Overflowing

Perhaps we are able to share because we have reached a point of overflowing. This overflowing eventually becomes a flood. By our own overflowing, the entire universe is filled and sooner or later we touch all stars. At the point that the whole universe is bathed, in us the earth feels good.

Maybe from up above, the lit windows of our modest homes look like a fallen constellation. Night air moves in the spaces between trees as moths make dusty circles around illuminated squares of brightness that glow far away from any why, when or how. So often we do not seem to care one way or the other about the sweet smell of late summer berries, or take the time to follow a wandering drift of unidentified sound. Yet on days in which a strong wind presents a challenge to us, we so easily open our mouths.

Looking Inward

Perhaps eyes are the light of the face. Movement is their nature. Just like a river, they are so alive! They continue to move even when we are dreaming. The whole night they are dreaming along with us, but they can rarely remember what they saw. 

                      

Maybe eyes are the doors to our inner secrets, yet at any time, we can close them. But who has ever really looked at their body from the inside?  Beyond a blank sheet of darkness, a sensation of having totally gone blind – perhaps something greets us naked, toothless and hairless, heart newly opened, face turned upward, nose almost touching the pure anticipation of our open palms.

Mirage

Perhaps if there are no objects, then light cannot be seen. Look at the sky, it is blue, but it is not blue. Only when the wind has scrubbed every cloud from the sky will it be a bright morning; only then will our eyes, straining like fan blades against the ceiling, begin to flicker - their sharp edges poised to slice through the wonder of this new day’s delicate cocoon.

Maybe a child sees the rising sun as a saw blade, or as a yellow circle with teeth. Lao Tzu believed that that which can be said cannot be true. As a result, he remained silent for most of his life. I will always wonder if he ever visited hidden rooms of forsythia, with their inviting, open doors of yellow star-shaped flowers, or dark mountains gathering dust from the sands of ancient Egypt, swallowed whole by trees in the nearly invisible rain that smells as bitter as aspirin and sounds much like a lid closing over a tomb.