Anne-Marie Houy Shaver
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Zen Moment

5/7/2018

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This week’s walk started with birds. There were quite a few at first, in the trees and other greenery, chirping away.
 
We made our way toward the center of campus. The bird noises lessened.

But then a jingle.

My immediate thought was “dog!” It sounded like when Olive shakes and the tags on her collar clink against each other. But I corrected myself, because that sound source didn’t make sense for the middle of campus.

But it was actually THREE dogs. My brain knew the sound, but considering the context made me second-guess myself.
 
Sidewalk.
Paved road.
Sidewalk.
Gravel. But very small gravel. The size made it much softer to walk on than I expected.
 
We were able to do a longer pause/meditation on our walk this week, and we did so at Skyspace by James Turrell. During this meditation, I had a semi-breakthrough when I finally felt as if I was actually experiencing “deep listening,” listening to all things at once - and without inner dialogue. I’m unsure how to describe it, but it felt very right and very “zen.” Of course I only maintained it for maybe two seconds…but it’s a start, and I’ll take it.
 
From Skyspace we moved to the neighboring garden. One participant commented that Skyspace cut out more low frequencies and the garden cut out more high frequencies.
 
Back toward the music building.
 
Small yellow flowers covered the sidewalks. They crunched under our feet. But they softened the sound of bike tires passing over them.
 
We passed what seemed to be an open mic night. Amplifiers. Loud.
 
Splashing and fluttering.
Birds in a puddle of water, taking a bath.

This was really awesome to hear, partly because I’m not used to puddles or standing water here in the desert. Context informed this moment, like it did with the dog collars jingling. I realized just how much assumptions of spaces influence how we may perceive the sounds in a space.
 
April 12, 2018
5:40 - 6:20pm
Sunny

Until next time!

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