Time.

Theme

Time.

Being in a group you see how differently people make use of it.  How different allotments apply pressure and create a sort of tension that preserves the unit, and pulls it apart.

Out here there are so many directions.

And everything is fleeting

The questions: could there be less suffering, could there be more happiness, for whom is it worth it to change, when, and how? are not expressly stated but are the basis of this storm that rolls on and on invisibly even when the skies are clear, when a hundred dragonflies dance out of reach of recording,  but present, always, all the same.

The currents in this river have taken us to places outside of any map.

” I didn’t feel any fear but stopped moving.  The stream was like a dividing line and my inability to cross gave what was on the other side power.  The spirit of the bear defended it from me, what I would take if I reached the peak that retreated farther, deeper into the mist with each step.  Even without seeing it, it moves in the minds of the people who come here, protecting the mystery of this forest, the enchantment that is gone from places where you know nothing lurks, where your awareness shrinks because nothing can kill you.”

To places in our minds where the world is created, where what we feel waits for where we came from.

At the café, on the last day of Summer, a light breeze is tickling the grass and Bossanova is playing in the background.

The butterflies, and dragonflies, and hawks way above and in between, all realities overlapping into one.  A peace recalled from somewhere so far back there was no picture of it.

There was a process taking place as we began the hike to the top of the mountain.

A transition from one way of inhabiting the moment to another.  Was it just the beauty of the highlands, turning, almost before our eyes, red and gold?

Some

directions

seem

clear.

But what we find, when we get there

depending on which way we turn our ear, is a reply to our determination, in an icy voice, telling us we are small.  That there is nothing at the end

that it just keeps going

Its hard sometimes.  So much turns on the weather.

The long soggy surly drive around the central mountains to meet the sun finds it.  After two nights of no sleep and hours of tension, from beyond the glistening hotel lobby it tells you things will be different.  And sometimes that’s all it takes.

So how do we answer those questions when what determines which current we surrender ourselves to, and what friction we face in it, is in the air?

Splitting up, we’re all under a different part of the sky, pulled and pushed by the ideas we live on, speaking words, when underneath something else is happening.

In those clear moments, it seems so indescribably simple.