be here now

Most of my regrets have something to do with summertime. If I don't wander enough through the green grass or eat enough fruit underneath a golden sun, then I am left hollow and full of regrets like a boy whose too afraid to tell his father how he doesn't like fishing. I want to touch every wild oak as if my hands were new to me. I want to taste the raspberries as if I had never tasted sugar. I want to walk into the garden and see the flowers climbing towards the blue sky, not dying and becoming crumbs of what summer was supposed to be.

What will be will be, I say to myself. If a hailstorm were to arrive, like a grave in the ground, here only to bury my garden, I would have to let it go. I spend so much of my waking life being bothered and worried about tomorrow. I stand at the edge of seawater thinking only of how I will miss the sea when it's gone. Sometimes, this way of thinking is beautiful and nourishing to the spirit. Other times, I feel like I am living on the last sentence of my own chapter book.

I want to be living in the moment. Instead, I am living for the moment's departure, as if it were an airplane you were boarding only to take you from here to there. I was sitting at the Calgary Folk Festival and all I could think about was how sad it makes me to see moments end. I could have been shaking my feet to the sounds of a banjo, instead I was pruning my thoughts to think only of tomorrow. What if tomorrow is the day when a hailstorm buries the garden? What if my feet give way and I can no longer dance? What if tomorrow's sunlight never shines on me? What if, what if, what if? 

I want to learn how to be here now. Truly, simply, nowhere else to be. Let me sit in the sunshine because it warms the skin, not in an attempt to slow down the speed of summer.  Let me live in the joy I find when my feet touch the garden's soil, not in the sadness of an imminent winter. I know a day will come when the moon no longer lights the bedroom where I sleep with C, let me forget about it and fall asleep without knowing what tomorrow brings.

The Outfit

Bathing suit – Voodoo Vixen*
Heels – OASAP*
Hat – Value Village

The Location

My Backyard

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