Priory Park

"The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better. Forget about the future, and live each day according to the teachings, confident that god loves his children. Each day, in itself, brings with it an eternity." - Paulo Coelho

Sitting in the grass at Priory Park. The quiet is unexpected and a relief after the constant hum of city on pavement. The buzz is still there, just farther away and thus more noticeable yet more of a relief. I can feel the sun on my skin for the first time since I arrived in London, my new home, one week and one day ago. Like a sun flower, I turn my face to soak in energy from the one true source.

As I sit, I try to connect myself to the source, the spirit, the universe...to ground myself in it. I find myself so easily swept into the human created stress of city life. These moments alone serve to bring me back, back to the recognition that all things are one, that if we focus on the present the future will care for itself, that our mind is part of one, not its own, being.

Sitting here, I see life I could not see busily, distractedly walking London streets. A squirrel plays in the tree above, jumping from branch to branch. A bee hovers over the grass. Two ants climb up my calf, an Everest for them. Children in strollers (buggies). "Uh oh, a squirrel and a cat! Do cats like squirrels, Mum?" A little boy in a floppy sun hat peering at his mom inquisitively, adorable, childish, British accent asking the question. I look for the cat, but don't see it. The squirrel now digs in the grass.

The park is beautiful: rolling green rises, paths stocked with benches, an old marble fountain from 1880. The whole park is surrounded by hedges and fences, insulators of the peace. Oak trees scatter the lawns. City noises are muffled and irrelevant here in my sunny patch. A spider hanging from his thread falls in front of my face. I lift my pen to lower him to a blade of grass.

The skies are so clear, so blue, that I am glad I don't have my camera as it would never do this day justice. Two birds communicate, one in chirps, one in clicks. As I tune my ears to the birds' frequency, I hear more calls now. They come from all around me. The squirrel still rustles behind me searching for food as the seated man before me rustles his plastic lunch sack for his midday meal. A white haired woman clutches her days shopping as she walks the path before me. The park must separate her house from the grocery. She walks with purpose, not to enjoy the scenery, yet she does not appear wholly unappreciative.

Just now, a long skirted woman, coffee in hand, stoops to collect leaves of red and brown matching her outfit and died hair. The red-brown of the fallen leaves and the woman's aura, contrast well with the still green grass and trees. Fall is perfect. Always an ending in fall, but also a clensing in some way. Like the trees, I try to clear myself so that I may nourish and grow again. If you do not empty yourself constantly, there is no room to take in the new, the present, the now. So here in the fall we have this opportunity to follow nature's lead, to clean and clear ourselves and sit attentively in the now, full observers, full participants, our eyes open, our ears scanning all frequencies, taking in, but never holding in.