Wishcasting Wednesday: What rules do I want to make and or break? My Wish is to be able to break my unspoken, but always painfully obvious rule of having to make everyone happy all of the time, and making a rule that saying "No" is okay. (I'm copying this wish from Rochelle and I hope she doesn't mind!)
It's Wednesday and that's a good day. It smells like spring today. There is just that certain scent that spring evokes. It's different than the scent of winter, summer or fall. Scents and sounds trigger so many memories and emotions. When I smell the fresh scent of Spring I am immediately transported back home and at Sunday School at Easter. Easter used to be my favorite holiday so the scents of Spring tend to make me feel content and loved.
Scent is processed in the brain by the limbic system, or what is commonly called, our "animal brain." It is the part of humans that is tied to instinctual behavior. It is a part of the brain to which the nose and sinuses directly feed. That is why one can change the way you feel just by smelling something. Aromatherapy in action.
The scents of spring pour into my open window now. The moist, melting, damp smell of the earth when the snow has finally disappeared. The eager bursting into life of each tree branch. Each tree has it's own scent probably related to it's pollination. The pine trees give off clouds of vanilla-smelling green pollen that settles onto everything. The aspens we planted have grown tall and lanky like adolescents. They reach to the sky with straight, skinny arms all gangley and knobby. The have a sweet, raw scent. The scrub-oak is our final gauge for the true end of winter: when the leaf-buds appear, we know the snows are over. The branches are still bare, dry and skeletal as though dead. It pains me to admit, we may still have more snow coming. The scrub oak knows but I don't; how can that be?
I'm more aware of my breathing now. This is rather important for a living thing, and I've held my breath way too much over my life. I stood tall this morning and took lots of deep, deep breaths. How good that felt. The lingering croupy cough I had all winter has finally gone away. I haven't done yoga for a while, but remember the way I used to feel after yoga breathing: so high and light, I could fly. That's the way the air of spring makes me feel. I think, as humans, we are part of the earth and respond to the seasons more than we know.
It's like the invisible pull birds must feel when they take flight for the northern climates they'd abandoned in the fall.
The birds have returned to our mountain. Their sounds wake me up with a smile each morning. I never appreciated birds in California, like I do now in Colorados changeable climate. It just goes to show how we can take such miraculous life forgranted when it is seen every day. I opened my kitchen window this morning and saw on the closest fir tree a pair of Chickadees are conversing and hopping about. I imagine they have come back for the seeds in our bird feeder we put out each spring. This sounds strange, but I was going to go out and tell them to be patient, but they probably already know that! They've probably seen how their favorite perch, the scrub oak, has yet to bud. Suddenly they are joined by a large, shiny black and white Magpie. Already the birds are claiming their territory. The chickadees fly away with wings moving in quick small bursts through the warming air as the magpie preens its blue/black shiny tuxedo feathers. Will the magpies again try to build their huge nest right in front of my kitchen window? Then the fox will probably be hanging out in my backyard again. I call him Franklin the fox and he has inspired quite a few stories with his amusing but sly antics. The foxes stayed all winter, screaming with haunting shrieks under full "wolf" moons.
Even the night sky looks different now that it's spring. Orion no longer reclines over our roof, as if to guard us from the dangers of winters bleakness, wielding his star- studded blade. Now when I look up to the skylight which focuses the night sky as a telescope, I see more stars. They were always there but hidden by clouds. Two stars in particular seem to orbit around each other. Often they are parallel to each other and sometimes not. Come spring, these two stars are our nightly silent companions. It's somehow comforting to know they are always there. Did you know that stars make a sound too? It is the vast tone of silence. Completely enveloping. I can only stand to listen for a short time. It is so loud, in a way it's deafening. I don't know why this is, perhaps it is just the physiological effect of bending ones head back to look up to the heavens. It makes the blood rush to places it hasn't been for a while. Maybe we need to look up more often. The two little stars are just a drop in the bucket of life. Really, they are huge pulsing giants. Yet they look like two tiny pin-pricks, taken for granted by we ants scurrying around our little planet. They illustrate how life is never how it seems.
The birds have returned to our mountain. Their sounds wake me up with a smile each morning. I never appreciated birds in California, like I do now in Colorados changeable climate. It just goes to show how we can take such miraculous life forgranted when it is seen every day. I opened my kitchen window this morning and saw on the closest fir tree a pair of Chickadees are conversing and hopping about. I imagine they have come back for the seeds in our bird feeder we put out each spring. This sounds strange, but I was going to go out and tell them to be patient, but they probably already know that! They've probably seen how their favorite perch, the scrub oak, has yet to bud. Suddenly they are joined by a large, shiny black and white Magpie. Already the birds are claiming their territory. The chickadees fly away with wings moving in quick small bursts through the warming air as the magpie preens its blue/black shiny tuxedo feathers. Will the magpies again try to build their huge nest right in front of my kitchen window? Then the fox will probably be hanging out in my backyard again. I call him Franklin the fox and he has inspired quite a few stories with his amusing but sly antics. The foxes stayed all winter, screaming with haunting shrieks under full "wolf" moons.
Even the night sky looks different now that it's spring. Orion no longer reclines over our roof, as if to guard us from the dangers of winters bleakness, wielding his star- studded blade. Now when I look up to the skylight which focuses the night sky as a telescope, I see more stars. They were always there but hidden by clouds. Two stars in particular seem to orbit around each other. Often they are parallel to each other and sometimes not. Come spring, these two stars are our nightly silent companions. It's somehow comforting to know they are always there. Did you know that stars make a sound too? It is the vast tone of silence. Completely enveloping. I can only stand to listen for a short time. It is so loud, in a way it's deafening. I don't know why this is, perhaps it is just the physiological effect of bending ones head back to look up to the heavens. It makes the blood rush to places it hasn't been for a while. Maybe we need to look up more often. The two little stars are just a drop in the bucket of life. Really, they are huge pulsing giants. Yet they look like two tiny pin-pricks, taken for granted by we ants scurrying around our little planet. They illustrate how life is never how it seems.
The stars make humanities sense of self-importance disappear into insignificance. The silence after the cacophony of life shouts, in a whisper, about God, and our meaning in the scheme of things. There is so much in this concerto of life that we can not even sense or understand. Perhaps we just need to listen more and tune up by breathing in the scents of life. Maybe we'll make sense of it, eventually, but for now the main thing is to listen and to breath, especially through the change of each new season. Especially now,
into this Spring.
