These leaves were a message sent from someplace- someplace that recognized I needed a connection. A tether, to allow myself to pull closer to the now. When we feel lost and tossed about, it is a lifeline we need. A presentation of hope. A thread we have to accept and use. For no one can bring us back into the fold but ourselves.
I hardly ever stare out a window for an extended period of time. I always see in movies how people do that- gaze at a skyline or beautiful landscape lovingly- pondering their plight or relationships. Generally its snowing outside, they are sitting in a window sill, hot tea in hand.
It is a staple in the myriad of holiday films flooding the television waves as of late. Windows, landscape, quiet reflective music = epiphany. It seems hokey but it works.
I do not have a plight- nothing horrible has happened to me personally. I am working through the same tribulations everyone else is. But, I feel a bit lost as of late. I guess I do not feel sad or angry- just lost. Today I stared out my front window, into the street and there was this pile of leaves. I guess a pile is a heavy word, for a light gathering, but nonetheless, it was a pile that became a layer, and then a few.
The chilly, brisk breeze was tossing them about the concrete. The larger ones scattering, ending up in nearby yards. The medium and small leaves hanging on tight to the formation. Each updraft swirling them and then allowing them to fall gently into a semicircle.
Almost on cue, every minute or so a dust devil whirled them aloft and a bluster knocked them down again. It was calming to say the least- just watching, window gazing.
Then a truck turned the corner and knocked them into the gutter. I thought my morning gaze was over, but just then a gentle nudge, whether from breeze or momentum, I will never know- slid them back into their position and the cycle began again.
Medium brown and small red and yellow leaves kicked themselves up and down again, until they fell gently into a semicircle. Sometimes landing upright, others faces down. Dull and then shiny exteriors switching on and off like blinking holiday lights.
I felt like this mental excursion was only a few minutes. But when my hot tea arrived, I looked over at the clock and thirty minutes had passed. I had been lured into natures story for half an hour. I shook off the restlessness and went about my morning activities.
Then I decided to rest again, same spot, looking to see if the leaves had regained their acrobatic display but the street was empty. The gutter was empty. I felt a ping of sadness. Strange, I thought my instinct to miss these leaves, to miss that moment of gaze.
Just as I accepted my loss, my ten year old opened the door. A whoosh of damp, cold air, flooded in. My hair tickled by the message of fall. He ran into the yard, "Its chilly out here, it feels like winter." As I went to the porch to test the resolve of the autumn westerlies, I felt a scrap on my ankle. I looked down and a few brown, red and yellow leaves settled themselves atop my feet. Attaching themselves to my thick, winter socks.
Five of them in fact.
The last five, I believe, I had seen dancing together in the breeze, bluster, dust devil of yore. Having felt my longing, they found their way yo my yard, to my porch and the breeze knocked them into my orbit.
These moments we allow ourselves, to just stare out a window are important. Letting our mind wander and our visual input, attach itself to leaves being tossed about in the street- can be a graceful opener to our day.
I have a new found appreciation for the holiday movie window gaze- in fact I have decided to adopt it as part of my daily meditation. I think that emptying ones mind to the sounds and acts of nature and thought is so important. I just tend to do it with eyes shut and quiet. Today I learned that nature wants to be a part of it- needs to be apart of it.
And the leaves....they are a gift you see from nature. For even indoors she remembers to say hello. She remembers to tap us on the shoulder and say look outside- we are all in this together.
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