“So, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?”
I’d never heard that question before, hovering close to cliché and thumping me with its gravity at the same time…
“What do you think of the moment before you sleep?”…
“Why don’t you tell me about a dream?”…
“The dream is asking you the same question as I am, because it’s the only question . . .”
~ A. K. Benjamin, from his new book titled Let Me Not Be Mad: My Story of Unraveling Mind (Dutton, June 11, 2019)
Photo: (via poppins-me)
I wake from a dream,
reach towards day as it hatches,
its tiny beak presses against
the delicate shell of sky.
Today I might learn to fly.
~ Christine Valters Paintner, “Wings” in Dreaming of Stones: Poems
Notes:
Notes:
I went to the kitchen to start making lunch, but no sooner had I picked up a knife than I realized I was no longer ravenously hungry. Instead, I was very sleepy. I got a blanket, stretched out on the living room sofa, and promptly drifted off. I had a dream, a short one. It was clear and very vivid. But I couldn’t remember anything about it. Just that it was clear and vivid. It felt as though a fragment of real life had slipped into my sleeping mind by mistake. Then the moment I awoke, it fled like a quick-footed animal, leaving no trace behind.
~ Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore: A Novel. (October 9, 2018)
Photo: Yourtango
5:15 A.M. Monday Morning.
Terminal B LaGuardia Airport. Not America’s finest example of its greatness or its Might. Dark. Dingy. Beyond Stale. Earning its status as the Worst Airport in the Country. Dead last in surveys. Sad, really.
Lines are backing up at Security, including TSA pre-check.
One hour and 5 minutes to boarding: Flight AA2632 to DFW.
I clear security.
And I walk.
What if. Just what if. Just one time. You call it in sick. A Sick Day. What’s that? You walk back out of the terminal, stroll up to the American Airlines ticket counter, pull out your credit card, pay full price for a ticket and…take off…to…anywhere else. Like take a day trip. By yourself. To anywhere else. Turn off your cellphone(s). And disappear, for one day. Off Grid. Just one time. [Read more…]
Thursday morning.
33°F. Feels like 23°F.
Out the door at 4:50 am to catch the 5:01.
Dark.
Directly across the street: new Neighbors. Young and DINK. First things first. No curtains up, yet bright, white lights were carefully hand strung and evenly distributed across their bushes. The evergreens throw shadows on the front door. I pause. What was that? That softening, that load lightening ever so slightly. ‘Tis the season.
I board train. No open seats. At 5:01 a.m.? Conductor announces that the train is one car short and apologizes. $15.25 for a one-way Peak ticket to Grand Central (Yes, Peak at 5:01 am.) $15.25 and you get the privilege of standing. And standing for 55 minutes. Sigh.
I stand in the aisle, as the vestibule overflows with commuters. I set my bag down between my legs, grab the seat support, being careful not to brush against the passenger sitting in the seat. I hover over him. He feels it. Nobody likes this.
We’re five minutes into the commute. I’m restless. I’m tired. I’m anxious. I’m not going to make it. [Read more…]
So I say to you.
This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world:
Like a tiny drop of dew,
or a bubble floating in a stream;
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.
— Buddha, from the Diamond Sūtra
Notes:
How to describe the way these two waves of reality, the world and dreams, meet, do battle, fail to reach agreement, conclude short-lived treaties that are immediately broken, how at dawn they stare at one another incomprehendingly, begin to build bridges again by evening, and then once more turn furiously upon each other, with a passion mixing love and hate, and afterward, drift to sleep by the side of a highway leading nowhere, on an embankment where weeds grow with their heady scent.
~ Adam Zagajewski, Slight Exaggeration: An Essay (April 4, 2017)
Notes:
