Crouch Down

This happens to me from time-to-time. I’ll start feeling small and insignificant when I look out across a valley to distant mountains or gaze up into the heavens at night. We somehow tend to look outward and disconnect ourselves from being a part of the vastness and the beauty of it all. Here is a grounding activity, or something I do to gain perspective. I take out my camera, set it on macro and wander around in the backyard. I like to find an area where it feels like not much is going on. This time of year with the end of winter and spring just beginning to pop everything seems a little bland. Just set your camera close to the earth and click away. You should find little worlds that remind you that the universe is under your feet as well as out beyond the stars and that you are a part of someone’s distant vista.
In my blog of January 27th, 2010 I linked to a Native American story called Jumping Mouse. In that story the hero, the mouse, is told to “crouch as low as he can and then leap as high as he can”. I often spend too much of my time leaping to see what is out there, up ahead, down the road, I forget to be and express what I feel right where I am. This is ancient wisdom; I hope some day to make it mine.
Let me take this further and share a few images from the past few weeks as the snow has melted. I’ll add a little writing exercise to the images. What I did here was to look at the images I took out in the yard and write my first line from observations or thoughts that the image gave me. I then put the image aside and tried to quickly continue the phrase with sense or nonsense, whichever came first.

-Looking down into an abandoned flower pot.

Dry and dead at the bottom of a clay pot
I will lay here until the gardener acts
Then I’ll slide free into the compost
To give the power I have left
To a story with out end
I am not just a part of it
I am a part of everything




Green are the bottles that hold spring
I want that to rhyme again with everything
The every and the thing or the thing and the every
Separate they work but together they’re heavy

Now back to the bottles holding spring
Green is the color of so many things
Every of course is black and or white
Based on reflection or absorption of light

The bottles, the bottles holding spring
Break them open let’s get it going
Everything hangs just out of reach
But as soon as it’s done we can head for the beach.

Needles and twigs stuck in ice
Makes me think of beetles and pigs playing dice
And if you were thinking the same
Be sure and leave me your name
For those who think like we do
Know reality not to be true.

I’ll stop there.

For those of you who like to leap real high visit NASAs image of the day.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/iotd.html

Jumping Jeff