the language of Magic which for me, is first visual and then sensory.
This is how the Creek taught me and how, that particular day, i understood i was being taught. It was the 7th year.
When i say the Creek, my Mother, i don't just mean the body of water that meandered and flowed, but everything around her. The trees, brush, plants, earth, rocks, sky, light of SUN and then her other children...all the creatures, including me.
there was an old tree that had fallen across the Creek. It had a bowl shaped indentation that my body fit into. I would lie on my stomach, my chin resting on her edge and just watch the water. The drawing here is very incorrect but it's the way it went...as if i were looking down from above at that 7 year old self. Proportion, perspective is way off but it's enough so you might get the drift? if you think of the tree as flat. not tilted.
I would go there and just lie on the body of the tree, chin resting at her edge and watch the water flow. Watch the reflection of the dappled sunlight through the leaves as they moved with the breeze. The sparkle. I don't remember having any thoughts or feelings. Just a watching, a sensing. it was like dreaming. This particular day, i first watched the reflected light and the things that would come along, floating, a leaf, a twig. Watched them come and watched them go along, how the pattern of the water changed with their movement. And then...i saw the shape and movement of a crayfish at the bottom on the sand and my vision shifted through the surface to the bottom and for some beautiful reason, i was aware of that shift....both of my eye's vision and my mind. I did this over and over, being fascinated by it and then it just progressed. I watched the surface, the water striders, the ripples they made and by shifting my attention i watched the algae that extended from the floor of the creek toward the surface. I watched the whirlygigs as they spun and then dove down with their perfect bubble of air through the algae then rising up. I let my gaze descend slowly through the layers of Life to watch the caddis fly nymphs with their stickandstone houses traipsing behind them as they scavenged the sandy bottom, minnows above in the middle of it all....Back UP, Back Down. Over and over and i was mesmerized by this. All the while the sound of birdsong, the feel of breeze in leaves and it was nothing less than total Magic. I had no words for this but it was ok, because i had no one to tell. This was every day for that whole summer.
