lessons scooped from the wind

today amounts mostly to the cool breeze blowing through town. the dust of idle hours is settling and the motion that is forming is outgrowing the blades of grass. i am filled with a quiet contentment that reaches every part of me.

once, i was after the long busy days filled as much inside as out with details; lists of things to do, operations to perform, functions to be represented. once, i was only a series of orders to be carried out. i lived in concern, spent years worrying about the origin and genesis of the orders the methods the types and stereotypes, the ins and outs of a dazzling life spent missing everything that matters.

but now, i am more interested in the silences. now, i am more taken in by the long empty fields inside of me, by the strange rumblings of a future slowly forming, of a life in rotation as cropfields. i am a cornea contracting and opening to everything there is, to every moment to every glance shared between couples at bars, to every smile shared by people laughing over their purchases.

the question is, when you look, what do you see?

i see old men hunched over coffee cups working out the rough edges of the times crossword and children laughing and running home from the bus. i see postmen working their mojo fingers sorting mail and plopping it into slots. i watch a streetwalker swoop and lean into a car and see the wild-eyed grin of the passenger. i watch the growing of shrubs and the swaying of tree branches. i am a watcher waiting only for the moment to come, whatever moment it is. i have no regard for which moment will be arriving, i have only the sense that everywhere everything is happening. i know now that it is possible, with a wide enough lense, to watch any instant unfold into the great happening. i am aware mostly of the curves and lines of things, the oddball math that trumps one life over another (at least we imagine it does).

i am interested these days in the long slow unfolding in which sooner or later everything is revelaed, there is nothing to conceal or evade. everything will happen. everything is happening. the hard part is learning how to watch, learning how to see that every second is not a passing moment but a rearranging of the order of possibilities, a refactoring of probabalities and chances. the odds are always adjusting, expanding, retracting and i want most now to watch it happen.

so that's what i do. and today is mostly about the cool breeze that calls me to it, promising to cover miles of ground faster than any eye can move or any engine can trek. today is about the breeze that tells me that now the odds are on coolness covering throngs of line-waiters, traffic jockies, radio personalities and auto-mechanics. the wind pays no mind to social status or religion, no mind to math or variables, it is only interested in the onward movement, adjusting around corners or through gaps.

maybe the wind has the right idea.

it is not neccesary to place value judgments on every happening, to wage war on the independecne of action to your will. it is not impossible to live without control over everything all the time. we can witness without wading in, we can watch without wearing out and love without conquering.

it is not to us to dominate the earth. it is not to us to own or partition it or even always to understand it. it is to us to experience it. that's where the magic is. that's where the miracle happens. it's in your morning tea and reading the papers, it's in the drive to work and the on the way home, it's in the fragments of time spent laughing. that's the miracle. the miracle is not in a happening, it is in the happening. it is the happening. and if you're not careful, if you're too busy assessing and adjusting, you'll miss the miracle altogether.

the challenge then, is to stop for a few seconds today from whatever you're doing and just watch. watch people living and loving, watch the wind passing, kissing tree branches, watch water of a pond rippling with the wind, watch everything anything. don't involve yourself. in this moment you are only the watcher, you are not a participant. just watch. be there. no other thought on your mind, no care for what you could be using that time for or what you intend to do later. just be there, watching, watching...

2006-04-25 | 5:54 p.m.
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