Nature and silence go together, meaning human silence, so that the infinite spectrum of sensual delights can be drunk in, hindrance free.
The recent word in Malibu and Topanga is that mountain lions are roaming about much more frequently than in days past and being spotted in driveways and yards. The creatures of the world are on the move as their habitat morphs with changing times.
Uh oh.
As much as my wild side adores the notion of mountain lions on the prowl in bushes and behind trees on my bluff, I do not relish the thought of being their dinner.
Why does this thought ring a bell? Why does this thought make me want to sing?
As a girl in India, for the one month when my parents came up from the blistering heat of the plains and we ‘got out of boarding’, my route to our bungalow from school was down a road, around the end of the lake, through a pasture of cows and bulls, up through the woodsy jungle where who knows what lived…snakes, jackals, the occasional tiger, and giant bugs, and home.
Starting with the bovines. I wanted them to be at ease with me invading their space, and I wanted to be at ease. Cows certainly were everywhere in India, starving for the most part, innocently eating newspapers in the bazaar, or lazily hanging about and being sacred, but these were fat ones and they felt territorial to me. Song, from the depths of my soul, became my managing tool. The moment that I veered off the road into the pasture, with the very first step, “Whenever I feel afraid, I hold my head erect”, bubbled up from my gut and out of my mouth, into the air and with it courage.
Successfully making it across the pasture and through the opposite gate, heaving a genuine shaky sigh of relief that I had not been charged, now the tangled jungly vines, screeching birds and creeping insects loomed in front of me. And with it? Deep breath. “Oh What a Beautiful Morning”. I am here! Do not come near!
So now, sixty years later. The mystery of cellular memory. The notion of mountain lions on my bluff transforming what was sacred silence at the end of a day, into the hills are alive with the sound of “Oh What a Beautiful Morning”.
I wish that I was brave enough to be silent, but I have been warned that alone on a bluff, with no one else in sight, if happened upon by accident, I would be a tempting tasty morsel.
I shall sing.