Time is Now

Since two months ago, my life has changed dramatically. I live in a different apartment in a different city. Like so many others, I take the train to work every morning and rely on it to return home every afternoon. I mount the same train car, stand in (almost) the same spot, and see the same faces, postures, and black jacket with white star painted onto the back. Some days, I feel tired, but I am invariably happy. My happiness visits me much more regularly, and last for longer than the night.  In the last two months, I have changed the way I exercise, socialize, and understand my place in the larger scheme of human society. I feel much more well-placed. Love permeates much more of my day, every day. The difference is palpable, and it is rare these days that moments of empty feelings stay empty for long. To the cosmos, the gods, and my ancestors, I offer sincere thanks. I want to take care to respect these gentle and profound gifts, and the relationships that sustain them.

Rising with the sun lends strength to our efforts. Wrestling our minds out of the darkness and into the dawn of consciousness, with less fear to plague our thoughts. Having risen with the sun, our efforts for the day are blessed, for they accompany the cycle of the celestial beings, following in their timeless way. Night blankets our worlds after the sun sinks beyond the mountain tops, and lays our efforts to rest. Our hearts become quiet, although questions may linger. The time for doubt and seeking begins.

The night carried me into the morning. The moon shone with light of our Star, who beckoned from beyond the sea. Inch by inch, our Star cast its light across the sky, across the fish and their hunters, the mountains and their lunar queen. Cavalries of cloud advanced from up over the mountain range, gray and gloomy from their travels. Kissed by the light, their edges softened and brightened, blue giving way to green, and then to gold. The sea waited patiently. In an instant, the sky flashed. The deep. inky black was now cerulean blue. Another flash. Cerulean to turquoise. What power, our Star has, to transform the wide sea with just a bat of an eye. The night carried me into the morning as a guest in the Court of  the Abundance. from 10 May, 2020

One of the fundamental organizing principles of our human lives, breathing, offers us in two basic types of experience. We can breathe passively, or without thinking. The body does its thing. The mind does its own thing.  We can breathe consciously. When we do, we experience the bridge between the body and the mind. Breathing passively keeps things moving, and allows the mind and our emotions to race ahead. Breathing consciously keeps things balanced, and acknowledges that the present moment reigns. Breathing passively makes space for the mind to fill itself. Breathing consciously makes space for the mind to empty and acknowledge the fullness of existence. After coming to first consciousness, at whatever hour, breathing passively is the habit that allows the mind to race ahead. The mind becomes louder and louder. But, breathing consciously allows us to expand that first moment, and become sensitive to the seed of today's Truth-feelings.  How quiet they can

The world beyond the walls has already begun, although quieter than even before, what with the holiday now. While rays of light come through the screen door and transmute patience into rays of hope in my breast, the heavy stench of darkness snaps away at it. The heart that beats within me aches for communion, while the mind at work above me spins thoughts like silk that coil around my neck. At once, muscles in the back of my neck draw the face upwards towards the mountain's upper edges. Lungs pull in air. Eyes bulge, escaping their bone caves. For a moment, the awareness of what lay beyond the haze opens up. It smells like lingering spiced burned in irreverent prayer, and feels like cool sea air through the hairs on my skin. Here I am. from 5 April, 2020

Dreams a house where young, avid youth live next door, a house where my step-mother and father live a neighborhood with so much space, air, that kids cannot help but create adventures an accident in a garbage disposal room biking so hard that my pelvis feels like an engine time ticking a costume party, the last one of summer an electromagnetic field that possesses the body of an evil, black bird a holding pen room the escape of the children: the glass room next door, the sewer tools a trick of the imagination: changing allegiances, forgotten lunch on a typical, special day from 15 April, 2020

The air in my new bedroom is cold, where a mixture of musk, sulfur, and incense hang. I sit still. The muscles in my legs throb, having hauled this body up the hill not two hours ago. Quiet reigns. And yet, it is not calm. Like the inside of a woman’s belly before her contractions, life shifts and fidgets. Restless. In this room, my active mind has already begun to shed the attachments that it clung to since I crash landed in Japan. The charm of a park next door w here I seldom went, then-bathed in sakura petals that now have all but gone, has passed. The mystery that I felt lingering farther north, out by the bay, has not. The spooky chill of black sea will beckon my restlessness again. Home is where the heart is, they say. Home is also where you lay your head, they also say. (Maybe different people.) In that apartment in Oita City, though, my head has not laid there for nearly two months. My heart has already relinquished it. As wisps of smoke dance above me, carried by streams

A bathtub that fills with hot water sits on the other side of the wall below you. Enter it, then make a choice. The water flows strong, so it appears there is not much time. Do you slip into the bathtub, submerging the numbness of another day, one marked by a commute littered with the bodies of strangers? Do vague images of dozens or hundreds of those animated ghosts become lost in the blur of doldrums, the bulk of which have yet to happen? Do you exhale with relief as the hot water, made silky with raw oil, consumes before passing a few minutes to quietly eradicate hours that have been hollowed of feeling and emotional depth (which are your birthrights)? Or, do you sink to the bottom, hand over the keys, and sooner die? from 24 April, 2020

A stretch of road that seems never-ending lay before you. It is asphalt, not dirt or land, and it is black. The road sticks straight ahead without any turns or other textures, no change in scenery to take the edge off. In fact, the edges have been lined with conveniences just for you. Some are expensive, impossible to consider. Others are so cheap their value itself falls right through your fingers. Others, still, seem affordable, offering not only your money’s worth but also quality use over time. While nothing at the moment is needed, not by you, the vague inkling that a need will arise along the way flutters inside you—because you know better—, so you set out with your reusable water bottle, some snack bars with protein, and a promise made with yourself to stop and at least consider. from 24 April, 2020

Hi out there. The world is on the Internet, but I am here, still in bed. The clock races, but my legs are cramped. This laptop is new, but my mind is weary. But it cost a lot of money, and I feel far from dead. Thankful, Rossi Lamont