To capture two pauses in time
I like the light changing moments, each morning and afternoon. The minutes where the colours mix and redefine into ones that don’t appear on any palette. By the time you’ve thought about whether it’s cerise or coral pink, the light has morphed again and it’s nothing like either. That’s my first favourite time, when I wake, to breathe in gratitude and breathe out anxiety, as a day begins. It’s the best thing to open my eyes to.
The stillness, pierced by birds greeting each other, doing their own versions of hello and hitting the snooze button. Fluffing feathers, popping heads back under the wing for a bit, bobbing slowly like a pom-pom on one leg, indulging in another brief bird-nap before the business of pecking the earth for sustenance starts in earnest.
The second best thing to see is the sunset. The moment before the mountains and trees silhouette themselves against a paler sky. I try breathing deep during this afternoon shift of light. The heavens on fire, the streaks of golden red and blurred shell pink. The clouds edged in silver or bronze blazing through the rays of a dying sun, of a glorious fading light.
I love the pause in each sunset, when the mountains turn mauve for a moment. When birds cry out, chirping their goodnights before they roost and settle tired heads beneath their wings again. A cacophony before bedtime, bidding goodbye to the light of the world. The birds shush each other with sporadic chirps that sound like admonishments.
At dawn and dusk the earth breathes, pausing for a millisecond mid colour change. Such profound stillness it seems the world stops rotating for a bit with the light change of day to night, of night to day. Standing, watching, breathing with the planet in that in-between, feels good.
If I can make myself completely motionless, it’s a pause, a meditation bigger than myself. When I come back to I’m more grounded, accepting and settled like the birds. Another long deep breathe in and out; then I have to go in, peel vegetables and begin dinner.
