March 25th, 7:00 am. For the first time this year, I’m sitting outside with my Morning Pages. It’s a beautiful blue-sky morning. There is still a hint of frost on the deck and the grass is heavy with dew. Next door’s cockerel is announcing the day. I’ve replenished the bird-table and taken pictures of unknown things growing in the back end.
The guttering creaks, stretching in the sunlight and I can feel the damp cold of the metal seat through the cushions. Coffee is cooling rapidly. I am awake. I am happy.
Dad’s old fleece and silly socks.
Mr blackbird is first to the table. He will be followed by a dunnock, who’ll be chased away by the greedy magpies. There was a pair of jays checking out the wisteria yesterday. I wonder if they’ll still be interested now that I’ve cut it back. A crow flies over. Pigeons play in the early morning thermals, catching a rise.
Being out with the dew still lying and the world still waking has a holiday feel. It reminds me of walking tours and camping trips. Days that always started early and unrushed. There is magic in the air before the day has chance to stifle it. Shadows on the fence. City sounds starting to creep in, but giving way to the woodpigeon’s coo and the wind-chime’s chink, an imitation of the song of harboured yachts, chain-on-metal-mast. Great tits’ rusty sawing incessant somewhere over by the road.
Traffic. A year ago I was coming to terms with roads that had suddenly fallen silent. How quickly the noise has returned. How little I suspect we have learned.
My mind wanders. I bring it back to the page to think about simplicity.
This is simple. Cold coffee. Watching a dunnock feed.
Simple is sitting in the garden, in the morning, with the whole day ahead and only myself to please. I admit, simple can be selfish. Simple is beautiful. Simple is regenerating that coffee by just boiling the kettle and adding hot water. Simple is the pleasure taken in watching the steam rise. Simple is a smile. Simple is when someone jokes “You’re living the dream” and you can respond “Yes. I am.”
“And duly grateful.”
Simple is scruffy. Simple is quiet. Simple is slow. Listening. Picking out individual sounds. After years of being drilled in creating a sense of urgency as the only way to get things done, simple is recognising that nature doesn’t rush.
Simple includes the mornings when words flow from the pen in a torrent of thought or emotion. It also includes the mornings when the close lines on the page hide the many quiet spaces between thoughts and three pages take over an hour to fill. Simple is welcoming both.
Simple is knowing that everything is interconnected without being capable of grasping precisely how, and not needing to. Simple is looking at the sky and being uplifted, looking at the earth and being grounded, looking at the water and feeling the flow. It is the in-breath, and the out-breath, and the vital spaces in-between.
