Le tonnerre – thunder – is rumbling heavily, fast approaching. It is as if someone is rolling around bones above or moving a grand piano from one celestial room to another. It can happen sometimes with the heat in Provence where the pressure will build until loose, messy storms break out. They are predicted for today, have been predicted since morning actually but it was only a little while ago that I picked my head up from an article I am working on to notice that the sky had darkened and the swallows were swooping extra low. So I fed the dogs early and took them out just in case. My espadrilles are broken in to the point of being broken and so I have to pick myself carefully along the rock-strewn path. Sapphire-bodied dragonflies hovered like drones over powderpuff clover, wings beating so fast as to be invisible. I closed my eyes for just a moment to feel the breeze skimming across the beads of perspiration on my forehead but then another boom rang out, closer, and Ben, my sweetest Golden, looked at me with eyes shining in panic so we stepped up the pace home.
Despite the heat, I had stepped back on the yoga mat this morning. Just pointing my red-tipped toes towards it and then placing one foot then the next was like slipping into a pool. It is familiar. Somewhere – I think it is my Sister who has it – there is a beaten up, faded photograph of my Mom giving yoga lessons on the front lawn. Robin, my Sister, is doing a pretty good copy of my Mom’s pose but me, the littlest and probably only five at the time was doing something entirely of my own make. I might have added this into my memory but I seem to recall me giggling at how funny I was being. Today I told myself to go slowly, which felt appropriate as if I was parting the thickness of the air with my arms and legs and breath. For you see, it had been quite a while. And this for an act which does me a world of good, one that I usually say strips me down to the best of myself.
Age is not something that I tend to concern myself with much. But lately, my body has been telling me that maybe, just maybe, I need to be a tiny more specific. I am not the only one. My friend DA has written a really excellent piece for the Huffington Post that circles around and pin-pointing some of the same ideas that have been ringing in my head as evasively as the thunder. To me that is some of what the best of this odd internet world can do – a little lineup of gentle pinpricks of thought or ideas – that can help even the most heat-addled of us play connect the dots. So I stepped back on the mat.
Despite the house shutters clanking and the olive tree branches swaying like the sea below my window, I think that the storm has passed us by. I have been sitting next to Ben in the shower of the guest room – his fear fort – for the past fifteen minutes but something imperceptible shifted in the air so I got up to see. The sky is a soft orange in the distance – but in the opposite direction now. Maybe the heat lightning is cracking its whip over there, so quick and passing but I wonder if it is waking something up in someone else’s heart as well.
Hasn't the weather been crazy? We tend to get these big storm at the end of August but now? Does that mean that we will have them again later on too? I can't even enjoy them since I am on Dog Caregiver Patrol but I can see that the skies are darkening and that there might be one more coming this afternoon.
And yes, aiii, I have really been struggling with my practice the past few months. Getting back to it is not easy…
ps, thank you for your kind words about my photography! And I'm about 1hr40 minutes west of you *waves vaguely in the right direction*
Thank you so much for your comment on my blog earlier today! What a beautiful post, I love your description of the thunder. I've never heard thunder like that we've had here in the last week, I've been spending a lot of time sitting under the sun shades watching the sky in awe. I also love your description of yoga, I've been trying to get back into doing it regularly while I've been in France but my god, it's hard to motivate myself, even when doing it makes me feel so much better.
As I wrote on Judith's wonderful post…if only I could have a tiny more discipline where physical activity is involved…and perhaps on saying "non" to cheese! That is fantastic that you are both swimming…
Leslie, that is phenomenal that Henry and Bob listened to you enough for you to get them home! Wow. I have been in similar situations with Ben and it is touch and go and very,very scary – certainly when we lived in Arles and his beeline for home meant running out into traffic! Now he will listen to me enough that if I say "sit", amazingly he will sit and that will usually give me enough time to reach him and put on his leash. Good Boy.
I can't remember if I wrote about last 4th of July? I was at my Mom's in the States and volunteered to stay home to keep an eye on Sweetie – her gentle giant of a rescue – because he is petrified of fireworks. Well, Michigan laws state that you can set off even the huge fireworks and it truly was like a warzone. Finally, once he got into the bathtub I could at least get him to settle in but it was heartbreaking to see him like that and it lasted for so long. I am hoping that they will go to my Sister's place in the country this year because it is so loud that honestly I don't even think that sleeping pills would work.
That must be just gorgeous watching the storms roll in from your spot up on the hill! And I am so enjoying your journey with this new house…
I well know how our pooches need a "fear fort" and human solace during times of thunder or firecrackers. Henry and Bob go down to the part of our house's first floor that is underground and wait out the ear-splitting cracks in a dark corner with me and/or Scott. July 4 is so loud for so long that we have resorted to an Rx for sleep from our vet. When I was caught on a walk with them offleash during an unexpected spring thunderstorm, I learned just how much they trust me to take care of them when they are frightened…even though they just wanted to flee (i.e., find someplace to hide) they followed my urgings and made it home (just in time for the storm to clear). How fortunate that Ben has you, the shower and the music, and now Kipling, to soothe him through the thunder. I can't imagine how pervasively intrusive it must be for their sensitive canine ears. Well done, Leslie
Thank you, Heather and Judith, for reminding me of the importance of committing to a time routine when it comes to my professional work and, probably even more importantly, my swimming. Day and day, bit by bit, I am making the changes designed to allow a swimming practice and a work practice to co-exist with a modicum of (but less) flexibility. Thank you for the continuing inspiration! Your undisciplined-but-trying-to-improve cohort, Leslie in Oregon
Your thunderstorms have been saving up for Greece. We can almost set our watches these days by when the clouds covering the mountain top start churning towards us – the thunder a drumroll – announcing that soon huge raindrops will be falling. Each day they say, "This is the last" and hopefully one day it will be. Thanks for your recent visits to Travelnwrite, I think of you and your village life when I write of ours.
He did. Remi came home not too much later and that switched him out of it. I am glad and flattered that you liked the post so much! Sending Cheers back to the other side of the world…