To move in the world

Bright flowers on a sunny day (Davis, CA)

"Sometimes I seem to sense my own body from the outside, how its form and skin must feel to air, light, cotton dress. I thought, maybe it doesn't matter where you draw the line between in and out, self and other, even weakness and strength. These differences are but touch points in the dance of complementarity; like epidermal surfaces, they allow encounter and caress.

A light rain spattered as I bathed at the well. It mingled with the splashing of the bucket, and I lathered up with oatmeal soap before going in to eat my oatmeal porridge. In and out, above, below - how odd and intricate this dance. I remembered what the poet M.C. Richards had said once about solitude: 'Learn to move in the world as if it were your lover'" (199). 

– From Widening Circles by Joanna Macy