rose-colored glasses

sunrise:  5:16

This morning felt strangely incongruous.  The air was humid and sultry, with a light dancy breeze that felt so full of moisture that I kept thinking it was cloudy and about to rain.  But the sky is blue and wide open.  It's just a mild, moist and gentle summer morning.

I took these pictures of the moon in descent and the sun emerging from one spot in the northeast corner of our back field.

I wish my camera could translate for you the dancing of leaves.  Many, tiny individual zephyrs of breeze created a sweet display of bending, gliding, skittering and jigging amongst the greenery.  In one bank of leafiness you could see three or four different kinds of movement, as though each leaf was listening to its own personal music.  Nature's little advertisement for the Ipod shuffle.

****

I took a look back at my premise for this year long blog project.  The idea of the natural world as inspiration is in my first entry back in December '09, but it is not on my home page summary.  As it turns out, this reconnection with nature's beauty and serenity has become one of the most prominent gravitational tugs for me this year.

Life is ever-changing.  Aging is under way; endings march along in their inevitable progression.  In moments of depression one could feel that life is just one long, gradual decay.  In my children I see the beginnings of that entry into adult lives where entire days can be eaten up by the trivia of paperwork and frustrating bureaucracy.  Living in society has many weighty responsibilities and tiresome minutiae.

It makes me sad to see my child sighing with weariness after a long and relatively fruitless day of sorting out the misspelling of her name on official paperwork.  This is the same girl who used to love to lie in a pile of leaves and look at the sky, then write a poem about it.  

It is so important not to lose touch with the foundational premise for living here on this Earth, on this earth.  Remember the magic of childhood, the beauty of innocence, the wonder of existence, the joy of the rising sun and a blooming flower, even when our rose-colored glasses are off.

Sometimes it is difficult, but it is a good idea to keep those glasses in your pocket.  Submit your reports, fill out your forms, clean up the mess in the kitchen, face the family conflict.  Then slip on those glasses and go outside.  Find nature's unflagging insistence on survival, perseverance.  Celebrate a sea gull or an ant or a pile of leaves, or a reflective puddle, or a green vine growing out of a crack in the sidewalk.  It is still a beautiful world.