The sounds of windblown branches and cracking wood

   Still cold from the chill of this morning's walk, I sat in a quiet coffee shop earlier today, in a city still quiet the day after Thanksgiving, thinking about the beautiful sounds I heard earlier in the morning.
   It was pretty windy at times as I rounded certain corners of Stow Lake, and there were lots of leaves and dried bark being blown from the gusts around the main path. I also noticed that one particular large, old and very stately looking tree's limbs and branches looked as if they were dancing as the wind whipped them around. It struck me that it looked like a visual representation of an uninteresting poet describing the scene I was witnessing.
    After what I believe was my second lap around the lake, I decided to veer off onto the car path, as I frequently do when I want avoid people. (I should point out that I do this, for the most part, to have the space to better try to understand my feelings at the time). As I crossed to the right side, the wind began to blow strongly, and I heard overhead the branches of what seemed like all the trees in the park blowing, and most beautifully, the crisp, crackling sounds of dry wood breaking. Now that I think of it, what I was hearing could have meant to me the impending death of the trees in question, or less cynically, the shedding of old, unneeded skin, but all that I thought of at the time, and what still stays with me most now, is that sound.            
   I feel that I am very sensitive to the world audible to humans, and perhaps my ears are sometimes 'too open' (for I can also become easily irritated by sounds that I don't like), but I also believe that this quality can help me to listen better to what's around me, and there are are so many wonderful things to hear.

The depths of green

    It was a chilly, clear morning as the sun began to warm parts of Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park where I walked the morning I began this blog piece. While areas of the path and surrounding roadway were still shrouded in shade, the brightness began to warm the northeastern section. Interestingly, at least to me, this is the area that tends to be the foggiest and windiest during much of the year, but right now it is the first to receive concentrated sun, and the light here, at any time of the year, tends to illuminate the bushes, trees and their leaves in the most beautiful ways.
   I have written in these blogs before about the color green (I can't recall exactly where, when or exactly what I said about it), but the intense feelings of calmness that this color can fill me with warranted this second meditation. I try to keep this calmness with me throughout the day by wearing the color, especially the deeper varieties, but I only get the feeling deeply when in nature. I am consistently disappointed by it, it seems, when it is not living.
   It is very difficult to really know whether it's the color green itself or the way the light hits it at the time of day I see it that moves me to write on the subject (perhaps it's a combination of the two), but when I see it during my morning walks, when the light is just right, it looks like there are endless variances. It is like a forest of color that never ends, and occurs to me that I would like to be enveloped in it. It seems like it cares for me in a way that I never seemed to get from either of my parents.
   If I could become even somewhat as nurturing to myself and others as I sometimes feel when experiencing this wonderful color, I would be quite satisfied. If I could also possess even some of the nearly unnameable and  indescribable qualities in the place that I occupy in the world, I would be very happy.

Thunder, lightning and freedom

   It rained in San Francisco; That's news in itself, as the city and state have been in a pretty well known drought for the past few years. What made the day's storm particularly noteworthy, however, was the accompaniment of thunder and lightning, which is quite rare here, even during a normally wet rainy season.

   I began my daily foray out of my apartment as I usually do, with a walk in Golden Gate Park, and the steady rain, though not very heavy, kept many of the early regulars away.
   With the park nearly to myself, I walked amid the drizzle and then steadier rain, and soon began to hear thunder in the distance. The sound of the rumbling reminded me of when I was a boy in sleepaway camp, when on some days the hot weather would give way to strong thunder and lightning, cooling the afternoon heat. I remembered those days with fondness, even though I did not always have pleasant experiences, nor good memories of the time. The ducks and squirrels in the park seem unfazed by the thunder, and appeared to relish in the wet weather. I also saw the hints of an dark rainbow at about this time.
   As I continued walking, the thunder became more intense, and suddenly the muted colors brightened from the first hint of lightning. The flashes struck me as so unusual that it crossed my mind that a studio photographer's flood lights had momentarily flashed (I knew that thought didn't make sense, but that's honestly what occurred to me), and as the flashes became louder, brighter, and closer to the rumbles that proceeded them, the people who were there seemed to grow as excited as me. We all seemed to be sharing in our witness to  a remarkable event.
   It dawned on me at that time that I felt very free just then; it was as if this thunder and lightning had transported me back to the times I'd experienced them in the past, amid all of the pain and anxiety of those times, and temporarily cleansed them from my present.