MountainMornings

I had a very bad dream once in my first marriage. My ex was driving, it was night, and we were heading down this road that looked like Van Gogh’s painting of a Lane of Poplar Trees.

The headlights on the car were dimming, did I mention my ex was driving? The darkness was creeping closer and closer until I was engulfed in blank emptiness. Suffocating for air, I awoke thinking I had died. Something did die that night, or maybe it was slowly ebbing away for years. What made me think about it, was my lunch with friends yesterday. Fresh off a plane and back in Cville, we lingered and talked of our other lives.

After a vacation, people often experience a re-entry phenomenon. Returning to real life jobs, laundry, the day to day things that usually go unnoticed. For some, this can be a difficult transition. Everything is louder and faster in the real world. But right now, for me, I feel as if I’ve gained a new perspective. I slowed down yesterday driving home, rounding the corner of my country road I stopped and looked up at the coral colored clouds. There were about twenty hawks circling, swooping, gliding and generally having fun riding a thermal of mountain air that gently lifted them up into their current of winged wonder. I was so entranced I didn’t even think to haul out my camera; I sat in my car, opened the sunroof, transfixed.

Artists can demonstrate perspective with a lane of trees. But for us to feel it, now that’s something else again.

My friend Ann went to the theater last night after lunch to see Denise Stewart’s “Dirty Barbie.” She told me I’m going to LOVE it since I’ll be going Saturday night. Here is an interview with Denise about slowing down to pursue her passion. Congrats Denise and big thanks to Christine Hohlbaum my blogger-mentors. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-power-slow/201106/dirty-barbie-and-other-dreams
Slowness may be counter intuitive, but oh so true.