Time Change

Isn’t it interesting how time changes?  Maybe it’s just the interrupted quality of perceiving uninterrupted change.  This now thing feels like a long time when I’m just sitting in it.  The mirror of conditioned perception riles the bile in the back of the throat.  I want to clear it and sit up straight, breathing into it. 

Sometimes when sitting, silver spirals begin to churn in a void, dissolving into blue green memories and then, time spreads, divides and falls away.  I can’t be in the past or future for long.  Wheat fields undulate in the Texas wind, Dad smokes with a forever crooked index finger, the grocery list begins to write itself, the toilet needs cleaning, we’re all going to die someday, now what.   Sit up straighter.  Hip hurts where I stored untouchable pain.  I feel precious energy leaving me from the crown like a long golden thread unspooling nearly to the nub knot lashed around the ground tip of my cervical spine.  I am training to go back to the wise breath root, one long inhale, eternity, exhale, eternity. Following what is given me, that sustenance which cannot be named or sourced, sitting in the flesh throne of this guest house of borrowed bone, watery blood, and countless nameless beings within.  

Another morning.  I wake up to some safe job of many expectations.  I clutched at this counting for a living, to make ends meet and avoid suffering.  Ends that stretched from the Amarillo Globe News classified ads (an ample list of decent paying opportunities always in the A’s, how convenient) to online bots with artificial intelligence looking for bean counters to work maskless from home.  Time stretched in month end closes from dark thick chestnut hair, plump round skin still having periods to platinum cotton candy whisps swirling like sugared strands around an unthinkable bald spot at the crown of my head.  The dreams dried up like ovaries. Story fragments distilled themselves like woolly caterpillars awaiting a winter satori.

All this time I wanted to write.  What?  I wanted to write what.  And get paid for it.  Really! How?  Glorious conceit! No time.  Expecting outcomes! You’re not that good.  No one would read it.  You’re broken up, too dark! Just keep showing up and produce those books of numbers, forget using words! We want number stories and are willing to pay you for that. Keep tracking the money it’s made, click click click. Good little woman, good writing is what others do who know what good writing is.  Dad told you that your story was just a copy, nothing original.  Stop wasting our time! Killing my voice, again and again.  I learned to kill my voice from Dad. Mom taught me to let it happen because my value was in sacrificing my being to his anger. The beatings were nothing compared to killing my young voice.  That cut severed dreams. Time rolled on.   There are things to be counted under the pressure of time.  You need to live indoors, just feel grateful, just give up on this fantasy of words, of sharing your stories and your heart.  There are mouths to feed, besides, you’re not that good.  Nobody gets paid that much for that sort of thing, and even if they pay you a pittance, you will have to yield to their notions of good and find it’s not worth it.  You will fail.  Don’t even try.

But what if I do it just for me?  Because it feels worthy on it’s own merit, like the breath that comes from somewhere breathing me.  My old loving friend is always accessible, believing-me into every moment, be-breathing me as I am right now.  Arriving already loved to each moment is what my breath teaches me when I am brave enough to feel.  I am like that breathing-me quality that knows something like true love.  The breathing me quality that knows the untainted meaning of the word “purity” shaped with the water swirls of my fingerprint, borne by the worlds of enumerable beings upon this moment.  

So I bring the true treasure back into the cave of my heart and let the tender words be shaped from what needs to be known.  The courage of this post is sent through the ether like a heartbeat knowing it exists only to love you, be true to you, and that is enough.  Tomorrow you will move your fingers over the keyboard to the demands of Boards, Bosses, boys with caps on backwards who make twice what you do, and unintelligible voices on Zoom watching themselves with muted mouths moving.  They will pay you to live indoors and for that your feet will fall asleep and your thumbs will die in endless spreadsheet mouse clicks.  Does it tie out, net to zero, are the books quick enough, can anyone find an error to point to after you’ve spent your precious time pretending to care?  Your human life is just this.  What is it? 

The courage of opening your heart to the danger of the blank page is it’s own reward.

I write, breathe, and see with fresh eyes seed leaves growing from old hope.  Having pressed my seeds into the Fall ground without expectations, three white blooms drop their petals on Buddha’s altar in the warm zendo.  My teacher says this altar is mine, so I claim it in my heart with these words. I share the inner journey and find you here too, dear reader, glowing in the light of an eternal journey.  What mystery has mingled our destiny, like two fireflies dancing in the void of night?

We are not changing time.  We are time.  Can we accept that?