Slow Sunday, time slowing down, life like theatre & a recipe.

Mackerel with sloshy rice and beans

Arriving home after working away I woke to sunshine playing on my walls, magic it was.

Warm words

Sometimes when I go out I don’t wear my hearing aids and the world, is very quiet. Serene. It’s a great way to come back home to myself when life has been busy. The world takes on a surreal quality.

The other day I was sitting on a seat at Reading train station, having taken out my hearing aids after two days of intense delivery to a group of people. My platform was empty when I arrived. The one opposite had lots of human beings coming and going. I couldn’t hear any of them as they moved this way and that. Watching their bodies walking, running, standing, leaning, changing their minds; was like a show at the theatre, one that kept slipping into slow motion because, when you can’t hear properly, life slows down.

A ladies shoes were standing in a beam of sunlight and they, shone. She moved and they disappeared behind a pillar. Then over on my platform I noticed flying insects with wings bigger than flies have. I could only see them when they flew through beams of sunlight, appearing then disappearing as they flew in and out. Those beams of golden light shining in great shards through a partly glassed ceiling.

A train arrived across the way and people walked from left to right, some fast some slow, one running but all silent, it was like watching a ballet on a stage with me in a front seat. There were legs and boots, white trainers and dark ones, shoes and sandles, all moving at different speeds, and on one of the blue seats there was a bright pink T-shirt, the person inside it holding up a phone but not looking at it, staring off into the distance. As I watched all this with no sound attached, my body, my nervous system slipped happily back into ancient time, a time before the world started demanding we live beyond the rhythm of what were made of, of what we are.

I kept watching through eyes, ears were at rest. A stream of people appeared on the escalator on the platform opposite from me, made their way onto the platform, others walked out through the ticket barriers into the sun. Then those flying insects that looked like pollen being blown about with wings, continued to anppear and disappear, until the beams of sunlight disappeared, and then they were gone.

On my platform there was one pigeon standing on the ground looking about, and one person sitting on the seat next to me, and there was a muffled sound I couldn’t make out, it was like listening to sounds above when you’re swimming under water. I could hear something and tried to make it out, perhaps a lift, or the hushed sound of people talking on other platforms, or perhaps something else.

Letting go of trying to work out what the hushed sound was I realised my platform had filled up, suitcases, people, tension in the air as our train arrived, packed. I heard it squeaking.

We clambered on with bags and cases and a young man with, I think a huge horn in a case, was becoming exasperated trying to fit it into the cases space, eventually giving up in dismay and leaving his great big horn case, in the carriage opening. I clambered over it and he found me a seat.

On the way home I sat and wrote this, listening to the sound of distant quiet voices and the hum of the train. A quiet rhythm for a couple of hours with countryside passing by the windows in dappled early evening sunlight, on a summers day of now, peaceful tranquility.

And then, I was home. Clattering off at the little station with one platform, where there are hedgerows full of birds song–hearing aids back in.

Recipe

Smoked mackerel, sloshy rice, green beans.

This was just what my vata needed after three days away from home, simple, unctuous, moisture filled rice, salty mackerel and green beans slathered in butter, parsley freshly picked and more salt. I love simple foods, tasty, fresh and nourishing. And that sloshy rice with ghee and salt is great for comforting an imbalance of vata dosha (Ayurveda). I put it in the slow cooker to slow cook with lots of water, then stir through ghee and salt for a simple unctuous feast.

It’s a short one this week!

I don’t think I can say, wishing you the warmest, because some people are too hot right now so, wishing you all good things,

Lucy x