Everything that I look at is nature. Table, bookshelf, a wall, a person, a plastic bag too — not just trees, rivers, mountains etc. Anything that exists, is nature. Nothing is possible outside nature.
However I have noticed that what quietly nourishes me when I look at it, is only what is conventionally considered nature — trees, rivers, mountains, the sea, the sky.
“How is your writing going on?” an aunt asked me the other day. I fibbed that it is going on well. The truth is that it is not going on at all.
Most of what I have written so far, was written when I was in USA and Udupi-Manipal. There I had direct and abundant access to nature, conventional nature. It surely had a positive impact on my mind and influenced my writing.
Since 2014 I am back in Kolkata. The past few years I had near-zero access to nature. Sometimes I would remember how the sky had been my very-good friend when I was a child, how it nourished me. When I remembered that, sitting in my room, the only way I experienced the sky was by bringing my awareness on my breath.
Now I have moved to an apartment that is on the top floor of the building. The view of the sky is much more generous from here (though the night sky is destroyed by a glaring halogen 🙁). The view from my working table is of a water canal (apparently it was once the original Ganga here in Kolkata), an open expanse of trees lining it, city buildings behind it, and then, yes, the sky🙂. So there is much more of nature to look at it, though still only 10% of what I had in USA and Udupi-Manipal. So I am hoping that the positive impact of the increased quantity of nature will seep into my mind.
To increase the quantity of nature further I was wondering whether I should fill my rooms with copious amounts of plants. God, kindly note.
Problem is, I like to just look at nature. Gardening, whether on the ground or in pots, is hard work.
However, that aunt’s question, “How is your writing going?” made me write this piece at least 🙂. Counting my blessings.
A couple of times during this writing I had the urge to break and do something else, but I didn’t give-in to that urge — like they say in meditation, around two times don’t give-in to the urge to get up. Third time you may get up. Luckily this piece too got written by overcoming the urge to break only twice.
Thinking takes less than a second. Writing the thought down takes sooo many minutes. That is something that can be improved upon in the Universe.