this is what actual peace feels like

quiet notes from my journal #4

c turned to me and said, can you hear that?

i said i can’t hear anything.

he replied, exactly.

we sat in our little wooden home for the next two nights, with every appliance and piece of furniture visible through our peripherals with only the bathroom as a second room, still, mouths slightly ajar at the absence of car engines, buses, people and aeroplanes. a short train would pass about every half hour or so but that was all. we were officially in the middle of nowhere, in a town many people have probably heard of, with nothing to do but stare at the double doors before us leading to a little garden and the sounds of our own hearts beating.

it has been said that people don’t change, or rather that they are incapable, and i still haven’t decided my own personal stance on that yet, but i do know that i once was afraid of vast shades of green that stretched beyond my vision. being able to see beyond a few metres without a building interrupting my sight was completely novel to me. discovering this alternate style of living was a shock, and shock and fear are close friends. there is too much space, too much possibility, nowhere to hide. i thought i was a city girl for life, endless dreams of stepping out onto a balcony to be greeted by skyscrapers lit up like christmas trees and the bustling sounds of a city beneath my feet. now this vision is far from a dream. now i take every chance i get to pour chlorophyll over my face, wash my body in the sun and fill my ears with birdsong and the tender whispers of bushes and trees. i take every chance i can get to swap the sounds of human consciousness for nature’s consciousness. and she has a lot to say.