I miss hearing the hills

I haven't heard or felt it for a week or two. It had been happening so regularly recently that I had come to expect it. And now, silence. It is still pretty, the rolling hills, the trees, the sky, all the colors, but I'm not hearing or feeling them. When it happens, it is like hearing the hills sing (the sky, the trees), but I don't really hear words, tones maybe, maybe I just feel it, like how a deaf person hears. I can't explain it, but when it happens, tears always come to my eyes, it is amazement, awe.

It might be a tumor, a seizure, or a bit of crazy, I suppose, but I like it.

It was over two and half years ago when I first remember it happening, we were on a trip in CA, and my son and I were at the natural history museum in San Deigo. I was looking at botanical paintings, Valentien (or something that sounds like valentine) was the name of the painter. Water colors I think. An exhibition of his work. Like many painters the admiration for is work, came after his death. I loved them. It was like they weren't a painting of a type of plant, but like he was painting part of the soul of this plant on paper, like he had somehow caught the essence of what it meant to be this plant. I don't know maybe I could see them again tomorrow and not feel anything, and think it odd that I ever did, but on that day, they sang to me. The colors, the curves, the flowing on the page, it danced and hummed, and I just wanted to stand there and listen to it forever. And my Son kept poking me, and complaining, and grabbing my arm and trying to pull me away, as I walked slowly from flower to flower trying to take it all in. Trying to hear them singing. He would practically walk into the walls, and lean against them, and I was trying to make him behave and be quiet, so I could hear and feel, and be this somewhere other place I had never been before. A person who worked there came over to me to express his worry that my son might harm the work. I wouldn't have let him do that. I wished they would both just let me be, just give me this, I thought, just a few more moments. Each time I was dragged away, the spell would break, and I was worried it would be lost forever. but then I would look at the painting, and the color on the page was like a note, being played, and as my eye swept from this dot of color to that, and this line of color to that, it was one note to the next, and I would hear/feel it again. I was so sad when finally I had to give up, and surrender to my son, and go on to the other exhibits. (I'm sure the gentleman who worked there was very very happy to see us go).

I never expected it to happen again, and mostly it didn't. Once or twice last year (meaning school year 05-06) I would be driving along and suddenly look over and be in awe. That year it happend mostly at twilight. The sky and the hills, it was like a tone, or sound, it was amazing the way it felt, so beautiful and like I hadn't really seen it before. I thought that I had, who hasn't looked at the sky of a setting sun, and thought it beautiful, and felt a kinship with the natural world and I would have used the word awe then at times to discribe it, but this was more. This fall it started happening regularly (without the twilight, I'm harldy ever out during twilight this year). And so then I wondered if I could make it happen. Sometimes when just driving along feeling nothing, I can focus on it, and lean into feeling it. Mostly be looking at colors or an area, and seeing the colors within it, and the colors next to it, and the colors are like notes, and I feel them moving against and with each other. And then it sort of takes off and plays itself. But it is the most powerful when I am not thinking about it at all, and am disgruntled and distracted, even mad about some stupid little thing, and then suddenly I see all this light and intense color, it is wham, I am struck, and when that happens it isn't a small section, it is all of it. Like this one day, after it had rained, and I was in the car, carrying on to myself, mad about something, and then suddenly I saw the light reflected off the white gold corn fields, the telephone wires reflecting a silver light on top, like spider webbing, the silver white lines in the road ahead of me (from the water), and then a green field ahead, and the water droplets, scattered through out the grass, reflecting back up to the sky, glittering as I drive by. And then I can't believe I didn't notice it before, didn't see or hear all this, right outside my car window.

The warmth that has persisted this season has made the colors more intense. Usually by now, the world has turned grey. This year the trees are bare, much of the fields ochre, or gold burned white by cold and sun, and then I will see a patch of intense green among the other colors, and the color modulations, will dance, and vibrate, and sing. I am driving, either from having dropped my son off at school, or going to pick him up. And when it happens, it is just so wonderful. I don't hear much but him when he is in the car (that is a kind of wonderful too, a different wonderful). And I usually don't hear/feel it when the radio is on, but sometimes I do or start to, and then turn it off. I still daydream a lot while driving, but not as much as I used to, and I try to pay more attention, when my surrounding are vibrant to see if I will feel anything.

Several weeks back, I was out with my husband running errands, groceries, etc. and I kept noticing the water. Ducks on it, a pond here, a lake, river, as we drove around, and it was like I hadn't seen it before, the weight of it, the ripples on it, it seemed different. Thicker, had more presence. I didn't hear or feel anything, it was just weird, the intensity of the visual. My Husband was listening to talk radio and going on and on about politics, and I wanted to say "hush, I'm seeing, really seeing the water and the ducks, for the first time, and I don't want to miss any of it, any detail". But of course I didn't say that, and after awhile there was no water out the window, so I turned back and gave him my full attention. Wondering if it was just the cold, and water always looks different in the winter, and I had just never noticed it before, or if it was some oddity in me, and it wouldn't be the same the next time I saw it.

Sometimes when I am out, things seem different, the barns, and trees, seem to mean something (no, not like the mashed potato mound in close encounters. it's just), I feel them differently, like I am not looking out a window, but like they are pictures in a painting, like they were thought out and placed exactly there for a certain effect. The way the tree bends and curves, the way the light hits it, the colors, the harmonies, the contrasts. And the little out building around them, seem symbolic. If there are childrens' toys in the yard, or birds flying overhead or,....it is hard to explain. It is like it is all too perfect, too beautiful, seems set up. And I feel the little buildings, the way one thing sits next to another, up close or apart, echoing, or not, groups of buildings or trees, a life in them, I hadn't seen before. Again, they humm and sing. Then the next day, when I am out, they are just buidlings again, not meaning or feeling, just there.

I have been loving all the burgundies, and reds, the rich browns, against the golds, and greens, this fall. The blue sky. I love the mist ( I don't think i have heard or felt it though, the mist, I would like to, but I don't). I saw a tree in our yard it was pale grey brown, the one side was hit by pink light, the other side, pale almost white blue, and as the tree branches, turned, the colors danced. Of course, I have always seen colors, this has always been, and yet that day to me it was somehow different. But now, it is merely pretty out. The way nature has always been beautiful and pretty, but without the extra whatever it is/was. I miss it. What if that is/was it, no more? I asked my Husband if he hears it/feels it, in case everyone does, and I just hadn't discussed it with anyone before. First he seemed confused, about what I meant, then said no he doesn't hear it, and that it is probably because he works all the time, as most people do, and because I am a stay at home mom, with a school age child, that is probably why I have time, to hear these things. I felt like he had taken a shot at me, and turned an occurance that I liked into a judgement against me. I certainly do not spend my days sitting down, looking out a window, or sitting out in the yard pondering its beauty. But I can't deny having the time to look out the window, while I am driving in silence/peace, and having my own thoughts, and not being incredibly stressed out (I can still manage to be surprisingly stressed though), really helps. It is true it creates a space were it can occur.

I wonder if there is a God. I certainly hope there is. I wonder if God hears all of us, and the animals, and plants, etc., as notes, and vibrations, if the earth is like a song, the universe can hear, and is played on and through it. And I wonder if sometimes I can just hear the faintest bit of the smallest part of it, and after I wonder that I immediately wonder if perhaps I am developing a brain tumor, or if this is some kind of seizure, or if I am going a bit crazy. Maybe my Husband is right, I have more time now, and I am more attuned, and maybe the increase in my focus on writing, makes me pay more attention to what I am seeing, and what it really looks like, feels like. And that the information I learned years and years ago when I went to art school, has just finally sunk in, and I can see pictures forming themselves infront of me, out in nature, where before it was all just separate pieces, unruly, unrelated, this and that.

I don't know. I just hope I hear/feel it again.

And I wonder if it is odd/ an unusual occurance, when I do get to hear it. Or if most people do, and that they just take it for granted that everyone else does, and so it isn't really discussed, and thus part of me is just half waking up now, to what has always been, and I have to hope that it doesn't fall back asleep.