On Breathing: Poem

Some days, you just need to breathe. 

Consciously.

With awareness.

To centre yourself.

　

Here is a song by one of my favourite artists, Alex Murdoch: 'Breathe'.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCEzoOpG1zQ

Wonderland of our own making

　

There is this great quote that I haven't been able to put my finger on. It goes something like this: 'I realised that I have spent most of my life living just to the right of myself.'

 

Lately I've been thinking a lot about this, because I'm pretty sure this is familiar to pretty much everyone. How rarely do I - even now, when I'm much more aware than I used to be - live rooted deeply in my own body, deeply in the 'Now'. I am frequently leaning ahead of myself, just out of reach, off-centre, straining towards the next moment, the next relief, the next reward, the next task. And when I'm shrinking away from an anticipated unpleasant moment in the future, I'm still leaning away from myself.

On Being a Weathervane

Today I open my upstairs window and look at the gentle view over rooftops and chimneys and distant rolling hills. It is foggy, which makes everything seem suspended in ghostlight, somehow, just waiting for something magical to happen. Behind the sound of distant traffic and the single call of a starling from a television aerial, is hushed stillness. Streetlamps loom out of the mist. My breath smokes in the early morning air.