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(Node your homework for English Composition: Write a descriptive essay about calming place, real or imagined.)
"A Special Place"
When I sit down to meditate whether thinking or "unthinking" I often visit a similar place in my mind. The setting is lifelike but mildly abstract.
The first aspect another visitor might notice is the sky . Surrounding rarified, stratified clouds the sky overhead is a deep pink. As one's vision is filtered through more and more of the atmosphere, towards the horizon the hue is a less saturated yellow. This effect seems (to me) to make the foliage all around to seem brighter and more crisp. In this place is a stream that bulges into a kidney-shaped lake. The water is dark and calm. In patches it reflects the yellow horizon betwixt the wavering tree tops. The banks of the stream's central engorgement are leafy and over hung in places with wild grasses. Always on the far side, low cedar varieties shelter the lazy fish with sprawling limbs. In the area I most often sit the grass is not uniform or particularly cared-for, however, it is richly green. Around the open grass bushes of foliage rise up in tiers: First the edges in juniper, then plants with elongated leaves like daffodils or wild garlic, beyond these in a buffer (before the trees block out the light) are ligustrom and bushes that resemble azalea - but do not flower. They are dense and rolling but give way to foot paths into a sub-tropic forest. Live oak and cyprus and cedar stretch off to the distance over top of bamboo, ferns and the occasional mossy stone.
The place is devoid of humans. There are no obvious creatures about; but the chorus of life belies this fact. Birds call, bugs hum and chatter, and squirrels bark occasionally. The drone is relaxing and never distracting.
Usually I visit this place in the afternoon but sometimes it can be night - with fireflies twinned in moonlit water - or it can be raining and peaceful. As a reflection of my life in Florida it is never snowing; The air is always just shy of hot, cool in the shade.
When I meditate I choose a spot and focus on some nearby detail. When I am here merely to daydream I roam the land and explore the wood and the water's edge. This setting is somewhere peaceful to escape the accelerated urban life I lead.