Clarified Butter and Trees Falling in the Forest

Did you ever have something big happen? Something that shakes the insides of you so that you have to shut your eyes and when you open them again the world looks strangely tilted? Something that changes how you approach people? How you approach the world? How you approach yourself?

I'm in the midst of something like that. I know that I've been quiet pretty much since last spring, and it's because I've been walking on a tilted landscape. It gets pretty tiring. I've been trying as often as possible to be still--which isn't easy while mothering, wife-ing, working, writing. But I've found pockets of stillness. I almost hold my breath when I find this stillness because  #1: I'm always surprised by it, but more so because #2:  I desperately want the stillness to last as long as possible.

And maybe it's because my breath is held and I'm oxygen-deficient, or maybe because it's only in the stillness that I'm able to actually open my eyes and look around, but I'm finding my view of the world has started to clarify, like butter.

www.macheesmo.com

www.ivillage.com

My view isn't crystal clear, but it's not gloppy anymore. (And let me tell you, it was insanely and disgustingly gloppy for awhile.)  So, whenever I am able to steal some time from a busy life, I'm going to be posting here some of these moments of clarity that I've been stumbling on while in the stillness. Moments I suppose I might refer to as "Clarified Butter Moments." 

(I actually had no intention of using this butter metaphor when I started this post, but there we have it. I've written my way into something a bit ridiculous, yet maybe--hopefully--not fully stupid.) 

Perhaps you have had these Clarified Butter Moments (CBMs) ages ago and I'm just starting to catch up. 

Or maybe when a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, the falling tree was just me tripping and falling into a gorse bush, and the fact that no one hears it is because no one's actually listening. (But believe me, I make a horrendous noise when I fall into gorse bushes.)

Or maybe you're on the same path of discovery as I am, and we can walk together for a little while.

Whatever the scenario, I'm going to keep showing up now and again with my CBMs, because as Leonardo Da Vinci said: "Develop your senses--learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else." 

So maybe amidst all the clarified butter I--or we--will learn how to really see.