The Tale of the Rabbits, the Fox, and the Tranquil Moonlight..
Hello there. Do you have a few minutes to kill? Let me tell you how I found my time of personal tranquility, recently. It's a slightly lengthy tale, but a rewarding one and one with a lesson for us all, I hope.
What I do some of these nights is walk through Homeland, which is an upscale community not far from my home with big $350,000+ dollar homes and expansive tree-lined front yards. It had rained earlier last night, so the rabbits that live all throughout this community were out and everywhere. The shadows were deep, cast by huge, old trees and hedges, and patchy clouds in the sky only passingly covered a full moon drenching things in silvery luminance. There was no traffic, no other people at all.
When I walked there it was 12:40am; all the people living in the community were asleep to prepare for the work day. As I was walking up one of the other hilly streets (keep in mind this is about 1:10am and no other humans are even awake, which is when I like to take my walks), I saw a creature trot across the street further ahead. It was too small to be a typical dog. Too big to be a cat. And it had a bushy, white-tipped tail and pale tawny fur. <3
I blinked and trotted forward quietly enough to at least get another, confirming glance, in time to see him disappear into an ivy thicket fronting someone's front yard. For those of you used to seeing foxes, I'm a city voop on the edge of the ghetto: until now, I had never seen a wild fox, live and whole. Hell, I smile when I see deer. This fox, it was too shadowy to see where he went...and following him, I believe, would have been rude. So I simply continued on, and the next two rabbits I saw, I simply warned them to watch out for the fox. :3
What happened after, though, made the night for me. Ever have a dream that was lucid and clear, of a sort that you remember it for a long while? That's probably a silly question, of course you did.
You will want to have this playing to have another aspect of what I'm talking about.
I hook my iPod to my PC speakers to play music as I fall asleep. One night six or seven months ago, I had a light dream while this song was playing. Edge Hill is one of my favorite songs, has been for years. In said dream I was laying horizontal, looking up at a starry sky and floating backwards, silhouettes of darkened buildings moving along at the corner of my eye. The only light was more starlight than I'd ever seen personally on a vast sky overhead, framed by the occasional passing building. Paired with the music, it was a very trance-like situation and only grew moreso when the song hit 2:47 and entered the next movement: A bright, silvery, huge full moon crested from below, looming slow and lazy into the sky and dominating the air, very mesmerizing in its presence as it slowly transitioned from horizon to overhead, then over, setting beyond... 5:04 on the song, and a ring of light bursts from the moon as it disappears from view, restoring the starlight. That dream stuck with me for the past six, seven months.
Now, back to last night: 1:20am I was walking back down Lakeside road, which is the center-most road in Homeland that also has a stream and pond-like setup where ducks often can be found. The whole area was darkened wth shadows, mostly, except for the old-fashioned amber street lanterns. I didn't want to go home yet so I decided to go sit down on the grass by the pond, enjoy the night ambiance and keep listening to my music. It was cloudy at that moment and the full moon behind the clouds kept stars from coming out. Then Edge Hill came up randomly on my iPod, and as I looked up I noticed the clouds moving...darkened fir trees were lining my peripheral view, but the sky was dominant. This felt very familiar. The biggest cloud which had been covering everything was still drifting, and as I sunk into the song, and the song hit 2:47, it uncovered the moon, bright and clear.
I couldn't even move, wide-eyed as a pup I was....daresay I even tear-spilled a little, profound and freeing as that moment felt just sitting in damp grass, listening to music, staring up at a full moon and remembering a dream I'd had six months ago, reimagined in real life by sheer happenstance. Like those stupid little opens we see in movies where someone dies and somewhere a photo of them cracks in front of their loved one or a breeze blows. Only positive...liberating. The rabbits, the fox, and last the night sky... It was my own little gate to tranquility, and for that time everything that trouble me or I was worried or afraid over just fell away.
It was prismo that said that nature gives us little rewards in its own way...I like to think that was one.
As the world sleeps, at an hour where time doesn't matter and one of the precious few places in a city where traffic sounds don't disturb the night, I find things to be at their most peaceful and least complicated. I get to forget all the problems I have and create.
* * *
Lastly, I did say there was a hopeful lesson this taught me that I could impart: In two years, I'll be thirty. I feel like for many of my peers (and even more of the younger people I've known), the name of the game for them is rushrushrush....you're doing it wrong if you're only doing two things at once. Things grow old fast and if you aren't of the first to find or do something, you're lagging. You're failing if you don't have all the stuff you want yet, and the world's going to crush you. Edge Hill is...perhaps...the representative song for the mien I'm trying to take, but we all have to find our own things that help us return to ourselves and shed all the baggage we collect from society, from people, from life. Like Pikacha told me, Enjoy Everything. Stop, and admire something beautiful. Don't be in such a constant rush to get to what you want, or you'll think of nothing but it. And also importantly, find your Place of Tranquil. A place where you can shut the world out and surround yourself with the things that make you smile and let you drop the masks we all wear, the mask that doesn't have an expression for song or tears or free laughter. Find a place and time where you can descend into yourself on self discovery for at least a little while...it's a very satisfying thing to have moments like these.
What I do some of these nights is walk through Homeland, which is an upscale community not far from my home with big $350,000+ dollar homes and expansive tree-lined front yards. It had rained earlier last night, so the rabbits that live all throughout this community were out and everywhere. The shadows were deep, cast by huge, old trees and hedges, and patchy clouds in the sky only passingly covered a full moon drenching things in silvery luminance. There was no traffic, no other people at all.
When I walked there it was 12:40am; all the people living in the community were asleep to prepare for the work day. As I was walking up one of the other hilly streets (keep in mind this is about 1:10am and no other humans are even awake, which is when I like to take my walks), I saw a creature trot across the street further ahead. It was too small to be a typical dog. Too big to be a cat. And it had a bushy, white-tipped tail and pale tawny fur. <3
I blinked and trotted forward quietly enough to at least get another, confirming glance, in time to see him disappear into an ivy thicket fronting someone's front yard. For those of you used to seeing foxes, I'm a city voop on the edge of the ghetto: until now, I had never seen a wild fox, live and whole. Hell, I smile when I see deer. This fox, it was too shadowy to see where he went...and following him, I believe, would have been rude. So I simply continued on, and the next two rabbits I saw, I simply warned them to watch out for the fox. :3
What happened after, though, made the night for me. Ever have a dream that was lucid and clear, of a sort that you remember it for a long while? That's probably a silly question, of course you did.
You will want to have this playing to have another aspect of what I'm talking about.
Click to viewI hook my iPod to my PC speakers to play music as I fall asleep. One night six or seven months ago, I had a light dream while this song was playing. Edge Hill is one of my favorite songs, has been for years. In said dream I was laying horizontal, looking up at a starry sky and floating backwards, silhouettes of darkened buildings moving along at the corner of my eye. The only light was more starlight than I'd ever seen personally on a vast sky overhead, framed by the occasional passing building. Paired with the music, it was a very trance-like situation and only grew moreso when the song hit 2:47 and entered the next movement: A bright, silvery, huge full moon crested from below, looming slow and lazy into the sky and dominating the air, very mesmerizing in its presence as it slowly transitioned from horizon to overhead, then over, setting beyond... 5:04 on the song, and a ring of light bursts from the moon as it disappears from view, restoring the starlight. That dream stuck with me for the past six, seven months.
Now, back to last night: 1:20am I was walking back down Lakeside road, which is the center-most road in Homeland that also has a stream and pond-like setup where ducks often can be found. The whole area was darkened wth shadows, mostly, except for the old-fashioned amber street lanterns. I didn't want to go home yet so I decided to go sit down on the grass by the pond, enjoy the night ambiance and keep listening to my music. It was cloudy at that moment and the full moon behind the clouds kept stars from coming out. Then Edge Hill came up randomly on my iPod, and as I looked up I noticed the clouds moving...darkened fir trees were lining my peripheral view, but the sky was dominant. This felt very familiar. The biggest cloud which had been covering everything was still drifting, and as I sunk into the song, and the song hit 2:47, it uncovered the moon, bright and clear.
I couldn't even move, wide-eyed as a pup I was....daresay I even tear-spilled a little, profound and freeing as that moment felt just sitting in damp grass, listening to music, staring up at a full moon and remembering a dream I'd had six months ago, reimagined in real life by sheer happenstance. Like those stupid little opens we see in movies where someone dies and somewhere a photo of them cracks in front of their loved one or a breeze blows. Only positive...liberating. The rabbits, the fox, and last the night sky... It was my own little gate to tranquility, and for that time everything that trouble me or I was worried or afraid over just fell away.
It was prismo that said that nature gives us little rewards in its own way...I like to think that was one.
As the world sleeps, at an hour where time doesn't matter and one of the precious few places in a city where traffic sounds don't disturb the night, I find things to be at their most peaceful and least complicated. I get to forget all the problems I have and create.
* * *
Lastly, I did say there was a hopeful lesson this taught me that I could impart: In two years, I'll be thirty. I feel like for many of my peers (and even more of the younger people I've known), the name of the game for them is rushrushrush....you're doing it wrong if you're only doing two things at once. Things grow old fast and if you aren't of the first to find or do something, you're lagging. You're failing if you don't have all the stuff you want yet, and the world's going to crush you. Edge Hill is...perhaps...the representative song for the mien I'm trying to take, but we all have to find our own things that help us return to ourselves and shed all the baggage we collect from society, from people, from life. Like Pikacha told me, Enjoy Everything. Stop, and admire something beautiful. Don't be in such a constant rush to get to what you want, or you'll think of nothing but it. And also importantly, find your Place of Tranquil. A place where you can shut the world out and surround yourself with the things that make you smile and let you drop the masks we all wear, the mask that doesn't have an expression for song or tears or free laughter. Find a place and time where you can descend into yourself on self discovery for at least a little while...it's a very satisfying thing to have moments like these.