stress

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts. And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart, you live in your lips. And sound is a diversion and a pastime.

And in much of your talking, thinking is half-murdered, for thought is a bird of space, that in a cage or words may indeed unfold its wings, but cannot fly.

There’s a brook along the road on my drive home from work. I stopped there today, parked my car, and I walked out to the middle of the brook. You can do it if you’re very careful, and you select the stones that rise just above the shallow eight inches of the babbling brook.

I walked out to the middle, and I stopped. And I crouched down. A few feet away, the brook gets deeper, maybe three to four feet. And the rapids are moving quicker. The sound is intensified, so strong and so loud, you can’t even hear the cars passing on the highway just 40 yards away.

There’s a brook by the side of the road. Sometimes, on the way home, I stop here.

It only takes a minute to get out of the car, you walk out, you tip toe across the little stones that extend and rise above the brook. It’s shallow here, maybe eight inches deep.

So I picked it, and select the large rocks, and I’m standing now in the middle.

The sound is beautiful.

As I look to my right, upstream, I see a driftwood. It’s floating down right now.

I wonder what’s going through that driftwood’s mind. Aimlessly, without a care in the world, just floating.

My mom would say to us when we were little, “If you don’t have something nice to say, say nothing at all.”

You ever notice in life, when you get in conversations with people in your family or good friends, that something will be said that’s hurtful or insensitive? Immediately, the natural thing to do is to respond, to react to what was said, and come back and protect yourself. And it’s said in the way of an attack.

Life’s a beach
Spending the day at the beach
At least at hour
Here in Cove Point, Stamford
The boats coming thru
The water glistening
I am thinking this is really making me feel a lot better
I can just feel
The calmness from the sea
The ripples of the wave
I am so grateful I am able to be here today
If only a brief period of time
The time here can be such a renewal
To my spirit, to my physical self, my emotional self
The only thing I am looking at
The children playing

I say to myself I need 5 minutes, I need a time out, I just gotta get away from all this stuff I’m doing.

So what do I do? Well what I do is I step outside.

I stepped out the other day. There was a patch of snow, covered the ground. Patches of grass broke out. The air was cool and cold. And as I breathed it in, it filled my lungs with this wonderful fillness of freshness and light itself. I looked up and the sky was crystal blue and clear.

A single hawk was soaring high. It just kept going higher and higher, and I watched him for a few minutes.