Journal: A New Moon's Jaunt.

A new week elapses, under the nothingness of the New Moon: of nothingness, a nothingness foray into the wild, this morning, a hike of some fifteen minutes, two road signs, turnabout at the Walnut tree.  

“Mindfulness”.  It’s kind of a hot-on, open-switch of brain activity, when the mind is otherwise unused, not analyzing Antonin Dvorak Top 40 tracks, or anything.  I had that marked emptiness, too stupid to come anywhere near the further signpost of self-awareness, and if I could bottle that, tens of hundreds would line up for that thing which others can only speculate about: Tao-like, such that the mindfulness one can describe in detail is false; it can only be hinted.

There was some thick-stemmed undergrowth with a cotton-like, feathery top, of which I presume prior to last spring, the effluvium of this droned across my yard, and they were speculating that there was a Cottonwood tree somewhere up the hill, but neigh.

Instead it was weeds that pretend to be trees, and me in the interim, enjoying my footfalls in the New Balance Cross Trainers, and I thought then some deer taking-off in the brush, but no.  There was an oak thicket further up the way, and I thought it might be that, but no a big old Turkey Oak, it’s leaves starting-up in a whisper.

And tendrils of sunshine across the road, and I swore, in ten minutes, the sun rose and made a wide patch of sunshine on the pavement, despite the treetops in between.  And one damn horse watched me, indifferent to the whole mess anyway, as if to say, “there he goes again.”

“There he goes again.”  I intend to Field Guide that undergrowth.  Really get at the quiddity of it, like memorializing a stupid simple little moment, me glancing over at it, hoping maybe, in peripheral vision, that it was some woman of age interloping through the underbrush near the roadside, coming past weather-stunned grape vines, plenty of broomstraw, and at last, the volunteer Magnolias on the State acreage.

I was not in sight of the homeplace, but such in the mind of that I wasn’t lost if I didn’t think about it all, as per so many pinball-people that bounce, collide and clank against one another, with the restraining orders and used Hondas between them.  But then when is never very far from home but in the heart, where the homeplace claims the mind of the earnest that genuinely cares for the place.  Don’t let them lie to you, that if you disconnect you enter into a kind of rest, when in fact, a cultivated life gives rest at home, first, and best–never otherwise, no matter how many miles from the shore or how pretty the white beach sand.