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‘I can be with life just as it is.’

I wake up in the morning and peek through the blinds to see what color the sky is today. It’s usually black at 4:30am But on Saturday, it’s the color of denim. Then it dissolves into a bluish gray. And before 10:00, the white blue shimmer.

I recently picked up Danielle North’s beautifully illustrated book “Morning Meditations.” With a gloomy mood and a swollen cheek adfter tooth extraction, I had no energy for anything else. And that book had been sitting across from my bed for what felt like two years.

I read: ‘Just for today, observe that you are not your mind. You have a mind, but you are not your mind.‘

‘You have emotions, but you are not your emotions’.

So who am I? That question sounded, really annoying. Thursday was dark. My head hurt, and I couldn’t make the paper sun I’d planned for the Celtic celebration of Imbolc.

Only the sentence: ‘I can be with life as it is‘ brought lightness for a few seconds.

So here I am in this unlit end of January. Creamy vegetable soup with avocado oil tastes wonderful because I eat it very slowly, almost meditating. It’s just a moment that passes. I breathe. A Tibetan bowl softly rings. Ding-dong. I see a soup stain on the tablecloth.

I’m desperate for coffee. My cheek is swollen. I close my eyes. I breathe. A seagull squawks in the garden. And I’m not pretending. I feel. I am. I don’t soar like a bird. I sit on the sofa.

In a book, I find a whale and think how lucky I am to live by the ocean. The path of my heart is dark turquoise. It leads through khaki grass. Then the landscape changes. Just like the days of my life.

On Saturday, I spread out yellow carton. And I’m outlining the round shape of the sun from dinner pot. Now I’ll cut out rays from crepe paper. And the sun’s eyes will be a turquoise glitter. I apply a little cornflower blue eyeshadow to my eyelids.

Ding-dong. The sky is changing again.

Illustrations in the book SpaceFrog Designs.