Simple but not easy

Today I decided to sit in our backyard for one hour.  So simple.  All it took was a low beach chair.  The idea was to see whatever I saw, hear whatever I heard, think and feel whatever I felt. 

What was not easy about it was that I seldom, more likely never, just sit quietly.  I have meditated at times in my life, but then usually only for fifteen or twenty minutes, and never consistently.  Restlessness always arises, thoughts of what I could/should/will be doing.  Not being productive, or at least busy (not the same thing at all), feels like a waste.

But still, I truly wanted to experience my backyard and whatever delights of Nature it might provide.  I wanted to experience stillness and calm.  I wanted to stimulate my senses.  I just wanted to know what it would be like to take an hour of the day and put it toward the everything of nothingness.

Sweet Hubby often sits on our deck in the mornings, and has reported seeing interesting birds, including a number of hummingbirds.  We have seen bunnies and raccoons in the yard from time to time, and there are pretty much always squirrels chasing one another up and down the trees and fences.  I wore my brightest shirt because I've seen hummingbirds approach brightly covered shirts.  I had a colored sweatshirt over my legs, because it was chilly today after yesterday's heat.  I realized early on that I had not been barefoot for a long time, so I took off my shoes and put my feet in the grass, which felt wonderful.

There was high cloud cover, so the sky was an unbroken pearl color.  For a long time, all I heard was the light swish of traffic going by on the street two houses away.  Every so often a bird would make a ditditditditdit sound, always the same note five times in a mezzo soprano range.  Later, there were other bird songs, but none I recognized.  I saw one bird, a crow, the entire time.  One.  Not a hummingbird anywhere to be seen (which doesn't mean they weren't there; only that I never saw them).  Sweet Hubby has the advantage of sitting amidst our flower boxes, so there are fragrances as well as colors to attract them.  Or maybe they show up for him because he's nicer than I.  Hmph.

I made myself as comfortable as possible so that I could be completely relaxed, but when I would scan my body, I always found that some group of muscles had tightened subtly.  Maybe it was because of the chill, or maybe it was that restlessness manifesting itself.  I would breathe deeply and relax again, only to find next time I checked that I'd once again tightened somewhere.

Toward the end of the hour, a squirrel showed up, hopping around in the grass looking for whatever it could eat.  It paid me no mind.  Once in a while I heard the sounds of neighbors in their yards, but didn't see anyone.  A child cried a few times, but wasn't particularly heartfelt about it.  Sometimes a jet would fly by, south to north.

And that was it, my big adventure in the backyard.  It wasn't as full of sensations as I'd hoped, but I've studied Buddhism just deeply enough to understand that every moment is completely full, even if it doesn't hold any of what one wishes or hopes for.  Even a seemingly half-full glass of water is completely full, because air is just as much something as water is.  So it was a good hour, and one I would do well to repeat now and then, just to rest and quiet my mind.

Still, a hummingbird would have been nice.