The pause.
How serene it sounds...How many variants it has and how many different meanings. Such a wondrous magical thing, this pause. And one feels the magic most when one is in it.
For example when I was expecting our baby it was a nine month pause, when everything else seem to come to a standstill. It was like a pause in my life when everything was geared up for one thing and one thing only - the arrival of our baby.
Then there are the pauses we take in between the decisions of our life. When we are weighing our options and thinking which direction to leap in. How each direction will take you to such a different place and you are in a pause.
Then there are the pauses when you are working towards something and waiting for it to happen.
There are also the pauses you take every Sunday... when routine goes for a toss (and rightfully so!) and you can just 'be'.
But a pause I love is the one I spend with myself and the elements.
I NEED this pause. I'd rather have one every other month but once in six months becomes imperative! I crave one and I feel I just can't go on if I don't have it.
It is a longish pause extending to some hours (never pre defined) in a garden or some such place of my choice where there are trees, my wise old friends, grass, preferably flowers , oodles of peace, a bird or two for sweet songs. A place where I just 'am'.
I carry with me a notebook to record and pen down my thoughts. Some eats and water so that these don't compel me to leave before am done.
To sit on solid earth and rest ones back against a tree... these trees are wise, very wise and this way one connects with them... they speak to you, send waves of calm through you and then you can converse with them. That's how they became my friends. No matter where or when, if I just lean my back against a tree I feel their solid common sense and mystic knowledge. Its enough.
I wander through this garden of vegetation, sometimes bare foot, feel the grass squelching under my feet or the dry leaves cracking, as the season may be. I admire the birds, the bees and the butterflies; The perfect shading and colouring of the flowers. Incidentally, this is also the time when I notice and discover the tiny wild grass flowers all over again! Somehow, at other times either they hide themselves or escape my notice. I rather suspect its the former... but when they reveal themselves during this pause, they are joy. Ah! the colours the splendid detail in each minute flower... its like discovering a hidden world, just like as a child I used to think that fairies and elves live in wild mushrooms and one day I'll surely come across one and at that very moment discover an absolutely new world!
I touch and feel the textures... the rough bark, the velvet soft petal, the glossy smooth leaf, knotty old branches covered with cotton soft blooms. I smell, that green smell of crushed grass, so so fresh, the faint whiff of some flower, the earthy smell of a damp log, the pungent smell of a tuberose...
I close my eyes and hear, ah! so many many birds, how come I never hear them otherwise? The musical far off gurgling, is it a stream or is it simply the water pipe??? Does it matter? It is cool and nourishing... maybe some people talking, people as much a part of the scene as the trees or the shrubs, its not a disturbance, they too are one with nature at this point of time...
Then the thoughts flow, all the clutter, the questions, the unfinished ones, the just beginning ones, the ones nearing conclusion, something I had discovered and stored away to mull upon later, something which was bothering me like lint on a perfect black suit, which I finally took trouble to examine, hear out and sort out... some feelings stored away because there was no time to feel them at that time in my mad fast paced city life... some little anger, some tenderness, some feeling which says were you wronged? If yes, learn a lesson.
Then my dreams, little and large, take this moment to remind me about them... there is this thing about dreams, these dear creatures are so resilient... I meet them once in a while hear them out with both my ears, my heart and my senses and they are content, each time they become brighter and rosier for they know many of their friends have already made that transition from dream to reality, some will always be part dream part reality and the rest will make that transition in their own time. But as long as they keep visiting me we both are happy. No dream is too little or two big, they all get an equal hearing.
Then I do a bit of planning in my notebook, sort out old lists, make new ones, after all, a woman to the core... these lists make sense of my life and bind me up together so many times!
I have a little picnic and devour my favourite eats, am almost done, almost, but I linger... take in some more of the serenity and the beauty, wrap up, dump the litter and the junk in a dustbin, pack my bag along with the notebook, the dreams, the lists all sorted out and walk out with a clean canvas.
