something beautiful

Yesterday in the early afternoon, frustrated and for many (mainly emotional) reasons, unable to write and work on my thesis, I took a walk on campus in my favourite northern part of it. There are fewer tourists and other annoying Chinese in that part of campus, with a few secluded walk lanes and lakes. It's actually very beautiful and has given me much strength during the past few years. It's also the area where I (used to) run each day in the morning...

Yesterday, feeling rather depressed I decided it's not a bad idea instead of staying in my room, to just be outside for a while...
The weather was actually quite good, clear blue sky, very strong subnshine and the intense green of the trees...
(The day before there was a pretty nasty sand storm, something normal at this time of year here in Beijing...I am terrified to think what is the condition of my lungs after breathing this filthy poluted air for 8 years.
Yesterday it appeared all cleared up by the strong wind, so it was a fine day.)

Anyway, as I was strolling alone on a winding secluded lane in my most favourite,most secluded and peaceful part of campus (and Beijing, and whole of China)I saw in one of the lakes a mother duck with her four ducklings swimming in front of her.
It is not rare to see birds and squirrels on campus, since a part of it is a park, and I believe I have previously seen the she-duck and her partner swimming before together, but this scene was so incredibly simple, but immenselly beautiful and serene...
Imagine, lush green, patches of shadow and sunshine on the water, the gentle swishing sound of the ducks swim, a woodpecker on a nearby tree knocking hard on the tree bark, soft, but intense light of an early afternoon...and silence.

I followed slowly the five ducks' swim for a while, gracefully, passed under a sort of a concrete bridge towards the next lake, until they hid in the reeds...There was actually the male duck (you can tell from his colourfull feathers, different from her brown and simple ones) being by himself. The she-duck following her 4 ducklings gracefully passed him (he was actually at some distance) and went further away...
The beauty of these few minutes was complete. I watched very quitely, almost transfixed.
It was a gift.

As I mentioned a couple of times already, I'm suppossed to be writing my thesis these days. There isn't much time left, and I'm almost nowhere...I'm going to write some other time more about it, but what I saw yesterday, the tranquility of the scene with these ducks gave me much inspiration since my thesis has much to do with animals in the Buddhist jatakas (former birth stories), but about that, some other time...

Meanwhile Blogger is still blocked here in China, but hopefully I will be able to circumvent the censorship and post nevertheless with the use of proxy browsers...
It appears that if I post from my laptop all the options for colours and fonts might work, so that's not bad. I was afraid my posts will be too dull without any pictures and other 'embelishments'...Uploading pictures seems not to be possible, but I'm going to think something up...