Café cruising in Cape Town a little while ago, looking for breakfast with a view. It’s 7:45 and a crew of teenagers order a bottle of wine. I wonder if they will have cereal with that.
I’m thinking about my day in the world, I am thinking about not really thinking about what happened this morning … well, I am thinking about it all right, but it’s slippery.
Strange experience, good, but strange. For odd and boring reasons I’d spent the night in a hotel in Long street … I am a few years past that being a good thing. Dead tired but not able to sleep I decided to just get the day started.
I have a pretty set morning routine … get coffee going en route to the study. Chat to God, meditate, work on my step … then it’s back to putting the coffee together and a day in the world.
So the meditation. Simple stuff, candle to focus on, follow the breathing, mostly stop the thoughts of the day from intruding by holding them and gently letting go, persistent little suckers though … and they tend to swarm. Mostly that’s it. It’s calming though. Sometimes I get to relax inward enough to hear my heart, that’s cool. Less often I can get in touch with my blood flow and get my hands to warm, or my head … whatever, that’s something I reach for. I look forward to whatever is beyond that for me.
This was a morning of low expectations. I was in a hotel room, unwelcome gift of a migraine. It had been a noisy neon flashing night and not much had changed. About an hour before dawn I sat on my pillow, got the old om namah shivaya going in my head like elevator muzak and started to follow my breathing. I wish I knew how I got there but this, I guess, was about being unconscious
… I felt a connection from the base of my spine, like a tail rooted in the world but linked back, through time and forward through me, my chest, to the future. One.
A bead on a string of selves. Heavy. Older. Wiser. Harder.
Cloaked in an older self like a coat, a second skin.
Muscled corded thighs, woodgrain hands, tools.
A sense of healing and healing.
Sage and storyteller. Younger and older.
Light flows and rolls, gentle pulse, it felt like time.
Long time, no time.
Falling, falling. Held dark and warm uncoiling. Quiet. Quiet self. Still. Still self.
Blue, white, white, white. Belly deep voice.
A calling. Insistent, irresistible gentle pulling. Warm wise eyes, eldergrey.
Wearing this self fills me, really fills me, with a warm dark comfort … viscous, liquid, it’s a holding place.
Then a rush, a foreign emotion, unfamiliar … Teeth clenched, hot and hard and sharp. I want to howl, can only groan.
No label, no value, no register.
Linked, through me, cog and wheel.
Forward, behind and here. All Here. Only Here.
Stand with me now. Stand. Here.
Now, with me, in me, through me.
Caught breath and a little manic shiver.
It’s been an hour. Where the hell have I been?
And that is why it was so slippery ...
Namaskar, thanks, again, for visiting. Keep coming back.
No comments:
Post a Comment