Month: October 2014

“Gently Merging”

/ Brian / 3 Comments

I was standing at an intersection,
watching the sun set below Granite Mountain.
Between the mountain and where I stood were cars,
drivers immersed in isolated and insulating lives,
submerged in the cold hard human world,
unable to gently merge with the dying day.

I was thinking that humankind Is a scar on the earth that does not heal,
a malignant tumor that does not stop growing.  
Reflecting in this way,
immersed in isolated and insulating thought,
submerged in my own cold, hard, all-too-human judgments,  

I turned to see a young mother about my age
walking on the other side of the street with young two daughters.

I watched as the older girl tore a piece of bread
and gave half of it to her little sister,
who beamed with all the light and wonder of a desert sunrise,
and gave her sister a warm soft soulful embrace.  

I watched as one light changed and another died,
watched as the two girls crossed the street together,
their hands gently merged.

What is Under and What is Out

/ Brian / Leave a comment

The goal is not to see ourselves as unexceptional, no different from anyone else, but to see others as exceptional, to see the life-giving and unlimited potential for uniqueness in everyone and everything. Seeing what makes you stand out only means realizing what sits within all. Seeing it in yourself is a start, but if you don’t keep moving on the road you aren’t on the road at all. Finding the exceptional in others, in the other-than-human: this is the road. Keeping on it does not mean keeping under what you find on it. Keep on, go under, bring out, and walk into where time is not and all.

It may be a long time before you are able to find it within. Keep walking. Keep going out, under and out, under and out, a little further this time.

It may be a long time before you are able to bring it out. Dive down again, down and out if need be, go under, a little deeper this time.

What is under seems a long way away from what is out. They are not so far apart as they often seem. Although you might only feel a part of the places and people you depart from, there is another part for you to play. You are not so far apart as you often feel. You’re a wanderer, but haven’t you come to find you are more than the one who goes and grows lost?

As long as you are saying something you need to say, you can say it any way. Say it anyway, regardless of what may stand in your way, say it so you have said it and can move on to saying something new. Say it and play with it, tease it out of yourself, seize it and let it go gently. Let it go as you let it in. What you let out is what you let in.

As the sun sets, and I ride up to where the trees enclose the road in darkness; as I breathe in the exhilarating air of high elevation desert forest and feel what below I am somehow prevented from feeling, I breathe out any sense of doubt, any sense of inadequacy, any thought that I am not quite up for the task. Feeling it here I know I can feel it there, if only by its apparent absence. Its existence below I do not doubt, but I doubt myself when I cannot perceive it, when I do not experience it.

I do this climb daily, whether at sunset or after it has grown dark, if only to remind myself that it is, that I can.