Macademia nuts have a real bite to them, not a clear cut from teeth biting through nutty flesh, more so a distinct, yet quick and intentional scraping and halving the nut. Wise is my observation of snacking on said nut. Just as meaningful as dragging my mattress in to the open to lay flat on my back and observe the stars. In no way more or less filled with meaning than finalizing a 100 million dollar transaction or standing at the man-made border on the lookout for smugglers. Meaningful is an interpretation in everyone’s own right.

I sat on a wall far too long, staring into open space, trying to make sense, when I would have rather dipped my hand into my pocket to retrive the fruit of the tree and taste it fully. Attaching meaning became my thought-hobby, an obsession so very boring I grew real good at it. I preached and promised myself into isolation, so I could think and think some more. I was pushing thoughts around in imaginery circles, fooling myself into believing they had gained any more depth or clarity or meaning, when they had not. Nothing new comes from folding clutter into more clutter, like carrying sand to sand, unwilling to sit and rest and play. Not the scripted, practiced play, this dismal display on thought out stages. No – childs play without a prescribed outcome to gauge and evaluate. Just play. Lost in time and action, contrary to the constant rowing through mucky thoughts.

So here was a deciding point, to sink teeth pleasurably into the macademia nut or to ponder and weigh the decision in my mind for the upteenth time. In a break of habit, scream for release, I threw the ores over board and sunk the ship, swam on my back and kicked the water up high, exhaulting rapid cries of joy. Was I alive or what?

A wise man sits and pulls on a strand of grass, not forceful, not in desperation, and not at night, because he knows they rest inside their quiet selves and slip into an unknown space. The light they cannot see grows within them. A page everyday turns. An upward motion underneath their skin, a slow bend, inaudible and correct. Life easing intentionally into itself, reaching up to man with urgency in meeting his heart.

A long walk in the park, my quiet place. I think to myself: my friends cushion my soul, when I long to be held. They walk alongside me for long or short. I don’t measure distance, gratitude knows no restraints. My friends distrust their impression of knowing me fully even in the maturing years of our friendship. They have not lost wonder in meeting me over and over, frequenting the nectar of our friendship, like a hummingbird dipping deep into the crevasse of a flower to still its thirst.

My friends listen to my voice and to the muscles in my face exposing my inner world. They listen for the sweeping sounds of rising waves my heart carries to the edge of my skin. They listen with me in their mind. Empty saucers draw in my every word, they then hold to their lips to taste and estimate my state of being. Their presence and regard caress my heart, so it too walks freely in the park of parks, trusting to be seen and heard by those, whose footsteps never wake the quiet place into distress. Their silent elephant soles knead the earth, which enwraps me, each step purposeful, considerate of the leaves and branches strewn on the ground. A mosaic-me they shine their light on with their presence in my life, always seeing, hearing, tasting the composition of color and light anew.

The far end of the world is only a distance, one my heart never ceases to resolve, when I think of a friend and they of me. Here nests my trust, that ever knowing-feeling of being held in timeless friendship. And sails that ship one day to new grounds, I rest in fond memory. And one day too, the horizon swallows our glowing sun as we transition, then still, I know I am loved.

I follow the white vastness with my gaze, in awe. We both smile. The flower in my palm. I love the flower’s kindness, touching its tenderness to the extended palm. I recognize the same vastness in a flower as in the floating ice. I grab a nearby chair from those cast under the protective shade of trees, and sit. I am a spectator with the world expanding before me. The continuous motion is a passage through time, scattering worn leaves along the way, hurrying my own life forward. Anticipating nothing, I rest for a moment with eyes open. The red chair on dry grass, a backdrop to life, is my resting place. I will die an observer, yet every act of mirroring the world plays out wholly in myself. Every irritation belongs to me, just as every marvel charging and mounting my heart is mine alone. Life is overflowing and I am not seperate, not from flowers, nor from shelves and crests of snow and ice, not from a single breath exposed and raw in frustration or pain or love. A faint or furious chime echos life, whispers to petals soft to my touch, breaks now on the ocean’s surface. The ocean is the palm that holds the flower up to the sky, where our eyes meet and smile.

My feet carried me through a dark alley and further into the night. I traced my hands along the narrow walls lining the alley. Cold and damp, that familiar smell of a cellar, where I breath in the past. It is an old breath that fills my nostrils and prodes my memories in to immediate action. There, down the stairs and round the corner it sits and awaits my coming.

From afar I hear your voice. It travels down the same straight stairs. Here word and ear meet of one grandmother and grandson. Today the meeting is free of any physical binds. I have forgotten the words. But I remember you standing in the kitchen. Apron around your waist, ladle or spoon at hand, something cooking on the stove. I wish I knew what you wore on your feet. Surely you weren’t barefoot! And your hands? Did you stick them into the pockets of your apron as you overlooked your doing? Or did they handle plates and cutlery as you set the table? I didn’t observe your fingers then. I do now. The hands weary, oh many ladles passed through their grip and release, and many soups and dishes they guided to hungry family and friend. Not that I truly remember. It’s a thought that passes as we touch the warmth of our hands together. I observe yours,  and rest my attention on your fingers and nails. I think to myself they are beautiful. Autumn swept your worn leaves away, your fingernails remain untouched. Youth in those nails. What contact they must have had as your hand reached out to connect to the world.

In dreams I fly. I lift off the ground effortlessly. I am unchallenged by doubt or any order of thought. I fly as I walk.  The ease and innate trust of letting go. The feeling rouses me, but only in writing, for in flight I am free. You see, I retain my human form and don’t flap my arms. In effect, I loose my physical boundary, which separates me from the world. I am air, though human mass, and materialize in  space free to move as I please. What strikes me, is the unquestioned progression of being across all dimension. Flight itself is insignificant, I thirst for the experience of being boundless. A moment of mindless recognition, of expansion, of touching the heart to the cheek of creation in a song of outmost peace, expressed solely by stepping beyond and aside, simply to allow. To allow the song to be flight and form in its very nature revealed. Then, it is not my flight or my doing, only at the verge of consciousness my wakeful being. Ever more.

This iceberg shifts its weight in a low bow I cannot understand. I seek to comfort, but fail. So heavy. So ever full. Something bursts on the surface and something within. I sit and listen. Yesterday – I sit and listen. Tomorrow – I sit and listen. In this eternity the iceberg releases itself deeper and slides beneath my bare feet. Where skin touches ice, I dream of our sublime meeting. It is hard to bear in true presence and with eyes open. I need to feel you. Run with you. Breath along your side. I hesitate. Today – I only sit and listen.

On your periphery the sky mirrors its silent presence, and the clouds draw in the scene. You dance in me and echo the vibrance of human suffering. The lump in my throat imitates the mass of tears that forged you with time and time again. Still, I cannot understand. Why? Why this suffering, iceberg? Why this lame and shallow tango? Feet dragging in limb pose, no color draped, turning and twisting man or woman, no attendee in sync with waltz or jive. I hear the music! I hear the music, screams my heart, but only a skip and spin in memory’s embrace, where you melt and return all tears to the ocean, and the humans to their beds, where they may rest and dream.

The „why“ grows faint as the clouds disperse your image into the universe. I pain, you pain – pain. And tears well and ice melts and humans have sat and listened, and suffered, and always will. I miss the dance as the music beckons me to lift my legs and shuffle my feet, shake off the blinding dust of suffering and lunge into the tune, to slip my own tears out of my body and into the sea, and slip out of my heavy garment I cannot shoulder, cannot understand. A little disco, jazz and mambo – they too have a place and name like suffering, but I, I need just dance.

Ocean visitor on dark sands. Once was far off, a world beyond. Same visitor. Sitting still, listening, wondering, what may be. Every exhale, every inhale seizes, draws in deep, persistent shivers. The organ(ism) world pumps, is alive, sends waves, nudges minute and month , or other ideas, to follow. Strictly human ideas. Caressing glass and metal into the beating heart, names and numbers too, wiping now or later all concept of form, of need, of want, of past and future. Not driven by emotion or aim. Only the rhythmic, natural, convulsion, coming and going, giving and receiving life. Wave emerging, wave retreating.

Is a song a roar? The foam on moving mass, does it blow out candles and hum a blessing to life? Or, occurs the ocean in a shell, a curved bell, resounding all known and unknown? Word on word, thought on thought slipping away. And then, what remains? That too may be a concept, a hope, a holding on. What if nothing remains?

The ocean quivers inside the visitor. The visitor steps out of shoes and falls into heart. The heart opens and closes. It pumps not with purpose. The visitor stops, drops the cloak, walks naked as ocean, as universe, speaks only as wave, turns to rock and tree and grass, and dust, and is heard no more. Ocean heart beats, presses in, presses out as it must. As it must.

(Just is, here to blossom and to flower, and to grow and die, and grow and die. Hopefully without suffering. What more do I know? What more needs be known?)

This chapter has my heart draped in heaviness, though the heaviness it wears like a garment; dressed raw, raw love. The sky and the butterflies are my witnesses. A hum outside drives deep and settles at home, on that sole wooden bench just opposite the brooding fire. I too sit quietly as you fill the shadow next to me. Light: you overrun my soul and swarm the edge of me. Your waking erupts, breaks out of a remoteness foreign to me, in a single stride conquering every outpost of my existence. And so, I fall.

Low blackbird flap and whistle – space, though infinitely wide, hold my hand. Set sail, old friend, I missed your trusted tremble, now passionately disrupting me. Your calling advances through me, through the crust of the earth, as sunlight hails roots to press, and then pulls and pulls the strands of life. Sprouts. And flowers. And trees.

And as buds turn their heads they transform and blossom. I mistake their quiet disposition and overlook their drive to live out an ingrained plan. I slip on my vigilance and observe. The surge so plainly visible over time, yet mysteriously hidden. I lean against bark, and carefully place bare feet on ground, rest eyes and mind. In my innermost I search out the same light that knocks on every bud with its caring and determined capacity to wake the heart of all creation.

Its presence disturbs me. I cannot ignore the call. I want to because my reality I so prudently built is threatened to collapse. I wonder if this is how bud feels before blossom, and if the snowbell knows of its ring before present. The same before-before rings and sings through me. Where is the seed planted that now stirs and responds? And where the roots that quiver outwards? Branches unclad legs, exposed neck, and leaves on fingers and nails. Then turn to touch. Here warmth.

I fail to shake the grain out of my system. I really have no choice, but to embrace and tie my rope to life, now beckoning me to taste fully. I step aside and allow. I open. Life curiously schemes and prepares in hidden cavities, and then bursts forth freely, withholding nothing, smashing out of me, into me, cracking my nucleus to wildly chase the winds and climb the bark and climb the branch and reach the sky, to breath and breath again, and yell „I am“!

So here I am, welcoming spring.