in the stillness
Dec. 12th, 2007 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
athenagreyI am content to sit in stillness today. The day is gloomy and I spent too much of the night working when I should have been sleeping. With the daylight hours so short, I end up working in the dark of evening anyway, so I lose sight of the boundary that sunset should mean a stop to work.
I am listening in the stillness, and enjoying the rich scent of the wet earth outside. It's only a few more weeks of this darkness, and then the brittle cold brilliance of an icy winter will both enthrall and chill me.
The colors of now are brown and green. Soft colors. Comforting blankets of earth. Windswept branches against a pale grey sky.
I call this the time of listening. It is not a time of watchfulness, even for a visual person like me. My eyes take in the misty landscape, but they see it in soft strokes of watercolor. It is the sounds that stand out, because only in stillness do I really hear them.
First, there is the soft sound of my own breath.
Then, the gentle purr of my drowsy cat. She knows how to embrace the stillness of the season.
The Aerie makes its own sounds, the creaks and pops of a mature building flexing its joints. I almost called it an elderly building, because in human terms it is. Eight decades isn't long in stone and stucco years. It is just a whisper of time in the earth's years. I must learn to think in earth time.
Outside, the wind is becoming insistant, whistling and pounding on the Aerie's windows, sweeping out of the West and muttering threats of rain and snow.
I can hear the distant hum of passing traffic, beyond the gatehouse. Out There. Not in my space. At this time of year, I dread going Out There. The majority of people are working against the season, bustling and self-important. Consuming rather than being consumed. I fled the city yesterday because there were no pine cones and no people who would comprehend my immediate need to hold one. Some things are better left unspoken, or whispered to the wind.
I am listening in the stillness, and enjoying the rich scent of the wet earth outside. It's only a few more weeks of this darkness, and then the brittle cold brilliance of an icy winter will both enthrall and chill me.
The colors of now are brown and green. Soft colors. Comforting blankets of earth. Windswept branches against a pale grey sky.
I call this the time of listening. It is not a time of watchfulness, even for a visual person like me. My eyes take in the misty landscape, but they see it in soft strokes of watercolor. It is the sounds that stand out, because only in stillness do I really hear them.
First, there is the soft sound of my own breath.
Then, the gentle purr of my drowsy cat. She knows how to embrace the stillness of the season.
The Aerie makes its own sounds, the creaks and pops of a mature building flexing its joints. I almost called it an elderly building, because in human terms it is. Eight decades isn't long in stone and stucco years. It is just a whisper of time in the earth's years. I must learn to think in earth time.
Outside, the wind is becoming insistant, whistling and pounding on the Aerie's windows, sweeping out of the West and muttering threats of rain and snow.
I can hear the distant hum of passing traffic, beyond the gatehouse. Out There. Not in my space. At this time of year, I dread going Out There. The majority of people are working against the season, bustling and self-important. Consuming rather than being consumed. I fled the city yesterday because there were no pine cones and no people who would comprehend my immediate need to hold one. Some things are better left unspoken, or whispered to the wind.
