Naked Meditation

My friend Kim gave me a beautiful box of chakra-based meditation stones, and I have been using them to attempt meditation. Today I sat naked on the edge of my bed, after a shower, holding the solar plexus stone in my palm, watching my thoughts drift by and once thinking it was raining, as my hair dripped onto my nose and cupped hands. The mantra on the box for this chakra was, "I am powerful and radiant in everything I do," which I smiled at in a powerful and radiant mix of sincerity and self-mockery. My husband would have enjoyed discovering me naked, but he was elsewhere, possibly gazing out the window in a calm joy that the light rain would prevent mowing the front yard.

Meanwhile, I have been enjoying walking in nature on the hiking trail or around ponds or in the big natural playground now on the grounds of where my kids went to school. I am doing the BioBlitz for the month of July, a collaboration between the public library and the Ecology Action Center, posting pictures of what we find in nature (plants, animals, insects, fungi, etc.) and sharing them, seeking research-grade idientifications from experts or members of the iNaturalist community. Some of my favorites include flower-of-an-hour, found in scrub grass near Sugar Creek, but which I also remember on the edge of my dad's vegetable garden, itself on the edge of a cornfield (or beanfield, depending on the year), and partridge pea, found yesterday at Hidden Creek Nature Preserve, which is being restored gradually after lots of invasive plants moved in. 

While I have started a small stack of poetry books to read, I realize I won't be participating in the Sealey Challenge this August. I have some August travel and various commitments that will prevent me. Meanwhile, I am reading books from the 100 Best Books of the century so far, provided by the New York Times, with a follow-up readers' list. I had already read 51 of the 100, but now have read The Known World, by Edward P. Jones, and Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell, which had been pulling at me for years. Packed for travel, two paperbacks for the plane: Outline, by Rachel Cusk, and The Color of Water, by James McBride, a memoir about his mother, so it will probably make me cry.