Beauty is Healing

Raven, raven, raven
Oh, tell me why do you dress all in black?

I was so pupped out today after work. I didn't even go to dance class. Instead, I gathered up some special items... blueberries, rye bread, almond butter, an old journal from a couple years ago, that exceedingly impractical glass water bottle I've been lugging all over creation lately... and climbed to the park at the top of the hill to Just. Be. Still.

The air was cool and damp. I spread my belongings under a large oak tree with soft whispering leaves. And tried for a few moments to figure out if these droplets were rain or just very low-lying fog.

It didn't matter, I concluded and wrapped myself up in that brown woolen blanket and breathed and listened and felt and nestled. After a few minutes, I opened the old journal. It struck me, really, how much calmer, more centered I've become, even in the couple years since I wrote that. How much more clarity with which I see things, how much more comfortable I am being myself. What a broken little songbird I was...

As I was leaving, three adults and approximately five kids of different sizes and shades were in the process of launching a rocket driven by vinegar and baking powder or soda or whichever it is. I took my time gathering everything up, in hopes that I would get to witness the launch, but it was taking a long time and I didn't want to be a creeper.

I walked back down the hill with water sloshing around inside that great glass container with every step. As I opened the front door to our building, I noticed how it had grown dark. A sacred dark.

Oak tree, oak tree, oak tree
Oh, take me down where roots begin.