A Natural Emptiness

I did my best to stay "off the grill" today.  I need the low key weekend and so far it has been pretty good. I stayed up late last night reading "The Cloud Atlas", slept well and woke refreshed. I watched "Fringe" and "Haven", then met Tony and Ty for breakfast at the Hickory Pit. I did a walk through at Fry's, then home for a while. I met Richard for lunch at Pacific Catch over at the Pruneyard.  After that, a few quick errands and then home again.

I will say one thing about the level of work and personal currents running now - they have inspired many vivid but half-remembered dreams as my subconscious stirs around. Today, when I woke up, and then at various times through the day, I thought about the metaphorical boxes that I find myself in as I move through my ordinary days.  The power of habit is a powerful thing.  Our lives are infused with a hundred habits, from the simple to the complex and then back again. Somewhere in there, underneath that layer of habits, is our true self.

That search for the true self is the quest that can consume our days, if we have the courage to undertake it. Sometimes I think I have that courage, but then other times I don't think that I do. As we go through life, life inspires us and wounds us in equal measure.  Each event, each inspiration, each wound, is a thread on the tapestry of our life. Our life is not a single thread, not a wound, not an inspiration, but rather it is the sum total of all of that. Often, we cannot see the full sweep of the tapestry unless we find some way to take a step back, to get a little distance.  To do that, we have to go off the grill, we have to fnd a place of stillness from which we can observe, from which we can experience.

It's a little after nine o'clock PM here right now, I am sitting on my chair in my living room, everything turned off except a single light and my laptop.  I close my eyes and I can hear the sounds of traffic in the distance, through the open patio doors, the quiet rush of the freeway a mile or so away. The clock on the kitchen wall ticks loudly in the stillness.  The sound of my fingers on the keys is a distinctive rattle and click.  There is a distance conversation from the courtyard, but distance enough that I hear the murmur of voices but cannot make out the words. It's a beautiful moment all in all.  Simple and still. There is an emptiness within me, but it seems as if it is the emptiness that should be there. A natural emptiness.