The Eclipse (6-27-2010)

Is it endangered? These moments, the memory creators, are they rare or otherwise unpracticed? I see them plenty and rich, and still there is no more or less suffering and madness dwelling between life’s events. Does it stir curiosity to know what practice derives sentimental behavior in the now rather than months, years, or lifetimes later; where you’re appreciating while also enjoying today? Is there a way to transfer my thoughts that existed in the aroma of water splashed onto rocks sitting in the sun? I recorded the wonder of what language could describe what it was like. How do I tell you that the smell held warmth, heat of the sun, given a smell, given a scent as white stones reveal a bolder color when you splash a liquid upon it? I watched from the stones two companions sit together, constructing their ideas into forms and natural colors. That morning I looked for the eclipse. I got up and found them sleeping on the couch. I decided not to wake her and instead I looked for the moon alone. There was a glow in the morning of the partially lit sky, with a haze over the horizon, and a white planet, probably red, hiding somewhere behind clusters of trees, and I wished I had seen it, but I was satisfied to just be awake. I watched before a man, so familiar I know all of his names. He spoke of his professions and offered her a gift. Please, complete my work, and call it to be your own. Take my thoughts, my words, my practice; take me with you after I am gone. She responded with excitement, “Really?” she asked him, almost praising how honored she was, and I cried privately to myself. Gifted I was to be this witness.

Even after a shower, the smell of the creek didn’t leave my hair. My skin was warm of the sun, and my face withheld the light. My thoughts were empty while flashes of the day might visit for a moment. I would remember how I turned over rocks so my feet could grip the stones under water, rather than slip in the algae. My body ached from this bridge’s construction, and I was grateful to be this flexible. I photographed these moments, but these pictures only reveal to me my obsession to love life while it’s happening. I want to take that, and this, and that, keeping it to myself, letting it out every once in a while, sharing it with friends at times, and visiting the memories when I feel alone to recall the context of my life.

Still I understand misery. I can get the suffering, and I know firsthand what it means to have someone cling to you, so you can share this joy together. Before my companions left, we sat in each other’s company. There I told them stories about the love that clings to me, the love I willingly choose to be involved in. We enriched each other’s lives for a half hour more, delighted that we came to know one another. We hugged each other goodbye so briefly, believing it would be soon before we saw each other again.

I tried to rinse out my hair, but like I said before, the aroma of the creek remained. As I drove, the pale shyness crept into my body and I felt like the white skin that I was hours earlier before I entered the grace that the sunlight provided. My body was weak from standing in the flowing river. My heart was nervous, but it settled holding hands, and I breathed, and I sighed. I read a story, then I talked a lot, and I found great satisfaction with the day. Promise yourself to love in these days. Give me your permission past your judgment to unify with spirit, grace, and tender words that express honest feelings so you tremble realizing how good this is for you to love. Then breathe, then write, then paint or cry, then talk about it, and then there is tomorrow. It leaves me with an old photograph of my youthful parents, curious to know who was the one who decided to photograph that moment. In it, they were holding hands.