Weight: A Creative Prompt
A new meditation from Fran Gardner. . . "Concrete withstands earthquakes. Stones keep the river in its banks, and basalt headlands force back the ocean. . ."
Weight
Heavy. Gravid. Ponderous.
Dark, foreboding; you cannot breathe.
We need weight. Weight keeps things in their place. . . Paperweights, irons, horseshoes, a finger on the scale.
The weight of the comforter, snug in our sleeping.
Weight is something you want to know:
How many oranges in a pound?
How big is that baby?
And something you don’t want to know: How many pounds have I gained since last week? Looks like I didn’t bench press as much as I thought.
Let weight have its place in the Universe. Bricks anchor buildings. Concrete withstands earthquakes. Stones keep the river in its banks, and basalt headlands force back the ocean.
Weightless
What if you weighed nothing? Untethered to the earth, you could float on the breeze, sailing over mountains, over seas, carefree.
But, wouldn’t it be lonely up there? You could navigate, to some extent, wave your arms or scissor your feet. You might even approach land, only to bounce back into the atmosphere. But all the time, it is you. Just you.
What would it mean to have no weight, no substance? Nothing rooted. Nothing to tingle the senses. The only sound the rush of wind. The only scent the rain rising from the sea. You touch nothing; there is nothing to touch.
Weightlessness did not exist when I was born in 1950. It came later as astronauts prepared for the non-gravity of space voyage. How much fun, to be able to twist and somersault, bounce off the walls and the ceiling!
But finally, it is time to stop playing. It is time to come back to earth. To feel the weight of our bodies, to remember our skin, to know fatigue.
Colors rush back at us. Up above the Himalayas, all was white, from the snow to the stars. The sea likewise, monotonous, blue, heaving. Our feet touch the water, sending up spray. We taste the salt.
Meditate a bit on being weightless. Contemplate that peculiar freedom.
What would it mean to be truly free, unconstrained? No ties, no family, no deadlines. No need to eat or feel or even converse.
Freedom, that sort of freedom, can be a void.
“Freedom is a scary thing,” Laurie Anderson writes. “Not many people really want it.”
Do you want it?
What do you want?
You step out in your mediation, loose the bounds of earth, fly free and far.
What do you discover out there?
Eventually, you will ask yourself: What do I weigh?
Where do I weigh it?
Where am I going?
Is it worth the journey?
The answer is yes.
The next meditation will be on the journey.
Click here to read Gravid, the previous creative prompt.
Read more from Fran at Becoming….
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Weight of our thoughts, our beliefs, comments and opinions shared for other people's discussion. Do our thoughts carry the weight to move people toward an idea, an opposing understanding, and alternate lifestyle choice? Does the weight of our existence itself exist in these thoughts, in the writings from those thoughts, so that people deep into the future can still hear our voices ring? Will the weight of our writings bring solace or aggression, peace or war to beings far and wide? Or does it all really matter? We had our say, now move on.