This time of summer.
I want something.
Almond milk.
I am looking forward to this almond milk , iced, with cinnamon and cardamom, turmeric and barely-malt and extra vanilla, if you must know.
I put the almond milk in a blender to see if it would become frothy.
In other words: Lack.
I look in the frothy drink for delight, inspiration, love, satisfaction, re-kindled friendship, joy, kids wet, with blue lips, having been in the waves shrieking, having dug troths in sand to revert water. Froth left on shore as the last wave went out. Arms wrapped around good friends, beach towels half on, scent of salt wind, wild rose, and driftwood. Sand in the bathing suit when I peel it off. Run a hose over my feet and enter the beach house where my imaginary perfect friends are waiting… .
Desire is one of the ways we make ourselves suffer. My over the fence neighbor, Josh, said to me, Nostalgia is for something that never happened. A close cousin, nostalgia, sentimentality. We love our pain and we love our romantic longing.
~
Yesterday Damaris on the phone said she was tying drooping calla lilies. They grow so much flower they keel over and basically commit suicide—So she sits them up, one by one, saves them from their own heavy, beautiful heads.
~
The Buddha turned around to face a group of people and a bunch of other beings, (you wouldn’t even believe what they were if you read about them, in the Lotus Sutra). He finally spoke and what he said: Longing, desire, is one of the causes of our torment.
OH.
At this point the froth has really flattened out. I don’t care. Don’t need it. The squinted wish has passed. That which seemed so full of pain and I must have and why don’t I, has gone all away. Completely gone. Like a magician’s coin.
This happy and sincere coach, with a big sense of style, Marie Forleo titles her online presentation something like, You Can Have What You Want. This looks very good to me so I clear a spot on my desk, find a pen and I’m ready to press play. She tells us, her viewing audience, to write one thing we really, really, really, really, really want. She gives examples. I wrote a bunch of things. It was getting complex. One thing, she said, one. I wrote the word, nothing. I fear space may be so full that I have no room to move freely. I may feel cornered, or do I have to get a real job? Or my big beautiful head may topple itself over and I may choke on my own petals, requiring a friend to prop me up like the crutches in the Salvador Dali painting, holding up the melting clocks.
~
I ask myself in this so- called stillness, What is moving? There goes a breath. Eyes close naturally to really feel its end. Then, a… nothing. Ahhh. It’s the next inhale that feels frightening. Oh! Even the fullness of an inhale feels too much! Aha! And the next like a growing thing, a blossom. This is where practice takes me, us. Our teachers guide us, back to the breath, which doesn’t mean back to blankness or bliss. Our fears and angers and beauties appear in the smallest details of our lives in this loose wrapper package. This smallest, most inward sighting. Of course, this is why it is so terrifying to just sit still and do very little.
Tuesday, Patrick said the word “still” also meant still as in; I am still going down the road. As in, to continue.
~ o ~