Sky Gaze, In Wonder
A Wide Attention is a Practice
If you’re in New York City, and curious to learn meditation and journaling, sign up for this week’s workshop Grounded in Gratitude: Meditation and Journaling on Wednesday, October 16, with the full October workshop calendar linked below. To spark, sustain, or deepen your creative, contemplative practices, book a 1:1 session with me. Prefer to write on your own time, and enjoy being guided? Try out my journaling workshop recordings, pair with an Odette Press journal, and infuse your week with thoughtful moments to slow down and be with your life.
Bridge and sky stretch equally. The day is encased in purple gray, whisper pink, sky blue, fading. Up from the lavender horizon, the faintest hint of whisper blue, of daylight blending into twilight’s gray, and canyon pink, the faded pink the color of a desert sunset, of a rock in the daylight for millennia. Color the keeper of time, or time and light and land the makers of color, I wonder. Either way, the day is fading.
I drive the car in silence, passing past headlights and lanes, held by the awe of metal and structure, and the stone of bridge and building. City the distance, I’m immersed in wonder in color and the skyline. No cloud on the day’s horizon, the dusk sky instead unfolds as a painting, an atmosphere of color and light, of time and changing, as we arch around the bridge’s bend. October sun shines, nostalgic, and leans cool toward winter; the daylight cooler, earlier, fading from bright blue and loud into spring bloom-toned evening, moving toward eventual night. I cross the stretch of bridge, and exhale, grateful for a glimpse of color show, of nature against the stark black of metal, of stone, of the city, driving home.
Later, in the glow of another dawn, in the bath of phone’s glow, picture after picture comes through, flooded with color and wonder, nature and news. Mimosa pink, fuchsia, and the undulating vibrant teal, and the bright green of summer grass, glowing against the image of starlight and evening. “Did you see the Northern Lights?” the texts come through, an evocation of wonder and color and collective awe and pause.
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From a sliver of space sitting solo on the N train, I watch the sunlight, and another day come to an end. The view is commuters en masse, train car, black frame of the window, and in the distance, traffic slowing, and beyond that a bridge, while daylight fades out further. Clouds obscure the sunset. Clouds make a soft mountain against the monument of buildings. Pink hints peek through the distant in the coming evening. I yearn for the air, daylight, and remember my breath. Keep breathing. From inside the train, from inside my mind, I remember: breath is our connection, always, to the air, to the atmosphere, whether under sky, tree, or watching through a window.
Often, we can be pulled down into life and intensity in the smallest of things, quick to forget the gift of it all. A single moment may pull us out of focus, and tug on some quickness, some small view, or reaction. An upward glance, then, comes as a reminder: the lessons of sky are immense, sky goes on infinitely, and beyond that starlight. When a moment here on Earth feels unsurmountable, I look to the horizon, breathing. When we can, we widen our lens and view. There, colors dance, and sky speaks lessons of long views and wisdom, of wide skies and nights and daylight, and everything changing, how it’s always returning, this undulating wonder of color and backdrop to the birds flying.
Collective wonder comes, and whether ache or awe visits, I ground into the knowing that every single being is here under the same sky, breathing. Look up to the sky. Collective awe or calls toward bird in flight, weather, wonder, or sky is a ping the direction of our humanity: Did you catch the sunset? Did you see the bird fly? The hawk soaring? Can you see the sky from where you are? Did you see the comet?
Turn your attention to something awe-some, and notice how the lens of awe compounds. How does it help you balance? Awesome, our bodies in space, our bodies in time, our awareness of conscious breathing and awareness in mind. From where you are now, what do you notice? What does the sky say? The smallest flower growing, the brightest day, the cloud, the simple act of breathing.
Together, let’s make a sky piece: look and notice. Name the colors, textures, tones, of the sky as it is, as you see it right now. Write it out. Feel it. Paint.Wait a few hours or days, and notice again. A sky study: breathe, notice, and repeat.
PS. If you’re curious to learn meditation, join me in Brooklyn this Wednesday night for Suminagashi: Meditative Paper Marbling and Grounded in Gratitude: Meditation and Journaling. Prefer one on one attention? Book a 1:1 session. For more curiousity, mindfulness meditation, and writing, practice with Cultivating Curiosity. Meditate on color, ink, and paper in this week’s marbling classes.
Nourished by, Nourishing:
Thinking of Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit, and wind pieces, James Turrell’s work, this article on O’Keefe, a practice from Jack Kornfield on Big Sky Meditation, and this piece, from Lion’s Roar, and the perspective of cities and nature, bridges and skylines, and the gift of a fourth story apartment with a clear view of the skyline.
From a Past Season:
One on One:
