Get Mesmerized
Hello Reader
Well, I’m decidedly not sending this from eastern Washington. I am in southern California for the week, in a patch of the greater Sonoran Desert, so you’ll see quite a different range of images. But we are continuing with our series on tiny daily practices for big life impact.
Throughout my life a few different deserts have been key locales for me, both here in the U.S. and abroad. I just can’t seem to shake them.
How about you — what is a type of locale you keep going back to, again and again?
Cheers,
Jennifer
Founder, Ordinary Nature
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Weekly Reflection ✨🦒
- Weekly Practice 🍃🤩
- Resource: Best Desert Book Ever
- Little Tender Things 💚
WEEKLY REFLECTION
Get Mesmerized
Jennifer Ruth Keller
It’s a pilgrimage of sorts.
The first thing we do when we come to Palm Desert is sit with the giraffes, and marvel, and let ourselves be mesmerized by the lilt and bend of their distinctive motion.
The giraffes’ elegant pace and style seems to synchronize with the sway of the palm fronds in the breeze. On this visit, I wonder if the pattern and cadence is actually mathematically similar, in the deep structure of both beings–giraffe, and palm–simply because the effect is eerily similar. Transportive. As though I’ve entered a different rhythm of time, and life.
An adult male at the edge of the enclosure crowds out a female as they gently reach and prod for lettuce that’s on offer. They eat around eighty pounds of (vegan) food a day, and sleep only five to thirty minutes a day.
The connotation of their timelessness may not be mere human projection — they do not know waking and sleeping states in the ways that we do. The near absence of sleep in their lives seems to add to the sense they are, somehow, eternal.
A young male, five months old, sits by himself under a palm. I look upon him, beneath the tree, alone, and notice I’ve imbued him with a kind of melancholy solitariness. A few moments later he begins eating again, chewing grass with a low-key verve that suggests he’s quite content doing the very thing he’s doing.
The shape and manner of giraffe eyes makes it difficult, for me at least, to not slip into interpreting their visage as one of docility, or gentle regality. Their magnificent eyelashes suggest a doll-like manner, a trace of coquettish elan amidst all that long-limbed, vertebrae-rich gracefulness.
I extend a lettuce leaf to the towering male at the edge, seek out his gaze, try to gauge what it is to see like a giraffe, whether those huge gentle eyes match the temperament within.
I’ve spent a decade shifting away from “adventure” forms of encounter with the natural world, to open myself to ordinary forms of encounter within daily life, all around, as I try to release the illusory boundary between “human” and “nature.”
But it is still good to change up the patterns and locales of my looking, and release. Can be good to switch the angles of viewing I enjoy, and alter the sensory pathways I get accustomed to. Like letting the surprise and delight of the wet texture of a giraffe tongue on my hand jolt me out of my static ways, and invite me into a refreshed sense of possibility, and connection.
WEEKLY PRACTICE INVITATION:
The what: Get mesmerized. Enchanted. Dislodged from the normal ways of looking.
Which means: You may need to change up locales. Doesn’t mean you have to hop on a plane or make a dramatic scene change. Could be small: Go to a park you’ve never been to before. Or a section of a beloved place that’s new to you. Help create the conditions for surprise.
Then: Allow yourself unhurried time in this “different” place. Await it and its beings to show themselves to you. With a light touch, await the opening to be called to pay attention to something, or someone, wondrous.
What detail enchants you, draws you to look—to be with—again, and again, mesmerized?
Want a stunning book about the desert? Look no further.
Obi Kaufmann’s thick volume on California Deserts is a gorgeous field guide with an unforgettable style and treasure trove of remarkable illustrations. Fabulous. Available through Bookshop.
LITTLE TENDER THINGS
Palm bark, oh lonely palm bark,
while people swoon for your fans
of silver-green bladed fronds,
and look past your husk-armored trunks,
I see you, and touch you,
enchanted.
Have a “little tender thing” you’d like to submit and share?
Let me know!
