Exuviation

It starts when you leave the city and its barrage of noise, its assaults on your attention, the mad rush to pull you out and away from yourself. It continues as the days pass and you notice subtle changes in where the sun rises, its passage through the sky, the length of shadows on the floor. You notice that there are four planets visible in the sky, and you see the International Space Station float overhead while the sun sets. You see the Summer Triangle, Cygnus the swan, and you wait for Orion. You see storms form over the tall mountains, watch them grow, see them drop their loads of rain and then vanish. Then you see the grass turn the land green and the sunflowers carpet the valley in yellow. But mostly you listen for the right word, the right image, and you pay homage to patience, precision, method, mindfulness, technique, and craft. You are a disciple now of the wind and sun and winding order of the cosmos, and you try to remember what it was the ones before you kept saying about your place in the order of things, your need to tell a story. You do the work of slotting yourself onto the wheel of noticing, of recording, of taking the infusion of peace and work that is offered to you. And you give thanks.