Five Elements Through Five Senses: Earth
Seeing Earth
I had intended originally to do this activity in the arboretum on the first floor of my work, but I kept making it home after long days first -- so I chose to use the small green forest outside my house for this exercise.
I started with a walk out into the open green cut grass toward the forest. Taking in the size of gathered trees and the hues of green and brown from a distance.
The first thing to catch me by surprise was mottled tree trunks in deep brown and scattered splotches of white. Then another small tree who's leaves were dark green but had bright yellow dots like the color had been splashed by someone with a paint brush. Even a bush full of leaves with greyish spots that looked like disease, which were everywhere, even as the bush continued to sprawl glorious.
The colors indicative of not enough water under the Texas sun, side by side with other colors that deepen or lighten telling me fall is coming. The browned and yellow leaves already falling in singular rarity.
I walked along the forest line, never entering, and yet having left entirely my home and apartment complex area. Taking in the different types of plants all intermingled on top of each other. The solidness of the ground beneath my feet that leaves me balanced. The rise of rocks jutting from the dirt, the girth and weight of their appearance alone.
My first trial was a tree I wanted to reach out and touch the risen and raged bark of. And I spotted just before my finger touched, thinking about how this exercise was about "seeing" and how "touch" is a completely different way of interacting and deciphering the world around us. So I made myself a promise to try to stay in the moment. In only looking and seeing, no other senses to complicate my attempts.
I took a seat in a swing set closer into the back of my complex, but turned backwards and studied the forest from my seat for a long time. The way the wind moved the leaves, but the branches and trunks were steadfast and unwavering. The deep black of the places one where other limbs had fallen off and cauterized through time, the way life releases what isn't necessary so it can keep growing.
I had thought to keep it only to plants and rocks and the like, but after scaring off the first two dear during my earlier forest line walking, while sitting on the swing, another deer appeared from a far fence around ten or fifteen minutes and I took it as a sign I was supposed to be seeing this part of life, too. The deer always in my delightful forest every night I'm coming and going.
The way the young buck with his simple thin curve without a split startled and ran across the green at a branch which snapped under my feet as I approached them while walking back to my apartment. The way the older, more steadfast doe stayed close by and only watched me. Eating unhindered of the grass, but flicking her tail in what seemed less agitation and more a shared mutual understanding that she was aware I was there, when I sat down on the cement path before my stairs and watched her.
Watching the boy slowly inching his way back toward us both in our tiny watching dance while dinner continued to happen on brilliant green grass, earth to earth there, too. Their grace, the thin daintiness of their limbs. The way their heads duck and divot while eating. Their small black feet, matching their nose, and the soft browns wavering in and out of their fur, which surround their flush white stripe up the inside part of their tails. The sharpness of horns.
Earth is gentle and nurturing, it replicates endlessly, creating, subsuming, a cycle of life and death, but not helpless. The horns of the deer, the spines on the cactus, thorns and bark on trees. The thickness of packed dirt. The density of rock. So many contradictions and yet perfections.
I feel what I got out of this is that are a million tinier details I am choosing to over look for other things in a day, especially if this is what can be found in fifty feet of space right outside my house. It makes me think of the arboretum I only walk through and rarely glorify or stay in. It reminded me of how very aware I used to be of the season on the trees I used to walk under in Seoul, where every street is lined with them.
My eyes feel opened more, walking inside I picked up the articles from my second exercise on my steps to my door, and I noticed the orange streak and striations of my rose quartz on my bed table, as well as the wood pattern of itself, too. I feel so much more aware and awake to it all at this second. The way things appear.
Touching Earth
I am hypersensitive skin wise, so I chose a whole lot of different things to do this exercise with. I started first with the four things I'd picked up during my walk which I took for Earth Seeing. And I also chose to do it in a way I wouldn't be distracted by my other sense. In a darkened room with the only sound being my air conditioning this time.
I start with a black dotted white butterfly wing. Running my fingertips over it. Running it over the skin on my hands. Feeling how delicate and thin the wing was. How soft, and fragile and almost not there. Feeling scared of breaking it, but also full of holy humbleness toward its gentleness. Discovering the miraculous little bones/cartilage lines in the wings I'd never seen/felt before. That reach out like little veins but definitely feel (and look) stronger than the rest of the wing material. The hardness of where the wind connects and the tiny tuft of fur there around the hardness.
Then I moved onto a small acorn with its crown attached. The smoothness of the nut, with its small raised striations. The nub at the bottom that surprisingly made me think of a baby's belly button as my finger ran over it the first time. The rises and lapping top part, the hood and hat so hard, and formidable, like a little shield and shackle holding on firm, textured like the tight-knit bark of a tree. And yet the hardest part was the top nub where a little bit of the branch that birthed it was still holding on. This one didn't make me feel much but glee as I was sinking into the exercise finally.
My last two of my first set of four were two leaves. A long fresh green one newly fallen that night (and only the tips have even edged green now) and a small leaf so long fallen it is completely brown. I started with green one, running it over my skin, feeling how it surprisingly felt like prickly plastic when the edges ran over my skin. And yet it was so supple. Even know I could tear it if I tried hard enough I amazing at how limber and bendable it was between my fingers. Then how hard and stiff my second one was, how it creaked if I attempted to manipulate it's movement the same way. How it's texture held no softness in its give across my cheek, but felt like thick paper almost.
I moved on to the huge chunk of pink rose quartz in my pocket. Which with my eyes closed felt so glassy and oily because it's so smooth. And yet I spent three or four minutes feeling out the small imperfections of the many times I've dropped it in the last few months while playing with it. Tiny secret marks of history, with their own telling textures.
After that I moved on to a wooden carving of a pentacle given to me by my father over a decade ago. The porous wood that I ran my fingers over that fell so light and open, as though my finger could feel the space between the pieces making up the wood grain as I ran them across it. The places on the wide circle of it where the grain had complained of being shaped and was rough still, after making and owning. The indention's of carving.
I ended my walk through senses that day with soft things. A pelt of rabbit fur that is from a trio given to me when I was gifted my first altar at thirteen. I laid running my fingers across the insides, from edge to edge. Not like silk, but still soft, supple and yet worn. The fur was soft, but not silky smooth the way my rock was. Comforting but lacking all at once.
I was inspired by remembering the post and got up and pet one of the cats in the house. Thinking about the way fur coats change in fall and winter months. Heavier in preparation for coldness, thinning out in the spring. How different it all feels.
Added to this unexpectedly was this morning, too. The stickiness of oils and bits of herbs while crafting oils and incenses. How textures change and still convey the same things. Plants turning into liquids but still meaning Earth, still being a part of it. The whole pieces of cinnamon and clove and all spice all hard and spicy and specifically shaped, being broken down into powders, still all themselves but also mingled.
I think what I took away from this is that there are an unlimited number of textures that we tend too often to group into like five or six descriptor words, but they're all unique and different as well. The soft of a wing and a cat are different, the hardness of a rock and wood also different. I really loved getting lost in touch today this way. Thank you so much.
Smelling Earth
I've been working on this one now and then over the last few days and weeks.
I am so very aware of smell when I walk through the arboretum at work. The doors open and you are enveloped with the scent of thick, wet greenness. I feel this prickle in my skin and the back of my nose. Like the air is so much fuller here and linger usually between walking up to my work or even out to my car. I have this sense of it being so much bigger in the space when I breathe in the scent. The sensation of my life and living going on. I can stay and breathe more here, like I can in a forest
The area outside my house has its own scents and smells too. The deep rush of the green grass and the darkness of the earth beneath it. Which is completely different from the dried dirt in pots left too long, and not removed from last spring. There are different notes. I always feel a little too anxious here though, with all my complex around and the parking lot only so far off from me, or the herds of deer who don't want one wandering too far into their domain since the fawns were all born this fall again.
I sniffed flowers and focused on the sweetness of daisies. This morning I got to add this again by smell a whole bunch of oils and herbs. The sweetness of rose oil or the depth of patchouli, which bring comfort. The sharp, warm spiciness of clove and all spice, mingled with sweet cinnamon and nutmeg, all of them evoking so much fall food and drinks, making me feel the need to swallow.
The many cups of tea throughout my week, that left me smelling what tea bags full of herbs smelled like, what steeped water did, and them the tea bags at the end. The differences of all these scents, and the endless comfort I find in tea itself. The making, the herbs, and the drinking even when I'm only focusing on the smelling it.
The many candles and incense sticks/piles burned throughout my house in fall scents, and even the new scent stories player that playing oil scents throughout the house is a glorious moment to stop and recollect what scents do. How they calm us, or wake us up. How they matter or don't, what makes me stop and breathe in or what I notice but only as I'm still headed on doing whatever I'm doing.
My favorite scents to wear or the ones others wear that remind me of them. Smells both synthetic/man made and natural stood out so much this week. How they affect me physically and emotionally. What people made and brought for lunch, or how my food smelled while I was opening containers. What someone's hair smelled like after a shower while braiding it for them.
This was such a powerful focal point for days of unending stimulus.
Hearing Earth
I took a field trip to my outside area filled with green and forestedness again for this one. I walked down my stairs and sat not too far off from where I'd watched the deer during Earth Seeing, and leaned against a fence lining. It wasn't too hot in the late morning shade.
I listened to the song of the birds in the big tree right over my head and the ones playing in the grass. I listened to the way the leaves in the tree over my head whispered together when the wind was strong.
I listened, and more aptly watched, how when the wind was too gentle the leaves still brushed together but I couldn't hear it. The way I couldn't hear a butterfly float by on the breeze, or the birds drinking water.
I drowned out the noise of the moving traffic and the passing neighbors, watching the grass blow and listening to the trees talk to me. It seems so simple to write these things, and yet it filled me with this deep peaceful ease from the tips of my toes through my neck, relaxing everything. I felt so nicely pulled apart, like my mind could relax and stop thinking.
This is the one I have the least to say about it seems and yet it's all about feelings that were huge and endless and had me over running my original time frame because I just felt so at peace with the universe and how the earth sounded around me.
Tasting Earth
I kept everything here in the most raw and natural states I could find it, so I would be eating it the closest I could to way it might have come from the earth.
A pinch of salt. Very sharp...and salty? Is there a way to describe this not using that word, I hate same word in the definition that I'm talking about. It dissolves fast, but you definitely feel the hard shape of the crystals very specifically between your tongue and the top of your mouth first.
The differences inherent in tasting a pinch of pepper. No dissolving this time, a spice, smoky flavor with definite shape to all the little ground pieces. Yet these ones are softer, malleable where the salt was pre-dissolving.
The harshness of three or four pieces of hard raw brown rice, soaking up saliva in my mouth, having to bite down through the brittleness. A handful of crunchy, but softer, granola and oat tiny clusters. Hard and yet delicate, each of these to me was blander, but that's a very personal trained palate thing I'm thinking, too.
The hollowness of dried peas covered in wasabi, both blandish and spicy at once, creating a very balanced mixed of flavors. The crunching was fun though on all of the last three. Which I think of as just as important when we're talking about tasting and the process of the mouth.
The texture of a slice of pepper cracked ham. The wobbliness of it. The striations of muscle groupings that can be seen on it with the eyes and felt with the tongue. Moisture to be sucked out from meat and the solidness of the meat itself even when it's so thinly cut.
The way romaine lettuce pieces are thicker and harder to bite into, but explode with a little water onto your tongue and teeth. The way you it crunches and smooshes between by my front teeth, making me want to crunch it until it can't. Rather like a child amused. The bumpy raised texture all over it, and the completely different flavoring. The way it feels if I leave a leaf on my tongue and just move it around without breaking and chewing, kind of rubbery and bumpy.
The savory softness of an olive, a little sharp and earthy tasting, with its slick skin that isn't so hard to break open. The sudden squirt of liquid when biting into an orange slice, like my mouth is full of this color as well as this flavor, sucking the sweet meat out of the skin around it, the way I'm always reminded of Catherine and childhood. The sweet, hardness of almonds that are my family and my treats. The hard crunch of carrots, how dry on the outside and slightly moist on the inside, the sweetness hiding.
I love reveling in food. So this was fun, being even more aware of how I feel and what I'm tasting as well as feeling when it's in my mouth. Looking closer and building on all the other sense activities I'd gotten to do first this week before getting into this one. This was probably my most fun one, closing my eyes and letting my tongue map the way to feeling.