Prayer

Things are not always what they seem. Blank space is always blank, but as soon as you fill it with possibility you create perspective and perspective changes everything, always. See me, I don’t believe in the truth. I see little evidence that reality can be one thing. So anyone who tells me, “This is the truth”, has already lost my faith. Say, “This is my truth,” and I’ll look at things from your perspective. But when I look I’ll see only the ever shifting, and none of your blank space, because you can’t see blank space, it is blank.

I used to believe that I could see another person’s potential but when I suffer over the details of what might be, or what could have been, I am only watching one possible reality through the filter of my own experience. It’s only my perspective, you see?People lie. Especially the ones who are hell bent on finding the truth. I’m not pointing fingers, or passing judgement. It’s not your fault, truth seekers. There is no one to blame. Blame itself is a lie. In fact, I can’t even call us liars if there is no truth, so let me change my perspective here and redirect my focus.

People can’t help but believe. From your perspective, truth is. You don’t move and you can’t perceive the Earth moving, so it looks as if reality is standing still, revealing itself to you. It looks as if nothing is blank because you can’t see blank space. Reality is whole, without room for possibility, and so you feel confident in your truth.

Except, maybe you don’t. Maybe you feel the blank possibility, because you can feel blank space, it is infinite. You can hear the echo inside your imagination, or at least I’m told you can, if you empty the chatter from your mind, and find a kind of stillness that is beyond the struggle to hold your whole and cluttered truth.

And, so, if I don’t believe in truth, and I can feel the infinite, learn to listen for the stillness of the Earth pulsing in and out of existence, forever, perhaps I can find peace with change. Maybe I don’t need to filter every other truth through my own experience. It is exhausting to always consider everyone else’s perspective, strain to see a truth I can’t possibly understand fully, and struggle to find the harmony between conflicting versions of the same story. It was valuable, for a time, to consider everything, but…

Just because I don’t believe in truth, doesn’t mean it can’t exist, or doesn’t.

Snowmelt

snowmelt

I said, “This hasn’t felt like summer.” but what I meant was, this hasn’t felt like any summer has ever felt before. Which I suppose is true of every season, but sometimes you notice it, and sometimes the newness just slips past you among the clutter of the same old stuff you’ve seen and done, a million times before. This was the summer of hard work that’s worth the effort. The summer of cottonwood pixies dancing in the June breeze, collecting inside my bike basket. This was the summer we talked for weeks about tubing Boulder Creek, but we only wadded in to our ankles, because there wasn’t time to play, and because snowmelt is cold, even in August. This summer we explored the Boulder public library, the Saturday farmer’s market, and our own backyard. We talked about camping, but settled for a picnic in the park. We tried to visit home, but instead asked home to visit us. It was too fast, and felt so slow.

Now it’s almost fall in Boulder again, a time and place where I have been before. The golden light glitters though the aspen branches and the busy streets hum with all the people who love this place and care for it, or take it for granted. This morning we went to the Hometown Fest and the farmer’s market, and tried one more dip in the icy creek. Goodbye to my first Boulder summer. You were one of a kind.

independence day is lonely

I woke up today remembering people I have lost touch with, best friends who vanished long before I left home, who moved to the coasts and beyond, who disappeared into families and jobs, and all of the other places where I couldn’t follow, or didn’t want to. I miss them, and I miss the person I was when I loved them, tripping mushrooms, falling backward through my life, and landing gently on a front porch pillow where the full moon is just beginning to eclipse. We ate ice cream together and took long walks or drove out into the Missouri farmland as we philosophized the great truths of our generation. Although I always had the sense you understood far more than I about the mysteries of modern time, and the wheel that turns it. Do you remember? We laid on our backs on the wide green lawn and I told you that I was afraid, and you told me not to be, or to be brave even when the world looked dangerous, because we could always find our way back to this safe place, and our family of misfits. And even though your wild smile and the electric buzz of streetlight, or the pulse of noontime in the deep woods and deer ticks, yes, even though the purple mist over the park at dawn is a part of my life’s story, I don’t even have your phone number anymore.

So, don’t say facebook. Don’t say e-mail. Say you’ll come to visit me, in the rocky mountains. Say you have a blanket in the floor to sleep on, a pillow and a good book to lend me. Say you’ll meet me in Missouri on April 15, 2014, for the next total lunar eclipse visible from America. If today you feel the ether quiver like a dream-time replay of real life, and you find yourself watching my face in sepia on the movie screen of your imagination, see me smiling and waving from across the universe, feel me loving you. Find me someday, when we both least expect it. If you ever feel like coming home, know that home is looking for you in every crowd. –Ruby