moments of moment

I’m looking for the moments…I’m seeking the space within the space – the space where change happens. I’m searching out the minutiae, examining it and deciding whether to keep it, or remodel it or throw it away entirely.

An example:

Tonight as I washed my face clean of the day,  I began to feel anxious and wasteful at letting the water run whilst I waited for it to warm up. My inner voices chided me for the power consumption from running the pump, and the precious water just running down the drain. I considered putting a plug in for the washing up, but reasoned that I didn’t want to wash up in my dirty face water.

In that small moment of angst I glimpsed an option.  I glimpsed an opportunity to enjoy abundance. It has rained for about  10 out of the last 14 days. Additionally, the rain came each day in the late afternoon, after the spring sunshine had juiced up the batteries and we had an excess of power. So, as so rarely happens, I had plenty of power, plenty of water and plenty of gas (as I had just gotten a full tank).

What better time than now to enjoy abundance?

So I gave myself over to the waste.

I was wanton in that water. I allowed it to sluice deliciously over my hand on its journey to warmth, and run on down that drain taking the crumbs from the sink with it.  As I splashed my face in the hot water, feeling its warmth on my hands and face, I was so grateful.

Later on, I wanted to go outside for a cigarette. I listened for a moment to the chorus of voices in my head demanding to know whether this action would serve my greater good before conceding that no, it would not serve me.  Rather than go anyway, conscious of the fact that I was actively doing myself a disservice, listening to those voices and feeling crap about myself, I figured that maybe, whilst doing so, it was also possible to do something which would serve my greater good.

I walked out into the night, felt the chill of a clear night on my bare skin. I listened for a while to the frogs calling to each other. I began to discern the different frogs, their voices coming from different locations. I started to differentiate the different calls, their frequency and the answering calls from across the creek.

Looking into the sky I noticed the beautiful balance of a clear and high sky studded with stars, and the wisps of cloud streaking across it.  the silhouette of trees and mountain against an inky sky, the first blushes of moonlight in the sky above Blue Knob, and the frogs calling through the crisp and bracing air – what a wonderful antidote to the soul destroying habit of inhaling tobacco…..

Musing, listening, smoking, I watch as the first brushstrokes of the rising moon are painted above the mountain. The light of the still hidden moon is reflected back from the bottom of the clouds sitting in the sky above it, painting them golden, reflective.  As I watch it seems the mountains and trees below get darker in comparison to the lightness which is seeping into the sky, from a focal point somewhere behind the mountain which sits front and centre from my vantage point on my verandah.

It feels as though I am pulling the moon, cajoling it, willing it to rise.  I can’t help the smile playing about my lips as I feel her coming. She’s cheeky when she does arrive, showing herself first as a torchlight or a flare, suddenly illuminating the space between 2 trees at the very top of the ridge. This could just be a house light, or oncoming beams of headlights, but that there is no house, no road up there.

Before my eyes the moon ascends the far side of the mountain and drags herself into the waiting sky before announcing herself – luminescent, glowing, so smugly self assured and so damned perfect.

I smile, and I feel the night smiling back at me.