The art of being
This morning walking through City Park with Loca and Heidi on a gorgeous almost fall day, we passed all the other fellow park pedestrians who were also out later than usual because it is Sunday, because it is Labor Day weekend, and because. It was a lovely day, I had left Tin for a resleep in the crib and Tatjana for a morning nap after we had all had eggs, grits, biscuits and the last of the fresh peaches from the Green Market.
I debated a longer walk but was pulled in too many directions, should I get home for the guests who would be rising around now after coming in late? Should I get home to take care of giving Tin his lunch? Should I get home for something that I’m sure I must be doing? I decided to opt for the longer walk.
But as we rounded the end of the lagoon, I realized the dogs were already hot as the church bells ringing told me it was now eleven o’clock. So we turned and started our way back, but we passed several people reclining on blankets, and one couple had their very young infant on a blanket with a pacifier that had fallen out on the way laying on the sidewalk.
As we were about to leave the park, I decided for once to just sit on a bench in the shade and be.
The large white swan was preening and bathing and some brown ducks swam around as her white feathers were spread out and tucked back in. I thought about a conversation I had with a dear friend of mine who told me that instead of looking for inspiration in work she had started to contemplate the sound of birds in the trees as she walked her daughter.
Do you know how to just be, Rachel? a woman asked me a long time ago as she was explaining that perfectionism is overrated, expectations are out of whack and sometimes just doing something because is better than having the goal – walking the dogs, going to the grocery, to the post office – why not just go, walk, for the sake of doing it and being and nothing more?
I called E and am going to pay her a visit next week because again I find myself at a cross roads of trying to just get back into my skin and be. The doing part of me overrides the being part of me most of the times always harkening back to that line from an older actress who said, “I’m a doer,” as if that just explains away the endless toil and constant motion, as if it explains why some people just have no understanding of just being.
My friend is a doer and so am I and frankly I’m sick of being one. I want to inhabit my body and exist – like today when later in the afternoon everyone was napping again, I was able to recline on the sofa and read my book (although I again found myself tortured by the choice to go read on the porch or read on the couch).
I read and read Pollan’s treatise on how we have fucked up the simple pleasure of eating and now I wonder about the simple pleasure of being.