Slow Moments: Week Three.

“Try, as if you were one of the first men, to say what you see and experience and love and lose.”

– Rainer Maria Rilke

Last Saturday, my good friend and fellow sketch artist Chandler picked me up in Seattle and suggested we take the long way back to her home south of the city.

I was all too happy to follow the scenic route, especially once we began curving along Lake Washington and its evergreen-lined shores. Although the sky had been overcast for much of the day, by late afternoon the rain had cleared. The lake’s surface glimmered a dozen shades of silver and lavender and blue.

We passed by Mount Baker Park, a lakeside strip of land looking out towards Mercer Island. When I smiled at a canoeist whose passengers were two tiny white dogs in tiny orange life jackets, Chandler asked if I wanted to stop and sketch.

As we pulled out our sketchbooks and sat at a soggy picnic table by the lake’s edge, it felt as though the day had been a Russian nesting doll of slow moments, a continual series of decisions to do things not the fastest or most efficient way, but in a manner that enabled us to be near nature, moving at a pace that allowed us to truly absorb it.

Two days later, a friend of this site – Oliver from Germany – sent me a poem he had written, one that was actually inspired by our current Slow Moments Project. It’s a beautiful poem, and when I came to a particular question he asks in it, I was instantly reminded of my Mount Baker sketching session with Chandler:

What is it that turns minutes into moments?

In eight words, Oliver captured what it is that has been unknowingly driving this entire project. It’s about an awareness, an appreciation, an acknowledgement that just two seconds of our attention can isolate one of a million tiny pieces that make up each day and elevate it to a moment worth remembering.

Some of the moments you sent in for today happened last week, others happened years ago.

Some took place in your backyard, others on the far side of the world.

Some were times of joy, others times of loss.

But what they all have in common is awareness – a decision to step out of the endless ebb and flow of life and create a moment from a minute. 

Slow moment in Scotland: Oliver

{slow moments}

Keen
to keep pace
with time
we tend to hurry
chasing clock hands,
forgetting
to remember
to slow down
in order
to keep pace
with life.

What is it
that turns minutes
into moments?
And how dare we
to refuse
sometimes??

Moments
are not bound
to places,
but the setting
of our mind.
It’s not the journey we take,
but the journey
that takes us;
not the path ahead,
but the one
within.

Moments
are memories
in the making.

Moments
are the absence
of time…

Oliver is currently calling Edinburgh home and blogs at: www.coffeestainedjournal.com

Slow moment in Kenya: Brittany

Birds are all around us, feasting on fruits in the trees, twittering cheerful melodies, and gliding high overhead. But how often do we stop and take the time to acknowledge their presence? My life is often so furiously fast that it’s as though birds don’t even exist. Traveling reminds me that there are birds everywhere, if only we slow down enough to look and listen.

One place to rediscover birds is Mida Creek, an estuary that juts out of the Indian Ocean in coastal Kenya. There, at a community-run bird hide, my husband and I spent hours reconnecting with the birds. Gathered here from all corners of the globe for a few short weeks to fatten up on healthy microphytoplankton-filled mud, worms, and crustaceans, the birds enjoyed chirpy chit-chat, refreshing baths in the salty waves, and shelter within the surrounding mangroves from the harsh African sun.

We watched the crab plover with particular interest, as he soared over the mud before spiraling down toward his prey. Our only task that afternoon? To try to photograph the crab plover with his captured lunch in beak. Success!

Brittany and her husband Bruno are currently traveling the world in their 1988 Toyota Land Cruiser and blog at: www.wanderingfootsteps.blogspot.com

Slow moment in Malaysia: Amanda

When you’re travelling with just an energetic three-year-old boy for company, slow moments are rare. I wasn’t sure how he’d enjoy visiting temples around George Town in Penang, but (as he often does), he surprised me.

His favorite was the Dhammikarama Burmese Buddhist Temple, colorful and happy just like him, and he particularly liked its pond and garden. At first, he ran along all its paths, pointing out the enormous koi fish to me, then dragged me along to explore the other golden buildings in the temple complex.

Before we left, though, he asked to go back to the pond. It was shady there, with a light breeze; even the humidity disappeared for a while, and I sat down for a few minutes, watching him pause to take in all the unusual temple comings and goings, wondering just what a three-year-old might be thinking about it all.

Amanda lives in Perth, Australia, and blogs at: www.notaballerina.com

Slow moment in California: Sonya

A week ago I was in a bike accident. I was on a mission to run as many errands as possible in-between classes while getting some exercise by cycling around town. It was a Friday and I was gearing up for the weekend by checking everything off my to-do list.

I left my office, joining the masses of students hurrying from one class to another, and after ten minutes approached a bike circle where I’d be forced to make a sharp turn. Rather than slow down and hit the brakes, I chose to speed through, saving effort and time. Moments later I was thrown head-first off my bike into the pavement. People gathered around me asking, “Are you okay??” At first, I wasn’t really sure.

I had a huge bump on my head so I went to the hospital, waiting around in the corridors while more important injuries were attended to. A few hours later the doctor cleared me, saying I was not concussed and the worst of it would be soreness and bruising.

That evening, I found myself repeatedly returning to the question of why I had been in such a rush. It’s true I had a lot on my to-do list, but I genuinely had the time to accomplish everything without hurting myself in the process. Ironically, rushing only meant nothing got done that weekend as I spent the time in recovery.

This week, being a bit hesitant to hop right back on my bike, I walked everywhere instead. In California, it’s been rather warm this winter and the trees and bushes are already blooming with gorgeous flowers. I remembered back to autumn, when I would rush by the changing colors of the leaves in my car or on my bike, repeating to myself that I’d walk back one day, in a slower pace, and enjoy snapping some pictures. Which, of course, never happened.

So, this Friday, still feeling slow after the accident, I took my camera out, and went exploring. I enjoyed the “spring,” the flowers, the sunshine, and the feeling that life is right here and right now and doesn’t need to be rushed by.

Sonya currently lives in Davis, California, and blogs at: www.slowbutsteadytraveler.com

Slow moment in India: Anwar

When I think of India, my mind always wanders back to my grandfather’s house, a turn-of-the-century house that was tucked away in a corner of one of those neighborhoods that seems to defy change. My last visit to it was back in 2007 for a couple weeks among my family members so near in relation yet so far away in distance.

Slowing down was a necessity and unplugging was easy; there wasn’t anything to plug into. There was electricity but it seemed to be more of an afterthought as it existed in only a few of the areas; a strung-up incandescent light or the small TV that folks would occasionally tune into the Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” (Kaun Banega Crorepati).

Showers consisted of dumping buckets of water on you from a tub heated with a handheld heater. There was also a western toilet installed in a corner area for the American relatives that visited. The skittish lizards on the walls would remind us we were still so far from home though.

The house was perfect in my mind for the area it was placed; there were a few rooms lining the edges around a courtyard with a fig tree and pomegranate tree. The open layout of the house forced people to spend more time together which was just one of its many benefits. You could feel the outdoors yet still be within the quiet interior of the house and relaxing on a pillow watching the birds land and hop around provided ample amusement.

We’d spend most days sitting around on the ground sharing meals, stories, and laughs. My language skills were not quite developed (although I’m only marginally better now), but even just among the smiles we communicated and laughed at our rudimentary words in each other’s languages. We all had a curfew from myself and my mom, to my aunts and uncles (some of who were grandparents themselves). We had to be back in the house by 9pm lest they face lockout or my grandfather’s ire.

But even with the occasional joke and under breath complaint we all dutifully returned home in time for dinner and each other’s company.  My brother and I once ran up to the roof one evening to watch a wedding procession for it was already past curfew for us to go outside. There was talk I recall at one point of trying to get to an internet cafe to check email, although I never opted to follow my brother there. I didn’t really miss disconnecting for those days and even now my brother and I reminisce joyfully on those days and the benefits of disconnecting from technology and the outside world.

Having just returned from another trip to India, while I enjoyed it and all the moments, it was not quite the same. Since my grandfather’s passing, the old house has been sold and torn down and everyone from my aunts to my young cousins seem to have smart phones and constant internet access. Everyone is busier and there is no one making sure we are all home by 9pm each night. I almost regret my past jokes of wanting to see what Hyderabad was like at night.

We still sat together and I always made it a goal to be more mindful to unplug. But while it was still remarkable it will never be the same slow moment it was those years ago with the evening’s breeze singing through house and the flickering lights always a moment before blackout. It was those moments when I didn’t have to be mindful of slowing down, it was the only speed worth moving.

Anwar is currently based in the US and blogs at: www.beyondmyfrontdoor.com

Slow moment in Idaho: Erin

Adagio: a piece of music that is played or performed slowly and gracefully.

– Merriam-Webster.com

On a white, snowy day during the first week in January, after terminal disease had gripped his lungs tighter each year, my father-in-law, Patrick Byrne, died at his home in Boise, Idaho.

During his last months, as Pat’s intake of oxygen decreased, tender touches and honest exchanges with us, those who loved him, increased. His wife Jan, his four remaining siblings out of the original six, his children and grandchildren, and closest friends came to embrace Pat and say goodbye.

Pat had always accepted me as I was, which was a rare and sometimes unrecognized gift in my life. His papery hand felt fragile in mine, but he squeezed with surprising strength. We exchanged words of love and parting with our eyes carrying the invisible current between us.

In the Irish-Catholic tradition of this family, we gathered in Boise for days of ritual: vigil, wake, funeral, wake, interment…and departure. A wake is a watch held over the body of a dead person prior to burial and in the Byrne family it is always accompanied by much festivity.

As brothers, sisters, kids, aunts, uncles and cousins arrived at the hotel, time adagioed.  We exchanged kisses and embraces, fell into the rhythm of each other’s voices, reignited our comfortable connections. The kids’ table now held a case of Irish beer as college stories were interspersed with memories of Papa Pat.

As a “lapsed Catholic,” I hadn’t been inside a church for years, but that evening as I sat in the vast, circular space during the vigil and listened to Pat’s brother Bob, a former priest, speak in the cadence of the past, the sounds seemed to grow slower, to became notes separated by silence. I’d been asked to compose a poem, which I read in the way of an Irish blessing.  We sang familiar songs, and took turns touching the body that had once been Pat’s earthly vessel.

This was the beginning of our process of ending.

When it was time to leave for the festivities, inside a second of silence, I sensed a collective moment of hesitation. It was if at once, we all saw a life lived, felt each other’s sorrow, and existed in an elevated place together, a spiritual place that felt closer to wherever Patrick was now.

As we left this place, the music resumed.

* * *

For Patrick Sheedy Byrne on week of your wake and the night of your vigil

May you feel energetic and invigorated
as you laugh with those we envision you with
and celebrate in Celtic style with our God.

May you be enveloped in loving kindness
warmed in blinding light
transformed by eternity.

May you feel the rich and varied love of each of us here
inside whatever you now experience
as this very moment.

May you call to us with new resonance in that voice we remember
the voice we cherish
the voice we will hear again if we listen with our spirits.

* * *

Erin is currently based on the West Coast of the US – read more of her writing at: www.e-byrne.com

It has been such an honor to share your Slow Moments thus far! There are still three weeks to come…if you’d like to send in a story, please do so by email to [email protected].