Quarter Year

Peace in the sun, strength in the roots

by Mike

I don’t pay enough attention to a place’s ‘placeness,’ even though we travel so much, and quieting my monologue was powerful in letting me be present on the olive farm in Coaraze.

Here’s what’s there: Water on long grass that wets your shoes; dozens of bird songs from hundreds of birds; dry folds in the hazy valley; clay; upset chickens that sound like monsters; the echoing olive mill with its slick concrete floor; a shovelful of purple olives; sharp kiwi branch cuttings that sliced my arm; the cold and narrow aluminum ladder; greenish shadows of plants against the greenhouse plastic; scurrying spiders; dirt caking rotten tomatoes; the cold that descends when the sun drops behind the mountain at 4:30; honks that work their way up the valley’s tight corners ahead of the bus; barks from dogs down below calling to dogs farther on; the compounding smells of thousands of meals cooked in Marguerite’s kitchen, what became an average smell of food from this valley over 100 years; Claude’s cold fire; the jars and never-finished dishes in Claude’s cold kitchen; the peace of an olive tree in the sun; the strength of a deep-rooted sticker bush…

To know a place takes a while, and it takes attention, presence.

(one more photo)

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Tags: buddhism, meditation, olive tree, presence, spirituality