Making Hay while the sun shines, part 2.
My apologies for the late arrival of today’s blog. After months of insomnia I was able to sleep last night. The usual time for tweaking and posting the next days blog was used for sleeping.
This morning was always going to be busy with good things. An early morning dog walk followed by a swim in the sea. The dog walk gave me this revised blog title.
Our local nature reserve is having a second hay harvest only a couple of weeks since the last.Today was always about making the best of things. We’ve had a sad old week which I’m sure I will touch on in various future blogs. So our is a metaphorical ‘ Making Hay While The Sun Shines’ kind of day. It turns out that is is also an actual Hay Making day.
The early dog walk was planned to facilitate an early swim with some old friends, pre 9am at Cawsand Beach. We found a quiet, almost Mediterranean corner of the beach to swim from.
The access to the sea was easy but very definitely more Cornish than Mediterranean, as was the sea temperature.
We had a fabulous swim, completely life enhancing and happiness creating. Followed by coffee and breakfast in our little cove. Emerging from our quiet spot there was very quickly signs of things to come!
The beach ahead of us was crowded even at 10 am.
Trying to get home involved an almost 10 mile traffic jam or a half hour drive to a ferry with a half hour wait.
Obviously from the picture you can see we chose the ferry.
This was a difficult decision for all @theold mortuary. A much loved family member was killed on the road to Torpoint and we’ve not ever travelled that road since. Some tears were shed.
South East Cornwall is full to the brim with people and traffic. Time to get back to part of today’s original blog.
The only link I can find is friendship.
Apparently government guidelines suggest that gatherings of 30 people are acceptable, with appropriate social distancing. Even with new additions I’m not sure I could gather 30 friends together and certainly not 30 family members. So once again I am unable to comply with new government guidelines. Meeting with a lower number of people suits us just fine. 30 seems giddyingly too many.
Just before lockdown I met two women. One at an art gallery and the other at a gym. Lockdown created a unique time and space to grow new friendships at a distance, we have also rekindled our old friendship with our swimming friends and nurtured existing friendships with the gift of more time. I’m not sure quite why the pandemic promoted the ability to speed up the cementing of really solid and valuable friendships both old and new, it’s a lovely positive in puzzling times.
I suppose that is something to ponder on!
The pictures below are lovely gifts that arrived this week from the Art Gallery friend and the Gym friend.
Lovely bursts of colour from flowers and crocheted bunting.
The pandemic has taught us to value friends and family and everything closer to home. It is a lovely feeling.
I took this photo in 2016 in a Catholic Church in Havana, Cuba.Unusually for sunflowers I find this image melancholy and I love it all the more because it subverts the usual feelings evoked by sunflowers. I’m pretty certain I will never take a better photo of sunflowers. I should probably stop trying.
This is another favourite, a sunflower next to a table light , artfully abstract, I like it but I don’t love it.Adoration, loyalty and longevity are the symbolic meanings attached to sunflowers in Western culture and in China good luck and lasting happiness .In Cuba, where my favourite picture was taken, the sunflower has a unique cultural significance. The sunflower is offered to the Virgin of Charity or Cachita as the mother of Jesus is informally known. Digging a little deeper the offering of sunflowers is a fascinating blend of worshipping girl power. In the Afro- Cuban belief system that is part of the Yoruba based religions, sunflowers are offered to Oshun who is an Orisha or spirit. She is a river goddess associated with divinity,feminity, fertility,beauty, freshwater, wealth and intimacy.The Virgin Mary in Cuba is habitually wearing a dress of sunflower yellow.Who knows why these flowers were left in a church, one of the many reasons I love this picture is the unpretentiousness of the bunch of flowers and that the imprint of the person who left them is still seen in the crumple of the newspaper used to wrap them.
The blend of Christianity and Yoruba are held together in this simple bunch of flowers.The same theme can also be glanced in this Cuban dance.
Shikantaza is one of those words, a firework of a word; it could go off in any direction. Street Food, the art of folding tree branches into mysterious shapes, a high fashion garment, the possibilities are endless.What it is, though, is Zen Meditation involving sitting and thinking. I do a lot of sitting and thinking , often adopting other positions too. Already I’m anxious to find the word for Zen Meditation while leaning on a wall. Thinking is one of my favourite activities. I also like to meditate which is the opposite of thinking.I’m not particularly good at static meditation, intrusive thoughts are the fuel of Ponderings why would I want to banish them?
I’m more inclined to meditate when doing onerous tasks or when doing something that is regular and repetitive.
I found this pebble hiding on the edge of a field, while walking again, Another thing to contemplate. The message is compelling after such a pretty walk this morning.
