first day, within and without - lux continuum

The River

        


      

              I should have been somewhere else, but I am here. It is what it is. The lungtas remain to be made, the notes taken, the people met, new places, within, without, entered. These coming weeks will change my life. I thought to start alone at the end of an old pilgrim trail, but instead walk together with a man I've known for 30 years into unknown territory. 

              Today, as the doctor suggested, we walked. I drew him down to the river, full of sun and stones. He slept in the coolness of the shadows of tall trees while I gathered stones from the banks. These stones I have been dreaming about, common stones, as common as he and I, as common as our fears, and his sickness. Each stone is oddly shaped, uniquely shaped by the weight of life - icebound, thawed, flooded, fractured.

             Limestone, from an ancient warm sea that washed this place. See? Preglacial sands, sponges, small, small bones.

             I will gather many in the coming weeks. Mark them with bindi, marrying them to my dream, another context.

Reading

First and Second Elegies, Rilke.

The garden of Tenryu-ji, Kyoto.

moon waning crescent

four birds: male cardinal, female song sparrow, robin, swallow 

Ideas come, as dreams, compulsions, intuitive nudges. Things are as interesting, if not more interesting, than thoughts.