Day 2: Wednesday, 26 August 2020
Weather: Calm, occasional light breezes
After thinking about how I was using my arms in yesterday’s meditations, today’s drawing meditation focused on branches. The same elderberry ink as yesterday (unfiltered, blue/grey with purple hints, 2020 batch), but with a Chinese calligraphy brush on watercolour paper (a different sort than yesterday).
The calligraphy brush’s motion seemed to nicely reflect the motion of the tree in the wind. It was very pleasing to use – much better than the calligraphy pen from yesterday.
In the tree-meditation itself, I felt the loose arms were working well for me. I felt I also needed lose knees, loose head. Watching the tree in the breeze, it’s like it wakes up when the wind comes through, so I made changes to try to incorporate this – letting my head drop in the calm, but raising up with the breeze. This was working quite well, and solved the problem of where to look, but I felt it needed more exploration to understand.
Theres also a breathing feel to the way the branches move with the wind.
Today’s meditation felt more complex than yesterday’s – branch-arms moving as individual units, leaf-fingers responding with the lightest of breezes, head perhaps as tree-head, reflecting the response of the plant in general, switching between dormant and alert. I’m getting much more of a sense of the elder – today’s meditations felt much more like my tree and its reactions, much more satisfying to do.