I really enjoyed the poetry walk our class had last Thursday. It was a nice hike and I got the opportunity to get to know more about the other students in my class on the way up. Whether it was the soft crunching sound of our shoes pressing on the gravel, the distant view of three different cities, or the vast greens (that many of us don't get to see often -- living in the city), all added to the enjoyment of the trip. I shared the poem by Lal Ded "I searched for myself..." because it was the one I was able to relate to the most. Beautifully written and I really admired how the poet could say such things that I can only think of in my head -- the type of thing that I can never seem to put to words..well, if I did, it wouldn't come out as eloquent as this:

I searched for my Self
until I grew weary,

but no one, I know now,
reaches the hidden knowledge
by means of effort.

Then, absorbed in "Thou art This,"
I found the place of Wine.

There all the jars are filled,
but no one is left to drink.

-- Lal Ded
(Women in Praise of the Sacred, ed. Jane Hirshfield.)

Reading poetry out loud to each other as a group was so relaxing and I must say, a pleasant break from the busy study schedules we all have. Falling into routine makes our everyday lives so dull and since we've already past more than half this quarter I'm pretty sure by now most of us have fallen into some routine. This poetry walk though, was a nice break from the usual. I really took to heart what Mr. Lovas' said about how sometimes we have to step back and away from keeping a time limit on our lives; we would end up limiting ourselves. Something along the lines of how we need to waste our life at times. (Bad memory. Should've written it down : / Anyone remember what it was?) But as he was mentioning that, I couldn't help but reflect on how much I've constrained myself to silly limits -- limits that shouldn't have to be set. I should be enjoying these days more than anything else, not making myself weary by the want to do things a certain way -- the way within the set lines. (None of that probably made any sense : ) but anyway..) In any case, I'm still thinking about my poetic response to the outing. Hopefully I'll come up with something eloquent by the end of this weekend.

Our poetry walk reminded me of a quote I came across a year or so ago. It was from some website that I can't recall, but had the title of The Phantom Tollbooth.

...the most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what's in between, and they took great pleasure in doing just that. Then one day someone discovered that if you walked as fast as possible and looked at nothing but your shoes you would arrive at your destination much more quickly. Soon everyone was doing it. They all rushed down the avenues and hurried along the boulevards seeing nothing of the wonders and beauties of their city as they went...No one paid any attention to how things looked, and as they moved faster and faster everything grew uglier and dirtier, and as everything grew uglier and dirtier they moved faster and faster, and at last a very strange thing began to happen. Because nobody cared, the city slowly began to disappear. Day by day the buildings grew fainter and fainter, and the streets faded away, until at last it was entirely invisible. There was nothing to see at all.

-- The City of Reality

It reflects how caught up in time we have become that we fail to recognize the simplest beauties of nature around us. This put a whole new perspective on how we spend our days.