On, In, and Around Mondays: The Long Way

It is after my poetry session, at the Laity Lodge Writer's Retreat. I skip lunch, take the long way back to my room. I do not feel hungry, just tired and round-about.

The path is crushed red stone. The sun presses down.

Mindless, I walk slowly. Then something catches my eye. A yellow flower in the midst of otherwise dead vegetation. I photograph the flower, turn back to the path, then notice my shadow across the dryness. Or is it a dryness across my shadow?

I stand still and look, suddenly taken with the way something of me is captured in this scene. A slight breeze keeps tugging at my skirt. I watch it and the turn of my hand, in shadow. Then I begin to be more deliberate, embrace the moment. What would it look like if I turned this way, then that? I photograph myself in shadow, or perhaps the shadow in myself, for a long time.

And I feel alive.

***

Only under certain circumstances of constructive stress or in certain states—great love, for example, or religious ardor, or the courage of battle—do we begin to tap the depth and richness of our creative resources, or the tremendous reserves of life energy that lie sleeping within." (Ellen Langer, from Mindfulness)


Care to join us for a bookclub discussion of Mindfulness, by Ellen Langer?

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

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This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...