Barefoot

Long time since I've kicked off shoes and walked barefooted on grass, but I did it today. What surprised me: how cool the grass felt in the shade; how thorny it felt when over-sunned -- differed like night and day. And I felt how hard the earth is, and how soft and thin our skins are so we can feel every contour beneath our bare footsoles. When you walk barefoot on soft grass it feels as wildly pleasurable as a foot massage.

And then I thought about the earth, the planet that is our mother and our home. "It has a hard heart," I thought. Then, "No -- that's not right. It has a molten heart. Its heart is liquid stone." A churn of lava at the earth's hot center...and here we are on surface of it, plants and animals, all enjoying a floating green crust about a mile or so deep. The earth's thinnest skin. The rest is rock.

All this I felt and thought because I walked barefoot. When I wear shoes I don't have such thoughts.