Relaxation

I like to doodle. With an extra fine black pen on a piece of ordinary white paper.

The black ink is so stark, yet so controlled, so elegant because the line is so finely precise.

Doodling is one of earliest ways I remember to cope with frustration, with worry, with stress. It relaxes me.

There’s something about setting pen to paper that feels like raw creativity, pure play – no agenda – no picture in mind – just giving myself over to the moment.

It’s amazing to see the kind of plaything a child loves and craves. For example, a big empty cardboard box. A little snip here and there and presto, a small house, or a store, or a spaceship.

Their imagination is so intense and vast and immediate – that it can go way beyond the “stuff” in front of them, and “grow” their own little world.

There is something about winter which I really love.

It feels sleepy, resting, in a sense meditating.

It seems to give an upspoken permission to just relax – to have some time for yourself.

All the colors are muted - grays and washed-out browns. And the trees are laid bare, to show a visual essence language written by their shapes, their intricate and poetic lines, all outlined with lacy fine twigs around the edges. At sunset, they glow orange.

The sun is hazy, diffuse behind a gray sky – you may even think it’s the moon.

Come to the lake of calm. It sits there open to you.

You will not find it in travel books, nor upon any map ever made.

Because you do not “go there,” but rather “tune-in,” like dialing a radio station.

Many of us keep this place ready for you. Holding a space of pure peace.

Thousands, if not tens of thousands, if not far more, offer this collective vision. We pour out thought-power, our peaceful energy, our imagination into this “place,” this little realm, if you want to call it that.

We combine our thought focus to offer this.

Every year we like to visit the rose gardens at Boothe Park in Stratford, Connecticut. Even from several feet away, one can smell the beautiful and pungent scent of the various types of roses. Once inside the garden, one can see all the different sizes, shapes, and types of roses - more than seem possible.

It is like a Wonderland of Flowers. Some are red, some are pink, some are yellow, some white, some purple, some orange, and some are even multicolored. Inevitably, some are buds, while others are partly bloomed, and still others are in full bloom.

There’s nothing like doing nothing.

I feel liberated, carefree, as if all responsibility is paused, and I am placed in a state of open wonder, able to just be.

Some may find it totally boring, perhaps a waste of time – not me!

My imagination is piqued, and ideas appear, as if clearing away everything that was blocking them. My senses are more, well, “sensitive,” magnified. So, I see and hear beauty around me more easily.

I am drawn to where the past lingers on, like Sturbridge Village Museum in Massachusetts, where people dress up in yesteryear clothes and character. It is truly amazing how these people fit their parts so well, as if being transported back 300 years.

Seeing the farmer in a long coat shepherding a flock of sheep thru the village green.

Seeing the potter casually spinning a clay pot.

Seeing the tinker making a lantern of tin or a candleholder of pewter.

Seeing how they cook in a hearth with an open fragrant log fire.

There’s something about a very old photograph that really draws me in. Perhaps it’s the black and white monochrome world that looks oddly “at a distance” – as if that’s the best that could be done at that time – almost like a dream.

I like to see how people are dressed and I try to sense how it felt to be in that place at that time. Did the air feel different?

It was the end of fall, and we put out a pumpkin on the front steps for the squirrels to enjoy.

A large chubby squirrel came up and started eating it. He was not shy, or perhaps he was too awestruck by such a wonderful feast appearing for him out of the blue.

In any case, we slowly opened the front door so only the storm door, a full pane of glass, stood between us and him. We were one foot away as he continued to chew his way thru the pumpkin – to the point at which he was able to sit inside it and eat all around himself.

One of the things I like to do for fun is to go on walking tours of cities around the world. Sometimes I revisit places I have been to in the past. In recent days, I have been to London, Pisa, Venice, Cologne, Madrid, and Nice.

How can I do this?

Often I walk around cities that I would like to visit in the future! For instance, I recently saw Buenos Aires, Argentina.

How is this possible? Especially, in the age of Covid-19?