Some days we sit and watch surfers. At other moments, it’s sailboats on a small country lake. Often it’s simply the color of the sky. The texture of a fern upon my palm. Even more frequent is the taste of a freshly opened wine on the tongue. (Yummy, yummy. Gobble, gobble.)

There’s a filmy kind of brilliance to going slowly. There’s a boundless amount of depth and feeling to be discovered. For it seems that when I coax my body into stillness, when I focus outwardly upon every sense, therein lies the most pure nuggets of joy. Joy! Unbridled, unfiltered gratitude and astonishment!

Filed under: life is grand.

In a similar vein, let’s talk molecular science. Everything in this big, bad world is just a frenzied mass of atoms, all vibrating, pulsing, humming to it’s own tune. So: what happens when you align your own rhythm to the cacophony that surrounds you? Is this another key to the lock that guards the secret to happiness and contentment?

Last week Eric and I ambled on over to a waterfall. After following a meandering dirt path through the forest, we came upon a high white cliff face hosting a brilliant shower of cascades. My clothing was eagerly shed and discarded; feet quickly submerged, navigating the slippery rocks below. In the presence of such grandeur, my brain hardly registered the glaciality of the waters I was wading into. It was not enough for me to be at the waterfall; I needed to be of it. I needed to stand beneath it, head tilted back, arms stretched wide to the sides. I needed to close my eyes, find it’s pitch, then add my hum to it’s natural chorus. (I also needed to sing TLC in loud volumes and kick about in the water like it was a stage, but that’s a separate, ah, spiritual experience.)

And when it happened–that alignment–I felt fully and powerfully giddy in that connectedness. The wind blew in, throwing a baptismal spray upon me, making patterns upon my body. I inhaled strength and assurance, drawing in full balloons of breath as I filled my lungs to capacity. And it was so. goddamn. beautiful. To feel alive, to feel full, to feel vital and connected. To have that moment all to myself, and to realize that feelings like this are always within my reach, as long as I’m willing to stretch for them.

And THEN… I hustled back to the riverbank to put my clothes back on so I didn’t get caught by any picnicking parents gettin’ my naked on in a public waterfall.

Filed under: life is really damned grand.

-K