sensory acuity
Reaching out for the stars.
The corner of Johan Wagenenaarlaan and Diepenbrocklaan (Music in the air…)in Leiden. An August evening say 10 o’clock. Years and Years ago… still yesterday…. Marian and me. Classmates and warm friends. Both 13 years old. The grass field about 100 by 100 meters. Next to a school. Near water… boats softly floating on their way to the next costumer.
We lying on our backs in the still warm summer grass feeling each and every oddity that was softly supporting our body. Funny enough we both had wisps of grass in our mouth… tasting the grass as a dog eats it when the stomach needs a new balance.
The starry night had filled our perception, after a long walk along the river we had to land on the grass of this small field.
Hearing the night whisper… the water rippling… the birds singing their songs before the dying of the night… We counted the stars… identifying the star signs…. Noticing that a few stars -satellites obviously – were standing still where the stars were moving. We talked slow, soft… realizing that around half of the stars we were seeing in Realtime had died… were not there anymore…still we saw them…
The summer breeze flew over our faces…bringing us the smells of water, grass, trees and all nature has to offer
‘Do not go gently into that sweet night….’ We recited Dylan Thomas…
The smell of nature preparing for the sweet night…
All our senses intensely…still light …travelling… embracing grateful the notion that the earth was turning at 1500 km an hour… whilst we were lying quite… that the chemistry factory in our body served us with 100.000…connections per second… as our senses moved us towards the stars…back into our body lightning us in delight… flashing the earth … the milky way…into the unknown universe…all is energy and the best things in life are not things but energy connecting
Years and years later…as I was in Kassel Germany, in the Auepark with my daughter, then 8 years old we embraced several trees … one moment I asked Loulou to stand still look at the different trees and what impression they made on her. She identified emotions as messages the trees were sending…
So we played the game… ‘what does every single tree tell us’…what do I belief it tells me…
We compared and 9 out of 10 we got the same words / feelings…
So never leave a park without greeting every single element of nature… thank them for sharing…being there…whisper silently to the clouds, all colors green… the birds… the trees…the grass…
