Liv: After the Fall
The Meeting Place. FOURTEEN.
How often do I stop to consider that I have arrived here — to this very moment? It’s the kind of question that is surrounded in barbed wire with only one way out. To be in full acceptance of what matters. That I am. Here. One thought forward puts me into an unboundaried future and one thought backwards puts me into a bottomless past. Why not settle down where breath means life, where sensory perception holds me in the awareness of what I can see and hear and smell and taste and touch and feel. An enoughness of heartbeat, blink, and swallow. A shedding of skins, stories, cycles. Polish mirror, clean window, open door.
And I must be alert. I’ve been hit with some whammies over the past several months and especially the past couple, including and up to this very perpetual now. Moments that ask from their core if I have what it takes to stay with them. No matter what.
What can I say about living in the moment if I’m really walking my talk? Given a precious few hours to myself today, my first stretch of time has been spent straightening, cleaning, putting away and then straightening, cleaning, and putting away some more. It’s been tossing the expired yogurt and opening a half-uneaten box of frozen vegetable bird nests from Trader Joe’s. It’s been turning the toaster oven on to 400 and putting the flavorful sauce packet in a warm water bath. It’s been measuring for a ramp for the door leading from the kitchen to the garage. Visualizing a hospital bed in the living room. It’s been lighting a candle. It’s been making a matcha latte. It’s been wiping down the kitchen counter and a round, silver quarter sliding into my hand. Tails. The image of a woman at a spinning wheel appears.
I grew up with a spinning wheel in the living room. Mother’s father’s mother’s. I loved the way the black wooden circumference brushed my hovering palm. When I pressed the thin, worn foot pedal, I imagined an old woman beside me. I imagined her taking my hand, teaching me how to transform matter.
The spinning wheel was a tool that stayed put. Except that it was only useful when some of its parts were in motion. Like the moment that arrives like a mystery on this spinning wheel of life.
Read more from The Meeting Place series by starting HERE. Use “listen” option to hear a stilted male voice interpret the lines. He gets a C minus.
