STILLNESS

Nothing like the stillness of a mountain rice paddy on a calm early May dawn, like this one. The paddies up here have by now been flooded, harrowed to readiness and let to wait with the infinite patience of water.

So it is that these fine days the mirroring mountainside is full of blue sky, passing clouds, now-and-then rainrings and rainbows, the mountains themselves, airy grace of hawks, curlicues of swallows and after sunset our entire universe, gliding over at a night's pace. But for now in this emerging morning it is a rare, pure stillness. You can stand here long and gaze at the sight, let it fill you with your own stillness, that brings to the front of mind a number of things that for some reason were stored way at the back...

Now and then, as so often with actual still life, along comes a slight breeze that shivers the water, scrambling the view till a new calm comes. In other nows and thens comes a crow or a hawk to walk the water, sending out perturbations with each hungry step, or up pokes a frog for a breath and a look around at the newday world, after a night of full-hearted amphibian carousing that I caught part of when I came home from the city last night, fell asleep to, woke up in mid-night to, then went back to sleep to. Like the sight of the widening rings and the feel of the reach of stillness, the sound is kin to the natural mind.

It is a good thing to have such a gift at my door for a few days every Spring at about this time, to re-mind me with the bounty that stillness is, nourishing to all around it, a truth that water knows as fully as anything can be known. Folks who have no time for such vastness might as well just stare at some kind of small screen.

Stillness begets all true nourishment, including rice.

WHERE THE LIGHT PLAYS

This morning when I stepped out the door onto the deck on my way to some garden work I was surprised at how bright it was out there-- the light itself was different, then I looked around the corner of the house and saw that two of the paddies across the road had been flooded since yesterday.

Like the paddies downmountain, these were now as blue as the morning sky and as bright, and as I set to planting my own plants I thought about how every year around this time the entire mountainside becomes a mirror that remains as bright as the sky for a good while after all the paddies are flooded and the mountain becomes the sky's reflection, even at night when it fills with galaxies.

This goes on until the rice is planted, when the sky of the mountain greens with growth each day as the stalks replace light with life, the mountainside turning toward imperial jade at the pace of growth, the ambiance changing as well all along the days as the light travels at vegetable speed, which is quite a switch, and stirs calming perturbations in the spirit, itself a matter of light that takes much of its nourishment from beauty and transition.

The habituated mind as well is reminded, as it steps out onto the deck blithely thinking all to be just as it was, and so comes to re-realize reality. Which is beneficial, by and large, and happens often out in the countryside, where light plays and grows, like widening rings in water.

No moon - 

newflooded paddies 

sparkle with galaxies

WATERMIRRORS

These are the early days of rice growing season, when the leaves of the new rice are all but invisible upon those many facets of water that just a few days ago were filled only with mountains and sky. Heading down the road these dawns is like traveling through a whole mountainside of optical illusions, passing by mirrors of open water where the farmers have planted their family paddies with the barest of rice stalks that from a distance are invisible, those small leaves placed 30 cm or so apart; in the slanted light it is a visual treat to slowly roll toward the village on my motorcycle and at first, looking down from above each watermirror, see nothing but sky reflected-- then a vague geometric pattern begins to emerge as the light changes and the tiny rice plants become manifest - mere wisps of green, the lines and rows of them curving and turning to fit the shape of the respective paddy - then when I draw to the level of the water there is suddenly a soft green layer floating there at eye level, like a jade mist above a mirror, then I look below to the next paddy and again it is only water, upon which a geometric pattern of green slowly resolves and turns to mist as I descend...

In a paddy here and there along the way stalks a crow, egret or hawk, searching for frog, insect, little fish that live there-- they pause in their breakfast labors, lift their heads above the green to watch me as I pass, then get back to the big menu...