10:22 am October 29th, 2011

It's the second officially cold day of the season
And the snow that was supposed to come is
falling
Over shivery fall leaves,
Sideways on the current of the wind,
Splashing jacketfronts,
As freezy raindrops, breaking in tiny explosions on the topsides of umbrellas.

The last sip of a cold hot chocolate in hand,
I'm walking your way and
You, mine.
I'm rushing just the right amount and
You're leisure-loping
(But we travel toward each other at the same pace; your legs are much longer than mine).

And these moments are cold and dangerous
We calculate, size each other up,
Notice how skinny the sidewalk gets when two of us, and two umbrellas, too, must share it.
Will I step onto the road?
Will you run into the wall?
Or shall we collide -- tangoing missed steps, tangled umbrella spokes -- ?

But time's up for thinking, decision-ing,
Cause you're here and I'm here
The moment is now and somehow,
We share a few seconds of brain wave synchronization:

You'll lift your umbrella arm
While I duck to fit under it,
And it's magic - we're a smidge and little bit,
Two momentary puzzle pieces
Made to fit together at this moment, on this rainy sidewalk, in our umbrella tango.

breath & balance

Today was technicolor leaves and oversaturatedly blue skies.

I was making my favorite walk across grounds after work (slowly across the Lawn on Old Cabell side, skip down the stairs behind Wilson, marvel through the leafy trees-surrounded brick gateway onto the jeffersonparkavenue,walksignisontocross crosswalk, approx. 5 o'clock in the afternoon sun or rain or cloudy weather) and being way too busy to deserve the beauty all around. Though I was finished with classes, with work, my mind was still way too crowded - with things waiting in my backpack to be done, thoughts of dinner to be eaten at what time with whom, lists to make and to be checked off blip blip bloop bah. 

Surrounded by so much beauty; so much wonderful, but "too busy" to pause and soak myself in it in a way it all deserved to be taken in....in. Realized, and actually stopped to think about, how much fewer pictures I've taken this year compared to the amount that I had taken by this time last year (probably. not completely sure). Don't get me wrong - I still have a bZillion and thirty-eight pictures to put up on facebook, but this year I have let myself pass beauty scenes by so many times because I was rushing from one busyness to the next. Just rushing rushing thinking about rushing, being tired from scurrying about everywhere, simply getting from point a to point b waving at people hello hello ah! oh! hi! being caught off guard wishing to stop to capture a scene (in my mind and on my camera) or to give someone a proper smile but not doing so and letting all the soul thoughts spill away and resorting to texting myself gigantic passages that I hope to someday make into blogposts. . .

So I stopped. Noticed an old man (as so often there seems to be in my life) standing in front of Old Cabell and just gazing Lawn-ward. Because it was obvious. Because it was a travesty not to stop and give this beauty some attention. So I stopped, too, and took my walking, moving legs out of my path of travel and stood. Facing the Rotunda and perpendicular to my route, rebelling against the urge of let's go go go hurry up please it's time, etc. hehe

And it was tear-inducing, this beauty. 

...PAHA actually, it wasn't - the leaves were too technicolored and the skies too melodramatically blue. Like OKAY SKY, JUST CALM DOWN YOUR BLUE BRILLIANCE IS MAKING MY EYEBALLS WANT TO THROW UP A LITTLE. Haha! But I did wipe my eyes because there was a small speck irritating the left one and then felt self conscious because I didn't want the people sitting on Old Cabell's steps to think that I was actually moved to tears. Which is silly because:

1. I love crying.

2. It is natural and beautiful to be moved by beautiful things.

3. Probably no one was paying attention to me anyway.

Silly.

Then I took a breath and felt the instinctive urge to check the time. Check my phone. Check my shoelaces. Check something and look busy and purposeful and not all alone. Sigh I didn't even wear shoelacey shoes today. Sigh I don't even care about being alone in public. Sigh when did I get so attached to my cellular, anyway?

But my hands had already lunged into both pockets of my jacket so I had to do something. I mean people were probably watching me, waiting, expecting for something momentous to happen, and I couldn't just let them down, you know. So I gripped both fists - the left clenching my phone and the right clutching my iPod - and almost pulled out the left, but ended up taking out the right. The iPod seemed like the lesser evil or something. Saw that it was some hour, some minute but didn't really care.

Then turned myself 90 degrees and resumed the trek homeward. 

And kept stopping to take pictures of this and that and this again (and these CHRISTMAS BERRIES!) - combined with walking really fast when I wasn't stopped - so that I was passive-aggressively racing this girl who was on the same path. Passing her, letting her pass me, passing her. 

And realized that I must find a balance. I can't just keep stopping in my tracks whenever the mood strikes - that disrupts other people's walks home, other paths of travel, the journey of point a --> point b, which sometimes does indeed trump capturing a beautiful moment. Must find balance. Bal-a-nce. B-alanc-e.

A baal-ance between tackling a formidable pile of homework, getting ready for another Wilde Wednesday (my busiest day of the week) and just stopping to write a blogpost while listening to my mmmmm playlist.

Even though everything is a mess. Because sometimes, just not doing what you "need to be doing" is exactly what you need to do to be able to finish doing what you need to be doing. Ya see what I'm doooing?