Warm-Up

Here is where I stretch my limbs from here to there,
to pet the Pacific fingers soft and worn,
to graze the Atlantic with the tips of my toes,
Like asbestos raining from the roof,
here they come! The thoughts, the thoughts!
Today I am going to write.

Monday night

The hum of the dishwasher keeps me going. I can hear two plates/cups/bowls/knives jiving together, clinking foreheads, or fist-bumping, or Eskimo-kissing among the tidal waves of dishwater. Perhaps they are in love. Or fighting. Or both.

Looking at my planner, I have most of my hours scheduled, and I've found myself here again, caught in the fog of yesterday and tomorrow, walking (sometimes sprinting) through each moment, unaware if I am in today's evening or the next day's morning.

Ironically, I'm writing a paper about how technology has impaired our ability to stay present.

I am so grateful for e-mails though, and how they let our words meet as instantaneously as we'd like, how they can sit there for awhile and wait to be opened, like presents, (presence?). It doesn't quite work that way for subject lines marked "URGENT: REPLY ASAP" — or maybe it does... like an over-decorated, demanding, be-ribboned Jack-in-the-Box...... or something.

Welcome to the evening, night-owls. To my fellow writers, friends, and lovers: welcome to rest, welcome to work, welcome to the meeting of days. Wishing you the best.

From a best friend.

I stood before a silk worm one day.
And that night my heart said to me,

"I can do things like that.
I can spin skies,
I can be woven into love that brings warmth to people;
I can be soft against a crying face,
I can be wings that lift,
And I can travel with my thousand feet throughout the earth,
my sacks filled with the sacred".

And I replied to my heart,
"Dear can you really do all these things?"

And it just nodded "yes".

So we began and will never cease.

-Rumi