BLUE LEAF SHADOWS

talking to my brother Jeremy last night and the subject of water came up, because he is getting ready to move across from a river. I remembered that his ideal spot as a kid, when he needed to go somewhere beautiful in his mind to meditate, was a river, and now he would be living his dream, in the suburbs of Denver no less.

I told him about how when I was on a 41 day vow of silence I read of a Russian leader of a nomadic tribe who would council his people to submerge themselves in water seven times a day and how they would plan their peregrinations around river and lake crossings as a result. This resonated with me and I have been trying to get in water at least ONCE a day ever since. A shower usually, but I find that in natural bodies of water the vibrations are much stronger. Positive ions or something.

That made me think in turn of the woman I met on a recent tour of Wave Hill Gardens in the Bronx. She touched every tree she passed. I asked her why and she said that ever since she had become a Reiki practitioner she could feel tree energy. As soon as she told me this it resonated and I knew it would effect the rest of my life in much the same way as reading about the Russian saint had. I would touch more trees in the future because of her suggestion.

Then I thought about a show I caught on TV in the hotel room when I went to Myrtle Beach with my in-laws a few months ago. It was called Naturescene and it was just a couple of naturalists walking through the woods and pointing out interesting things about the flora and fauna all around them. I could have watched that show all night. It's been on the air for 32 years in the south it turns out. I found it online.

I fantasized about putting a show together like that for my own surroundings, finding some naturalist guided and walking through Central Park, but maybe bring literature and history into the mix like Dylan did with his satellite radio show. Make the show that I myself would like to watch.

Just then I noticed the shadow of leaves against the trunk of a tree I was passing were a rich dark blue. Then the shadow turned brown-red, then blue again. I realized it was because a traffic light was lighting up the leaves. The dark blue shadows of the leaves against the tree were the beautiful result of the green traffic light magnified through the green leaves.

"One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes" Frank O'hara