Fading Light

I lay on my bed as the last of the sunlight fades, giving us, this small little planet, its final heroic effort of the day. In a dim room, bright orange light streams in through the window, hitting just three different spots on the walls. I lay on the bed, just minutes out of the shower, my hair now wet and cold. My pale legs are covered in oversized black sweats with jaggedly cut ends and a man’s thin striped pajama top.

I look at the last bits of light, feeling suddenly aware of the calm chamber.

My hands rest on my stomach, my feet are extended, supported by a jumble of three blankets that cradle them. Tiny gurgles call to my fingers below my pillowy stomach skin.

“Just be here,” I think to myself.

My chest fills with air, then deflates slowly.

I look to the wall on my left, the wall my bed presses against. There is a rectangular orange-gold piece of light, like a bright framed piece of sunlight on the wall. Cutting through the center of the light is the dark shadow of a cross. I stare.

“So pretty, I should get my camera…” But I don’t move. My hands stay on my stomach, my legs remain in the folds of soft blankets.

The cross, such an intense symbol; a torso and head, two arms extended, two feet pressed together as one. I see Jesus on a hill, I see myself in the morning, just after 7. How long did it take for people to realize the shape could be used for killing? For the structure of torture?

Perpendicular to the wall is the French glass door that leads to my kitchen. The top half of the door is bathed in soft yellow light, though the top-center of the door is glowing orange in the sun’s last rays. I realize the light is coming through my small window (parallel to the wall with the cross), hitting the doorway, then the glass is reflecting the image on the wall.

I look back and forth between the wall and the door, not needing to turn my head.

To the right of the door, directly in front of my body, on another small section of wall, are a few fragmented pieces of light, long jagged rectangles and bent circles and little speckles.

I think about the photographer I used to work for, Emily Payne. “It’s called the sweet light.” I can hear her say it, holding her big black camera in her hands. I imagine photographers around the world waiting for this time of day, waiting till they have the ‘right light.’ Do they stay indoors like inverted vampires, waiting only for a special hour? How many moments do they let pass? Is everything overlooked until the sweet light emerges?

I look up to the cross and the door. Has the light changed? It must have, the sun is fading by the minute. I search the color of the door. It’s just a bit paler. Still bright, but lacking intensity. It’s fading in front of my eyes and I can’t even watch it, I can’t see its fading unless I look away and then look back.

I turn to the wall. The cross has lost an arm. It looks like a T on its side. I should have gotten my camera. I could have written something about this and I would have had the perfect pictures to go along with it. I stay in bed. It’s too late now. “Just watch it, it’s fading away.”

How often had I missed this light? Maybe it would be the same tomorrow. Or nearly the same. The earth would not tilt too much in one day. What if I had not laid down? Would I have just sat at the desk, doing something, oblivious to the light around me? How many times have I done that?

I look up again, the light is dull.

“Just be still and watch…” I keep wandering away, I can’t even watch the light change for a few minutes without drifting.

The cross has become a single vertical line. The French door creaks open, pulled by the crack of the open window 15 feet away. As the door comes forward, the cross shifts, creating one solid black line, then another slightly lighter shadow line behind it.

Then the door creaks closed, and a single line emerges on the cross once again. The door’s bright orange light has faded almost entirely. I know that soon it will be completely gone, maybe then I’ll wonder what happened, how it left so fast.

I look over at the speckles of light on the wall perpendicular to the cross. The light there has faded too. Watch it. “Don’t take your eyes off it, watch what’s left.” I hold my eyes. Its fading…but a part of me cannot believe it. I realize I can barely watch it straight on. It’s almost painful. Why can I only see something changing if I look away?

The door is now dark. The cross is gone, and just a few sprinkles of light remain on the wall next to the door. I watch them, intent, finally holding my attention fixed as they fade. Dark, darker, then they are gone.

The phone rings.

The Staircase

The row of marble stairs rose before him, a stairway that went up and up, then disappeared in the puffs of gleaming white clouds. He stood where the stairs seemed to begin, on a carpet of soft brown soil that housed a few vibrant spouts of green grass. Those tender blades had found the sunlight, and he smiled for them, for their unyielding push towards the sun.
The stairs seemed to begin where he stood, but as he imagined his place on the green and blue sphere, he wondered if perhaps the stairs began much further away. He closed his eyes and imagined buried steps of marble, submerged in the earth, worms using the flat surface for a bed. Or perhaps the stairs continued even further, emerging on the other side of the earth, where men in purple robes stared at the same staircase, wondering if they too, could find its end.
But the words confused him. Where was the “end” and what could be the “beginning?” It was just as likely that the staircase began in the clouds…the words merely indicated the direction of the voyage, not the truth. What would be the beginning for him could be the middle for another, and the end for another man. Or maybe there was no end…it could just be a long staircase that spiraled through the earth in both directions, moving into the black space beyond the atmosphere where both ends linked.
He opened his eyes and looked. The stairs were so smooth, and not just plain white as he had originally saw them. Each step was a subtle swirl of color. Tiny lines of yellow and tan and cream and white, they all moved and tumbled on the flat surface, a painting of color. And he wanted to begin, he wanted to know how far it went and how far he could go. But the question remained, how would he begin?
Of course it seemed easy, one step at a time, a simple movement of the muscles in his legs, one after the other, up and up. But he could see it went on for miles, miles and miles, and then disappeared in the thick cover of gray and blue clouds that had formed. The clouds looked heavy and thick and held the promise of heavy rain. Maybe now was not the best time to set out climbing a slick staircase.
And there was the other matter of food. He would have to carry his provisions with him, maybe water too. How much could he possibly carry on his back? How far could he go before he lay exhausted and thirsty on the marble steps, dying from his own curiosity?
He sat there, at the foot of the steps, on the soil that felt forgiving beneath the weight of his body. He sat with his legs folded beneath him and thought of all the things he would need, of all the problems that he could envision, and he sat and thought and kept looking up to the staircase, the huge marble steps that went on as far as he could see, up and up, a beautiful spire that twisted with strength and the promise of something, something he could not hold between his tongue.
But the same thought kept emerging…where did it go? Was there an end? Or would he find a beginning? Or would he climb for years before emerging stained with soil in the same spot he now sat?
He wanted to start running up the slippery steps, but part of him held back. There was planning that needed to be mapped out, provisions and equipment to buy. But he sat and stared while his mind jumped from thought to thought. His body wanted nothing more than to move. But then he thought about his muscles, was he really prepared for such a feat? Would it be better to work out for a couple of months, to build up the strength in his body for such a climb?
He felt his body pulling, “come,” it seemed to say, “come, and let the mind follow if it wants.” But he continued to sit there, while the light of afternoon began to fade into darkness. And he closed his eyes, imagining himself on the staircase, pursuing the one thing that seemed important, and perhaps it was, and perhaps it wasn’t, but it did seem that way.
He felt a sudden chill and opened his eyes, and the staircase was gone.

Using Time

I smiled as we approached the corner. Ahead of us in the dark night was the circular shaped building I had always wanted to enter. I had seen it years ago, I had watched couples walking towards its wide open doors, I had seen the warm yellow light of the interior cast into the street, the people inside, just beyond the thin window panes. Now I would be that vision for another curious girl, in another car, as she passed down Van Ness on her way towards nowhere. The imposing size of the symphony hall took up a good chunk of the city corner with its massive cement walls and long, rectangular glass windows which offered a fractional slice of its inner vibrancy to the world as a silent gift.
Once inside, we walked up three levels of carpeted stout steps to the outer narrow lobby that wound along the outside of the auditorium. Between the outer lobby and the inner chamber was another narrow curved hallway. Every hundred feet along the interior wall was a door that led to the deep auditorium. On the outer wall were doors that led to the exterior lobby and to the long flight of stairs that would take us to the street. The inner hallway was lit along the outer wall by circular shaped lights that seemed like crystal covered portholes that fragmented the daylight into a kaleidoscope of shapes.
We followed the usher down a row of deep narrow stairs to our seats and I experienced the slightest bit of vertigo as a looked at all the tiered seats below us. The auditorium was arranged like posh rice paddy fields that descended into the wide-open space surrounding a smooth wooden stage with built-in tiers for an absent symphony.
A few rows away I watched two girls approaching and recognized myself…but wasn’t I here? In this chair? “Those girls have my same hair,” I said smiling. “I have no interest in talking about your hair, just be here with me.” I fought back the tears that sprang up, the machine feeling slightly reprimanded. My stomach felt a little queasy. I took a deep breath in, beginning in the stomach and then filling the space of the chest…VAHHHHHHH, my mind said in movement with the breath. KAHHHHHHHHHHH, there was no movement, just the holding of air. When I could not maintain the pressure any longer, I released…DEEEHHHHHHHH. Without anything left, I held and maintained silence within. The murmur of the room was loud. There were words coming from the people behind us, they were loud, their words came in and out without understanding, I recognized the sounds, the words, but I didn’t latch on, they went through me like clouds. VAHHHHHHH, my mind said in movement with the breath. KAHHHHHHHHHHH, there was no movement, just the holding of air. When I could not maintain the pressure any longer, I released…DEEEHHHHHHHH. Without anything left, I held and maintained silence within. The woman in front of me was reading a newspaper, there were photos of a beach. On the tier below us and towards the center of the room, was a man standing by the entrance to the balcony seats. He was wearing a black tuxedo and a bow tie, his hands were clasped in front of him, as though waiting for a command. VAHHHHHHH, my mind said in movement with the breath. KAHHHHHHHHHHH, there was no movement, just the holding of the air. When I could not maintain the pressure any longer, I released…DEEEHHHHHHHH. Without anything left, I held and maintained silence within. Across the space of the great wide auditorium, there was another man, dressed in a similar tuxedo, he stood silhouetted against the illuminated rectangle behind him, the open door. VAHHHHHHH, my mind said in movement with the breath. KAHHHHHHHHHHH, there was no movement, just the holding of the air. When I could not maintain the pressure any longer, I released…DEEEHHHHHHHH. Without anything left, I held and maintained silence within.
There was a pretty girl with long hair several rows down, a man with a pony tail just a few seats from me on the left…he reminded me of someone, but his beard was much too trim to be an exact match. The voices behind us peaked into a raucous chorus of laughter. Then the lights dimmed and the room was full of applause as a man in a suit introduced the three band members of the quartet. As the applause peaked with enthusiasm at what was coming, a man stepped onto the wooden stage. He was thin, slightly frail, in a suit that, from our distance, looked maroon. The musicians gathered in their appointed positions. The young drummer went to a slightly raised platform and sat on his stool, gathering the two wooden sticks in his hand. The guitarist nestled his instrument on his lap and beneath his arm and found a comfortable place on a tall stool. He reclined against it, not exactly sitting. One of his feet remained on the stage, the other balanced on the rung of the metal stool. The bassist stood behind his instrument, he put his arms around it, about to dance, about to show her a good time. He was ready, in his black pants and collared black shirt with the top two buttons undone. And then the man in front, the man described to me as a living legend, a demigod among the mortals. He stood closer to us than the rest, just a few feet in front of the bassist and guitarist who stood across from each other, the drummer was a few steps back but centered. The four of them made the shape of a square cross.
The man in front picked up his saxophone, beside him was a trumpet and violin. This was Ornette Coleman. There was silence as the applause died. The men on the stage held the silence with us as well, then burst into a frantic bout of noise. I was immediately lost. The sounds seemed to slap me in the face, moving fast, repeatedly, hitting me again on the other side before I had time to completely fall over. It felt like a storm. A big messy storm. I heard my brain say that I couldn’t hear them. I wondered if it was the room, but wasn’t it designed with acoustics in mind? Was it me? The CD I heard earlier in the day sounded clearer…I thought of my mother saying there were better Italian restaurants in LA after she returned from Italy. The piece abruptly ended and I clapped along with everyone else. The second piece began more slowly, a little more moody and seductive. I focused on the drummer, then closed my eyes to try and hear him moving with the other three.
I opened my eyes, I looked slightly to the right and saw him holding her hand. Immediately my body tensed. He was not touching me. I let the breath come into me slowly. NO, No. Do not fuck this up. Breathe. Pay attention to the music. The sound of the saxophone was high, seeming to screech. I closed my eyes. I listened. Yes. The bass. I like the bass. I tuned in. Song after song passed. Then I noticed that his hand was on her knee. His other hand rested on his left knee. I brought my knees closer, I tried to position myself close to him, so that his hand would come casually to mine, but it did not. When the song ended, he leaned over with a smile and gave me a kiss. I smiled, wondering if my eyes revealed my thoughts.
I watched the drummer, whose shirt was showing signs of dampness. He was a monster, tapping, moving, striking, there was so much variance, then I listened to the bass, I tried to hear it, I closed my eyes and tried to find it through the melody and the violin and the drums. But then I looked over at her knee, and I saw his hand there. “I just cannot do this. He really does love her more. He really does. I never spend the night, and he loves her more. It is always like this. Always. Oh my god. Ok.” I let out a sigh. A tear began to form on my right eye. I took a long deep breath, I felt my chest. “May the result of this small sacrifice be for the benefit of all beings everywhere.”
BAIIIoooooo….Ornette called me back with his saxophone. Come back, listen to me. I closed my eyes, I listened. It got deeper. I felt sleep tugging at me and I fell deeper into the sounds. It seemed to get louder. Was it me? The song ended and he leaned in again and gave me a kiss. His smile was bright, he was having a good time. But why wouldn’t he touch my leg? “He really loves her more. It is just so simple.” A long deep sigh. The drums…the bass…his hand on her knee. I looked at the filled seats around me, the bodies, the shape of the theater. I felt myself in the auditorium. I felt myself as a body. “Do you always want to be like this? Do you want to remain trapped in this body, in this realm? In this fucked up mantram that cannot let you pay attention to the music?” I didn’t. I knew that. Each one of these thoughts was the jealous machine that just couldn’t believe it was loved despite its foibles. I closed my eyes again. My head was moving. I realized I was bobbing to the beat of the bass… was that right? I wondered if I did this often, I wondered if the drummer had his own rhythm, if there were multiple beats to bob to. My head moved and I heard the screech of the violin enter. I tried to listen to the melody of the guitar, but it seemed the most buried. Then there was a fast little melody of the saxophone, then the response of the guitar, only slightly higher, then the response again of the saxophone, now higher than the guitar, it went higher and higher three times. I smiled, hearing it, happy that I had. “His hand, her knee.”
And then the three musicians quieted slightly while the guitar rose. I heard him clearly. Then the guitar faded while the bass became the center of attention. “Oh no. It’s over. It’s ending. I spent so much time begin jealous, I didn’t spend enough time listening. This little life is over. I wasted so much of it. I am here in this auditorium, I am here, in this body, I couldn’t focus on what was here, I spent so much time focusing on what was not happening. What I wanted, what was being fulfilled, what wasn’t. I wasted the life. If I don’t stop the habit, I will really be looking back, if I am lucky, sixty years from today, thinking the same thing.”
And then it was over. The lights came on and we walked out into the cold air of the night, staring from the balcony to the lighted citadel on top of the capitol building.

Death

A college-aged boy in a white T-shirt and jeans stands in front of a crowded room. His round Asian face looks towards the white pull-down screen in the center of the classroom wall. An unused microphone rests in his left hand. The room is dim, the only light source comes from the projection itself, which is a picture of the same boy, in another place, a different time. The boy in the photo is in a light filled greenhouse. His hard city mask has fallen and he beams into the camera, holding a red ripe tomato in each hand. In the dark room, down a windowless hall in the basement of the science building, the boy looks at another self. He cannot recognize himself. He brought the slides, he practiced the presentation, but the face that appears to be his own is a stranger.
Who is that? he wonders. He is without the requisite white bandana and required mask. The boy in the room has been overtaken by death. He stares with eyes blinking. He looks, searching, searching for the self he now knows. Searching for…something. The projected photograph is a sudden flash…something used to be different. For a moment, maybe as quick as the snap of the shutter, he was different. He smiled because of tomatoes. His fingers were dirty and his car was useless and all his friends and family were miles away. He was no one to the soil, no one to the trees. But he coaxed life from a seed. And life was given. Birth happened, and the tomatoes were proof.
The photo which he stares at now with strange curiosity, is a reminder of another life, one that faded the moment he left the greenhouse. A tarot card drifts to the floor. The boy doesn’t see it, he doesn’t feel its subtle wind. It lays facing up, a skeleton in armor tramples all with his horse. The flag of death waves in the red sky. A fallen king lies next to his forgotten gold crown, two children weep at the feet of the white stallion. Are they in the path? Is the horse’s shoe a moment from their heads?
The boy with the microphone does not see the fluttering death flag beside his own head. The stench of his physical death will take years, but this is just as foreign. It’s like looking at his own corpse, except…it is not. His corpse looks at the being left behind. The being forgotten, flowering just for a moment. Open and light-filled and caught forever. Caught for a moment that will always exist, even if it has moved beyond the recognizable.
Death came uninvited. Death came when the boy began to think, when he began to be “himself.” When he returned to life as though nothing had happened. When he got into his car, put on his bandana, and tried to explain his experience. But death happened. A moment of sudden life had exploded out of the rotting experience of a machine, and that moment lives on in the photo. It lives in the dim room, lives in the moment. It is the reminder that flowers can bloom in the mud, that a burst of lighting can cause a fire. But the boy standing with the microphone is a reminder that death is never far away. It is ready, with horse and flag and armor, ready to snatch it all.
The class waits expectantly for the explanation of the photo, the description of his experience and the things he learned. But there are no words for the captured moment. No words that can describe the bliss of creativity and birth. Nothing to explain the smile and the love of two tomatoes and the energy of a being spilling forth. The class is silent, waiting for the unexplainable to be explained.

Black Friday

“Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock, jingle da ta da taaaaaa….”

Overnight the mall has turned into a simulated winter wonderland. The shop windows are built upon beds of soft fake snow, mannequins in sweaters and mittens pretend to play in an eternal moment of cheer. There are pine trees everywhere, green garlands and candy canes and colored lights. It happened overnight. Just the other day was fall. The predominant colors were brown and yellow and gold…and now, just a day later, there is white and green and red. Just yesterday I was eating turkey and cranberries and stuffing, yesterday was another holiday entirely, but now, we are all in a downward slope towards Christmas. There’s the jiggling man and snow and trees and wrapped boxes with bows, all the signifiers of the holiday.
And this is it. The official first day of the season. “Official” according to retail analysts and department stores and consumer groups and the stock market. It is Black Friday. The “official” first day of the Christmas shopping season. And overnight, it has become just that. The food of Thanksgiving is not yet digested, and yet, the Christmas buzz has begun. The ringing of registers, the unmistakable sound of a credit card transaction spitting out a receipt, the bell of Goodwill employees with their red buckets, the Christmas carols in every store with a sound system.
The mall is an oversized ant farm. Families, couples, teenage girls…everyone is here. For the sales, for the shopping list, for the spirit, to ease the boredom of a day off work, out of habit, out of a clever advertising campaign. The mall, spacious as it is with tiled floors and wide aisles is just not meant for so many people, each laden with bags and staring into colorful window displays that depict what we should all strive for: endless styled merriment.
They do it en masse. Millions, all waking up on the same particular Friday morning. All with the same idea, the same plan, the same future just minutes away. The town may change, the particular name of the mall, the dent on the credit card, but it is the same flow, the momentum that propels them out the door, into a car, and into a packed shopping center.
The biggest cloud that coats the brain is the illusion of individuality. They may be singular bodies, breathing and moving independent of each other, but there is no individual thought or plan. Millions of people cannot suddenly wake up the same morning and each have their “unique” idea of how to spend the day. Anything that moves that many bodies to one particular place is carefully constructed. We’ll never see them, those slick men and women with a firm grip on human desires and insecurities. They can move a million people like soft clay bent between fingers. Scared, sad, bored, deeply fearful about the meaning of existence, desperately clinging to any theory that explains life in an easy-to-follow formula. The stores are ready for the masses, those people ignorant of their own fears. The stores are open by 6 am and there is a line around the block. Large women in oversized jackets run to the shelves like they are stocked with the last remains of bottled water and provisions. But there is no war, there is no scarcity. This is the desperation of the satiated, or seemingly so. Another Black Friday begins and end with the illusion of free choice.

“Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock, jingle da ta da taaaaaa….”

Polarity

“What!!??”
I looked over at the little boy sitting next to me on the couch. I saw his little tan hands with palms facing upwards, the same way my grandmother held her hands when she just couldn’t believe something. His little ten-year old body was already formed and aged, just as he would be years from now. The conservative grandparents clearly came though in his small face. The drive of his parents, the clear delineation between right and wrong and good and bad and black and white. He thought he knew it all. The world was clearly defined and he knew his place in it. His track was set, I could see that. The path of expectations needing fulfillment, degrees in need of achieving, bank accounts in need of filling.
“How can they say that??!!” He looked to me with a smile of disbelief on his face, somewhat mocking in origin, as though he knew it was wrong.
“It’s true,” I said.
We were watching a documentary about the drug war made from the perspective that the drug war is failing. Or rather, I was watching it and he sat beside me, mostly looking at a YouTube video on the small laptop in front of him and occasionally looking up to the larger screen, where images of marijuana fields and homeless men on Skid Row and the power players of America in their business suits moved across our vision.
“I don’t think anyone has ever died from marijuana,” I said.
“Yeah, but it’s bad.”
“Why?” I asked.
“It’s bad, if it was legal everyone would always walk around being high all the time.”
“Cigarettes and alcohol kill a lot more people, no one has ever died from just smoking marijuana.”
“Will you give me a hundred dollars if I find someone who’s died?”
I took a breath and smiled.
“I don’t have one hundred dollars to give you.”
“So then you don’t believe it. So you believe everyone should just walk around being high all the time.” His little face was scrunched in an accusatory ball. The verdict, the rightness of his opinion had been settled, any other statement would be taken as an offense.
“You know, it’s not one way or the other. Maybe a couple of people have died from some sort of weird complication with smoking, but overall, it’s safer than alcohol and alcohol is legal. Just because I don’t want to bet a hundred dollars, it doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s true. Just because I think medical use is okay doesn’t mean I believe everyone should walk around high.”
He disengaged and looked at his computer screen, on it was another little boy giving detailed instructions on how to modify a Nerf gun. Once again, as I had many times in the two years I had known him, I saw myself in this little boy. I recognized the binary thought. It’s one way or the other. This or that. The two ends of the spectrum, miles apart in reality, yet smushed together side by side, leaving no room for the middle.
For in this middle is the place of complex beauty. It is the realm of the subtle and vague. The softer spectrum of watercolor hues where many things can exist at once. Where all possibilities can coexist in an orgy of thought and merging possibilities and wonder.
I see a girl dancing. There are two walls made of bricks. They are miles apart, but they are so tall that their sheer height makes them always known. The pretty girl is in the field, among the gently sloping grass of yellow and green. Her skirt of layered gray chiffon moves like clouds tethered to her waist. She moves around trees and skips over sleeping foxes. She is in the gap. The huge space in the middle.
It is the middle which I push away with extreme thought. Either being happy or sad. Jealous or content in the slimy gloss of lovemaking. Two extremes, side by side. And always together, there will never be space for another possibility. Pushed together there can be no room for something new to flower. Without the gap, there can be no room for surprise.

Fueling The Habits

Sitting at her desk, she practiced her writing exercises as she did every morning. Long before the sun ever poked above house covered hills, she arranged long descriptive sentences into tight paragraphs, molded flowery stanzas and simple quotes into colorful stories. As the darkness began to give way to a brilliant, full blue, she paused to think of the next line. She looked out her window into the brightening backyard. The large space was nearly bare except for a lone wooden chair and a gray shed in the corner of the rectangular yard. There were overgrown shrubs that creeped in from the neighbor’s yard, but in her own, there was nothing but hard, smooth concrete land. At the point furthest from her window was a red hued wood fence, behind which was a tall wall of eucalyptus trees that blocked the view of the twinkling city lights below. She looked out, and as her mind freed itself from the thoughts of her writing, new thoughts began to crowd in. They were familiar thoughts, more aptly described as recurring worries that she rehashed day after day, year after year. Their forms did not change, their content, nor their frequency. Hour after hour, she wondered and worried about the same things. She felt the same jealous thoughts. She felt the same anger, the same desire for revenge, the same need to cry.
She sat at her desk, looking out the window, and now, tears were reddening her eyes. A salty droplet left a wet streak across her cheek. Alone in her room, she was filled with anger and sadness. Her body was hot and sweaty and a headache lingered at the horizon of her consciousness. Nothing had really happened to her within the last couple of minutes, nothing external. She did not get a phone call with bad news. Her neighbor had not hit her car. Her landlord had not evicted her. She had not had a fight with a friend. To any outside observer, nothing had happened. There was no external event that warranted the desperate need to cry and her elevated pulse. She had not really even moved, and yet, her energy had completely changed.
In a brief instant, she had paused and drifted into an unstructured realm of floating thoughts that quickly turned into other ideas and then, just as swiftly, morphed into recurring uncontrolled thoughts. They moved in and out of her mind like wisps of passing clouds. Their entry had been in the moments of her inattention. While her mind was off her work, it began to fill with less intentional thoughts. Gone were her poetic lines and colorful descriptions. Her attention had drifted from her creative task and, as it did so, she had begun to devote more and more of her attention to her endless series of worries. The more she thought about them, the stronger the thoughts were and thus, the bodily sensations grew stronger within her. She was overcome with sadness. And with each tear that escaped her eyes, with each suffering thought, her negative emotions grew stronger.
Like a blazing fire that begins with a small handful of thin twigs, each small worry fed the cauldron of negative emotions. Each small jealous thought added a little more strength and fury and soon, she was overcome with sadness and grief and bitter hatred. She fed it to herself, small bit by small bit, letting it grow in strength until it was impossible let it go. If she had noticed the first distracted negative thought, she could have redirected her attention to her work. Caught quickly and early it would have been easier for her to regain her focus, but a raging fire takes tons of water and ample time to extinguish. She had fed her negative emotions with her thoughts, bathed them in her attention and allowed then to consume her from within. Although she sat in the same place, with the same trees and light and view, she now had a large dark hole to climb out of.

White Sage

I watch my hand move as it reaches for a sprig of sage. Tenderly, with permission, it plucks a silver leaf, soft as velvet and pleasantly pungent.
Rubbing the softness between my fingers, the aroma gets stronger,...
like an earthy woman left in the sun to dance and sweat;
like the scent of a delicious man after ferocious love making,
his wild pheromones and wet hair only adding to his smell.

The plant knows no conformity.
It talks, but I am almost too deaf to hear-
its language is formed not by words, but by colors, movements and energy my brain can’t recognize.
It’s beyond the rational, beyond books of botany or healing.
It is the scent that draws me, that brings me to my knees each morning while I bury my face among silver ranches.
No, it does not speak English, but it communicates.
Perhaps if I quiet myself, if I become still and open to subtleties, something inside will understand.
Before I can hear, before I can understand, I have to learn how to hear without words, how to listen without my intellect.