concerned glances at each other. Completely lost on them, of course. So, I set about explaining Plum minutiae to a mildly uninterested audience.

I have been thinking of P G Wodehouse during plummy times. (P G Wodehouse was called Plum by his close friends and family)

I have been thinking of little passages from Miss Read’s books as she wrote about making jams and chutneys for bazaars from the excessive plums and marrows during summertime.

How lucky country children are in these natural delights that lie ready to their hand! Every season and every plant offers changing joys. As they meander along the lane that leads to our school all kinds of natural toys present themselves for their diversion.

– Miss Read

I told the children about eating so many berries as children in the countryside in the Nilgiris, it made us slightly sick.  But, I also told them about how it was the most fulfilling thing in the world, and they rolled their eyes again.

An Excess of Plums

You see? We are having an excess of plums.

Some days I would gaze up at the branches – grateful for the bounty. Other days, I would step into a mushy one that plopped into my path and spattered and mutter to myself. Plum season is upon us, and nobody is spared. Neighbors, gardeners, cleaners, household helpers, friends, family. Everybody is gifted with plums. 

I stood one evening determined to make the best of the plum bounty, and set about making batches of plum pickle, plum jam, plum chutney, and plum juice. I also might’ve eaten a few plums. It was beautiful. The evening light was streaming in through the kitchen bay windows bathing all the world in a luminous glow. The plums were freely squirting their juices into the stovetops, the floors, the kitchen counters, my clothes, and the children stood around helplessly in the melee. 

“Amma – you’re going cuckoo! Can’t you just leave the plums?!”

I gasped for dramatic measure and said that prudent folks saved the excess. 

“Another 10 have fallen from the tree since you came in ½ an hour ago. Let it go!” said the daughter. Seeing that lunatic obstinate look on my face, she decided that the best thing to do was to leave me alone and took mocking videos of me instead.

I sorely regretted this plummy splash of enthusiasm a few hours later. I had sticky juice everywhere, a jar of jam, a jar of pickle and two bottles of sour juice. But I also had the back-breaking task of cleaning up the kitchen. The mops ran red, the washcloths turned pink, the tissues soaked and cleaned like they had never done before, and yet the kitchen was nowhere close to done.

I tell you. 

Black & Blue & Plum

The next day, I plucked and picked more plums and gave them to my friends. “Err…it’s okay! I have some!” they said.

“Oh! Sure – that’s nice. Don’t worry – I’ll walk over and give them to you.” I said smartly, putting the phone down before they could say no, and walked over.

“Would you like some blackberries?” said one of them, and I beamed at her. 

“Oooh! That’d be a nice change of pace from plums!” I said, and set about picking the blackberries and popping them in the mouth. The friend peeked into the bag and said, “Plums might make a change from blackberries!”

We looked at each other – lips stained with blackberry and plum juice and started laughing so hard, it was hard to stop. 

I’d call that a fruitful week-end, wouldn’t you?

Exploring Dragons: Myths to Movies

No!

“You’re inviting me to a movie?” I asked, incredulous. 

Usually, I am begging to go to the movies with them, and the response is “No!”. Curt no’s, polite no’s, humorous no’s. But ‘No’. The fault, I admit, is on both sides. I fall asleep before the movie starts, but the theatres make you fall asleep even before the movie starts. What’s with all the dimming of the lights, and the trailers for every movie they are thinking of releasing in the next decade? What’s a good, hard-working woman to do in a comfortable reclining seat at the end of a long day with some inconsequential music playing in the background, and the popcorn butter doing its magic in the old intestines, huh?

I start with a simple meditation technique involving closing the eyelids for a few beats of music longer, and then a few frames of trailer longer, and before I know it, the magical lands open to the subconscious mind throw open the cosmic doors, and I float in with a smile on my lips. The theatre hears a dramatic hiss at this point in the proceedings: “Amma! Get up! The movie started and you missed the opening!” 

Anyway, this time, the dragons of sleep may have made valiant attempts to snatch my consciousness to their realms, but I was firm, and resolute. I was going to watch the dragons take the sheep in the movie, not in my dreams. 

“Wake me up when the movie starts!” I said before starting the m. technique.  

“If you don’t get up, I’ll…I’ll”

“What? Tickle me?! Please!” said I, and drifted off. 

I was happy to learn that I was invited because the movie was good for me: not too much violence, has a happy ending, is not too depressing, and has dragons and humans in a beautiful setting. 

How to Train your Dragon 

Based on the novels by Cressida Crowell, this is a wonderful story of a boy who seems to be a reluctant heir to the vikings chief, and a soft-hearted, intelligent misfit in a bunch of knuckleheads who all value brawn over brain. I have always liked the series, and when I read Cressida Crowell’s article on her childhood influences, it only made the series dearer.

However, I still do not understand the impulse of large studios to remake the same stories over and over again. Did you really have to take the same movie again? 

Does Harry Potter really need a remake this soon?

Our Fascination with Dragons

In any case, the fascination of humankind with dragons is millennia old and the number of dragon stories is near inexhaustible. So, I am sure there isn’t exactly a dearth of dragon content. 

How could human imaginations in the absence of social media have imagined similar creatures (Fire breathing, of giant aspect and size ) the world over? 

Our tales speak of dragons across time and geographies too. 

Ancient Aliens: Mythical Dragons Across the Ages

“Speak politely to an enraged dragon” – JRR Tolkien

The metaphors of inner dragons are just as widespread

“You can’t map a sense of humor. Anyway, what is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons? On the Discworld, we know that There Be Dragons Everywhere” – Terry Pratchett

“This Marcius is grown from man to dragon: he has wings; he’s more than a creeping thing.”  – Shakespeare. It describes the transformation of the play’s protagonist, into a figure of immense power and ferocity. 

With all the imagery, humor and wit we have humankind must continue on in its quest to slay its inner and outer dragons, with the motto of Hogwarts in mind

‘Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus’ – which means ‘Never tickle a sleeping dragon‘ – J K Rowling 

P.S: The children did tickle me when the movie started, and I am happy to say I enjoyed the movie.

Finding Calm Amidst the Chaos of Life

May seemed to me an especially fast merry-go-round. The spinning was fun, the laughter for all those involved loud, and the merriment infectious. But as June came around, I had the feeling of being dizzy without the fun bits. The world still seemed to be spinning, but the merry-go-round had stopped. Life had resumed. Normal life had resumed, I mean. 

One rare afternoon, I sat trying to soak in the quiet of the evening, and felt strange. I usually relish these moments of solitude. I reached for my books, and found that the mind and body were racing far too much for quiet contemplation. Even though the book I had in my hand was a perfectly good one on Writing, exhorting me to pay attention to the following aspects of life (Attention, Wonder, Vision, Surprise, Play, Vulnerability,  Restlessness, Connection, Tenacity, Hope), I could not slow down enough to take it all in. 

I gave in to the impulse of watching Instagram reels, and got a ridiculous song stuck in my head, I went into Facebook, and scrolled – joyless and felt more drained by the end of it. That is when I knew that what I needed to get back to a slower pace of activity was to reach for a tried-and-tested book: Changes in Fairacre – By Miss Read. I took a deep breath as I entered the village of Fairacre.

For some folks, music does the magic. The mother-in-law said she listened to Amaidhiyaana Nadhiyinilae Odum – a tamil song whose lyrics evokes the imagery of a smooth flowing river and all its associated imagery. I can see how that can be a calming influence on the senses. 

For Yours Truly, it was a Fairacre book, By Miss Read. The slow and endearing life a village school mistress leads, is therapeutic. Maybe it takes me back to the idyllic times of my own childhood – growing up in a small village community, where both my parents were school teachers. The imagery she evokes of the beautiful countryside makes you think of the maxim: 

Nature never hurries and yet accomplishes everything – Lao Tzu.

Nevertheless, that evening when my restless legs stepped out for a walk, I forced myself to slow down, to feel the breeze, to look at the rays of sunshine shining like little sparkling diamond strings through the evening air. The smell of sage and lavender crushed in my palms like a beautiful balm for the soul. 

It helped but it still took some time. For those of us who refuse to do the hard work of trying to still our senses and the world around us, the merry-go-round can keep going. That night I thought of Miss Read’s observations on modern children (her books were written a good 30 years ago, but it seems truer today than ever before) 

“What I do feel that the modern child lacks, when compared with the earlier generation, is concentration, and the sheer dogged grit to carry a long job through.”

― Miss Read, Village Diary: A Novel

Truly chastened, I settled in with a mellow light throwing a comforting gleam on my bedside table, took a deep breath, and immersed myself as best as I could in village life. Sturdy, slow, and reassuring.