A cool fall fog rolls over the mountains, trickling in among the palm fronds and nesting on the black, empty asphalt roads of twisting hillsides and residential neighborhoods. I walk, listening to the way the rubber soles strike the ground. Thinking about picking them up, trying not to shuffle along the street, I circle my arms forward and backward. Feeling into each step, pressing into the tendons and joints of my legs with each forward movement. Turning my head side to side, I look up, taking in the world around me. The sun filters in, a white orb dancing behind the low lying clouds just overhead. 

This is the time of silence. Of all the thoughts that want to creep into my mind about what I should be doing and how many things I am going to get done today. I slowly inhale, counting to six, holding the breath even though the rest of me is still moving, and then exhale. One, two, three, four, five, six. I try to slow down my steps to keep time, finding the body moving more quickly with the rapid swirl of thoughts beginning to increase speed with each additional second of being awake. 

Wrens and chickadees flitter through the eight foot hedges, evenly manicured as they curve around the streets. Guiding me through a maze of quiet mornings and uncertain work ahead, hearing nothing but the bending of twigs, the rustle of dead leaves on the ground. Awake and hungry, brown and gray birds have been at it since 6 o’clock with the rising of the sun. With the mountain warmth being met by the cool ocean air, as if the former tucking in the latter, asking it to wait just a few more hours to bring light into the world. Not ready to rise, not ready for the day to begin. 

I am already beginning, a mind full of things that should be done. 

I exhale and return to my body, coming back to a space of awareness and connection. Heavy dew drops finally let go of their perches and hit in front of my feet, plop plop. Eucalyptus trees standing tall against a towering monkey puzzle trees and palms, loosening the damp from the dark night air that’s hung to their bodies and made their crowns heavy. The day beginning, full of potential, and I am moving through it, twisting my body from side to side to warm it up though I wasn’t cold to begin with. Knowing last night I sweat out whatever I had to from a day filled with much more slowness than I was used to.

Some kind of beginning, this return to the world I’m living in. This return to finding work that I should value more, that I should value for some reason I find some identity attached to it. Rather, I want to be surrounded by the natural world. I want to be focused on what I need. And what I need right now is to connect more deeply to my body. To let the movement guide me. To give myself these moments of breath, not focused on what comes next, but only what is. 

I exhale and come back to the surroundings. Bougainvillea hanging over the road, coral pink and clementine orange mixing with the deep greens of a desert-esque coast. Perhaps today I can just focus on this: on being here. On doing enough. Enough for me.