I'm not very good at turning off my mind. It won't stop moving, won't stop running. It runs a quicker mile than I can. I tried to apply the idea of "being present" and "actively noticing" the world around me while I walked, and I did succeed at times. But as soon as I noticed something, it bounced around my brain.

I was thinking about the grass. About how I crave its cool sponginess on my bare feet. The little girl in her front yard on a blanket made me remember when that was me in my front yard, lying under the cool shade of my house. I can still feel the slight dampness of the red quilt, the softness of the yarn that stuck out all over.

I was thinking about the cul de sac, and about the time when my best friend and I covered her concrete front porch in her mom's pink flowers. We ripped the petals off the bushes and sprinkled them into our very own garden, hoping to create something beautiful. To us, it was. To her mom, well, it wasn't even a little bit.

I was thinking about the trees and how I wanted to listen to them. But the cars were too loud to hear over. I don't care much for loud things.

I was thinking about the little dog that wouldn't stop barking at me as I passed his front yard. He was on a leash, just like we all are sometimes, and he would have caught me had he been free. 

I was thinking about the birds. I heard them call out to each other. In their sweet, high-pitched drippy voices, they were communicating. Back and forth, back and forth, so fast and so clear. Clarity is a balm to the soul, my mom says. I wondered what it might be like if it was that easy for humans to communicate with one another. How it might be if we used our words. How it might be if I could simply tell someone how I really feel.

I'm now thinking about how I can't feel my fingers as I lay here on a blanket of fallen leaves, typing.

I guess I better go inside. A warmer, though hardly desired, place to think.