The full unfolding
The Stream
An ordinary mind on an ordinary day.
An ordinary mind on an ordinary day.
The morning sun greets a cormorant.
The question lingers longer than the bird.
The surface looked familiar.
The rain never falls on the same lake twice.
The water was still carrying yesterday's weather.
The lake held the colour of rain before the rain arrived.
The rain
The lake did not ask for preference. It simply received whatever arrived.
The leaf had turned before the others.
A single leaf carried the whole season.
I was watching the movement of cloud over the fellside.
For a moment, the distinction between observer and observed seemed unnecessary.
The water temperature had fallen again.
Some places are remembered by the body before the mind.
Nothing memorable happened.
Practice hides inside ordinary days.
Something was understood.
The thought vanished before it became language.
There are days when an hour disappears unnoticed.
Perhaps attention changes the shape of time.
There is little room for abstraction in cold water.
The cold asks for full attention.
A colder morning.
Winter arrives in fragments before it arrives in full.
The weight of the water before the first stroke.
There is a specific resistance in the lake this morning. Not the cold, but the density.
The fox at the edge of the path, frozen in a logic I cannot share.
A brief moment of eye contact before the world resumed its separate movements.
Walking the same loop until the stones become familiar underfoot.
There is a rhythm to the repetition that acts as a solvent for thought.
Before the rain, the leaves turn their pale sides up.
A change of register in the wood, minutes before the first drop arrives.
The kitchen light at five in the morning is a kind of company.
Before the day asks anything of me, there is only the kettle and the window.
Something arrived this evening that I cannot quite report.
Not large, not small. A shift in how the room was holding itself.