Twilight, random thoughts

Today, I returned to my site with a friend. As we were sitting on the lounge behind Rhoads South, looking at the field without a single person, she told how she dislikes being in an open space on her own. She mentioned the feeling of loneliness as she stands there in the middle a huge grass lawn, surrounded by nothing but the air and sounds of nature, which surprised me. It seemed to me that an empty open space made her insecure and feared. However much I try to understand the logic behind her feelings, I cannot imagine myself in such condition. I am not brave enough to walk in a strange wood alone; however, when it comes to a place familiar or known-as-safe to me, I enjoy being in an open space. It is relaxing to me when I am able to cast a look faraway and up high above, to realize the green field so big and the blue sky so high. I attribute personality to our difference. While I tend to enjoy my own personal space, my friend cannot stay without an accompany. While I am looking forward to being on my own, my friend feels insecure when she is alone. As such, even though both of us love to be outside in nature, criterias defining our favorite places differ.

After talking to my friend, I decided to have a change of view, so I wandered to the pond. A short walk along the fence surrounding the pond dawned to me that green was not the only color there, as I had always thought looking at it from the lounge. Catching my eyes the first were bushes of tiny yellow flowers. Decorating the fence, then, were some blue and purple little fruits, grown out of a climbing plant. Standing out on the ground of green grass were the dandelions with their soft and fragile white. The closer I looked at the plants, the more colors there turned out to be. All of a sudden, it felt much livelier and happier around the pond.

And I could not refrain myself from picking up a dandelion and gave it a blow. Reminded of the old folklore about this time teller flower, which relates the number of breaths it takes to blow off all the seeds of a dandelion globe to the hour number, I found myself making a childlike effort in search of the mundane magic. Four blows, at almost seven in the afternoon! Still, the moment watching its seeds fly freely and gently in the twilight sun was such a pleasure to me.