Most of my life I have just been looking for a quiet place to sit. It
seems silly to write this. It seems so easy. But I don't think I had
realized it until now. I have always had the calling... to be quiet, to
be observant, to trace shadows on the wall. These are the things I was
as a child. I think they grew into a sort of shyness. Being a writer is
to be a watcher, an observer. If not watching from the sidelines, then I
am called into awareness of my own movements in space, exactly at the
moment(s) that I am making them.
It is difficult to pour the tea from the teapot and simultaneously trace
the steam-trails that rise cloudy over my table. Difficult to drink the
tea while naming concussive//successive hits of: //dry earth//desert
sand//wet leaves//(each), as they break like waves into my awareness. It
is inward to sit with hands cupped, (in-shape), and outward to gaze
skyward, to translate the near shade of translucent blue arcing
overhead. It is painful to switch so quickly from being prone to the world, (acted-upon), to become describer of these things felt.
But this transition from soft body to clicking consciousness is one I
am practicing-- burn-path tracery, knife-edge projection.
Mountain skies have a different color of blue-- a crystalline,
watercolor wash of metallic and smoke that is not seen at lower
altitudes. I am thinking of the blue sky in Boulder, CO as I write this.
I am looking out of my window in Denver, CO and thinking that these two
colors are close-- they are neighbors, they are adjacent. But the
essential quality of the air is different, it is painted over our heads
with a different brush. The weave is looser in Boulder air, the blue
tightens around a smaller woven scaffold here.
I can be soft and peaceful looking out of the window here. I am relieved
to return to myself in a quiet moment, to feel the stretch of my body
through my clothes, to watch creeping sunspots alternate with shade. All
the best things come from here. From the quiet space of 'here'
afternoon. There is a ticking of clocks, a softness of rugs, a weight
that means 'afternoon'. The washing machine hums and ticks, my tea
expands into the pores of the hand-thrown earthenware cup. My fingers
flutter in arcs and curlicues over the keyboard. The birds are hovering
over a nest.
It doesn't matter exactly where I am sitting-- which town, which city,
which home. What matters is the cloak of peace and introspection than I
can make, a soft force-field expelled from my sitting form. (from the
center of my sitting form, back against the couch, soft rug under my
bare feet). It is hard to sit in this open space. I have become a
receiver-- a ringing conduit: for energy, for memories, for spirit, for
sound. I have become a malleable body that is porous. Sometimes it feels
too open-- an old yoga teacher would tell us to be open like the sky.
Sometimes in those states I would start to cry, feeling my body becoming
translucent-- open to shifting winds, sun beams, open-woven like the
sacred blue watercolor wash of wherever-sky smudged and shining
overhead.
"Anavopaya is the means whereby the individual utilizes his own karanas or instruments as means for his transformation for Self-realization."
"In anavopaya, the senses, prana and manas are pressed into service."
(Pratyabhijnahrdayam, Jaideva Singh, 28)
(elg, march 9, 2015)
