This and That...written down.

The world is on pause
an invisible hand playing with the streaming device of my life
I’ve always loved that feature of my cable box...
pausing the super bowl for a bathroom break, and
pausing Nadal vs Federer to make breakfast omelettes
It had never occurred to me
that the game I was watching could disappear
the paused picture replacing the show
the interruption becoming the narrative
the ‘pause’ becoming the ‘play’…
And here I am
in Covid times
Living my weekdays
like my weekends
mediating before sunrise
working out of my sofa and patio
brewing tea between meetings
cooking dinner on Monday nights
worrying if car batteries die from disuse
walking the neighborhood with smiling people
and marveling at sunsets
And yet
none of this is without a deep sense of foreboding
that this is just a calm before a storm
the ‘pause’ before the ‘stop’
when neither the program that was on play before
nor our momentary reflections during the pause
will have the same significance or relevance
once the plug is pulled
and the …

The impossibility of being consequential

Suddenly it has reached my shores
Like the persistent lapping of an incoming tide
a liberating realization
a nullifying epiphany
regarding the weightlessness of our pursuits
and of our lifetimes of misdirected focus
We live in our microcosms
our cages
Spinning our webs
Producing
Eating
Acting
Consequential in the moment
in our civilizations, perhaps
but
inconsequential in ‘time’.
See how our heroes and our histories are recent
a few hundred perhaps a thousand years old
But what do we know of our grandfathers’ achievements
from a million years ago?
Nothing.
The universe and it’s excursion is so much bigger than us, and
Our times
Our impact
Our genius
Our egos
Our imaginations
Even our aspirations
Note…
There are milky ways of infinity
And infinite milky ways
Imaginations that encompass galaxies
And galaxies of such imaginations
I am nothing
our totality is nothing
except in our own minds
…I find It heartening, liberating
this impossibility of being consequential.

Nothing lingers

There’s nothing more to capture
To take
To record
To achieve
To emulate
There really isn’t anything
That will inform the “nothing” that will ultimately remain
…
Our thoughts own so much
Ideas envelope such infinities
Imagination such fantasies
None of it but real or remnant
After the passage
Beyond these worldly vistas.

We are much larger than life
playing a hugely exaggerated hand
compared to our tiny selves
To indulge
to enjoy
To be
To play for a while
And then to return like a book to its shelf
To not be again what once was…

There is no sadness
Just a finality
The rightful conclusion
That after the bewilderment of life
After the dramas and the emotions
The heartbreaks and the loves
The dawning’s and the epiphanies
The reasonings and the philosophies
Nothing abides
No trace
No thought
No mark
“Nothing” IS guaranteed
So this right here is
An unmarked moment in time
Untraceable
Ultimately inconsequential to the future
Such an absolutely beautiful g…

I walk with her around the duck pond
I tell her I’m withdrawing my hand so she can steady her footsteps without my support
letting go her hand as she had done to mine when I had gone from crawling to walking
…all those decades ago
I warn her to negotiate the cracks in the road, the undulations in the asphalt, the stumbling blocks ahead
with as much paranoia and worry as she had always shown for me
…in those decades past
I demonstrate how to bend each knee and wring out each hand
knowing fully well that its the struggles on my behalf that has often brought her to her knees and worn them so
And it is her supplications for me that have repeatedly brought those hands together and stiffened them so
…in all our decades together
I point to the colors of the sunrise, the ducks in the pond and the trails through the woods
I’m naming ordinary things, revealing unhidden truths, drawing attention to wonders
paying back from a son to his mother
in exact exchange for her service which was dedicated to me, moth…

I  called him up to rant…
to rile him up with word and emotion
so we would revel in the power of our mutual disapproval
of people and events at our favorite mosque.
But …
he didn’t so much as hear me out
didn’t accept my bait
changed the topic…
That’s unusual, I thought
surprised,
somewhat confused.
A few days later
an email explained…
he had been fighting for his life and now died.
Suddenly
it all made sense
he had been picking his battles
ones he wanted to fight, and
those he couldn’t, didn’t
There would be no more ranting and raving
he had decided
even before he spoke to me.
No more wasting his precious breath
his last few inhales were reserved for things
more important
more significant…
…
It’s time, 
I think to myself
to live like that
to focus on the grain, and
ignore the chaff
before they arrive
those declines and deadlines
of mortality and morality
and the minute-hand starts to scribe its last full circle.

The grey water colors runneth into the pink as the sky rearranges itself to settle in for the night Tumult in the grey clouds forcing rumbles and tumbles anger perhaps at their brethren who’ve borrowed from the palette of a retreating day joyous, flirty and rebellious in their veneers of fuchsia surrendering temporarily their dark identities for de-lightful ones! Light retreats slowly blazing in its reluctant a gunman looking over his shoulder after the deed is done I know not whether… We unveil the night to reveal the day Or darken the day to create the night No matter which… The intersection of each night and each day is an alchemy a show bigger than any on-broadway or off And we are called to witness with the eyes within our hearts!

Four ravens tumbled within the young sky above
their Monday morning jousts a labor of love
Claw flipped over to glide on his back
his vision inverted, his sight out of whack
Shiny above him was diving in tandem
his unsynchronized wings beating with abandon
like a drowning man flailing in the water
screechin’,  drawing attention from every quarter
Big eyes and Handsome spiraled intertwined
so completely in love and so out of their mind
drawing exhilarating circles after triumphant loops
tearing up the sky with saxophone stoops
drivin’,  I watched them the heavens explore
in unison chorus-like they did implore
“What does it mean to be the smartest in the world?
if on this beautiful morning its your heart you can’t unfurl?”