I’m curled sort of restfully on the cool concrete floor. Knees, forehead, hands, humble sad eager wondering heart. Amy’s death, the loss and gain of good love, the endless emergence, destruction, and reemergence of my self, the tides of my life, the rest of it all, I’ve been here through all of it these last couple years. And though the concrete is cold, I feel an affection for these inert walls, this chilled slab, this place of home. I knew it wouldn’t be mine forever, (nothing is) but what difference does that really make? Even when I’ve stayed somewhere for a week I’ve settled into a sensation of home. But here- I’ve filled this place with my intentions for a good life, with my imaginings of the future, with creation, laughter, crying, dinner parties, meditations, friends and family. I’ve brought life to the air and sent prayers and smoke to all the directions. I’ve been blessing this space and feeling so grateful for what it’s held for me.
In this moment I feel almost hyper-aware of the uncertainty of the future, and also of my own mortality. All things end: lives, civilizations, organizations, systems, relationships, ways of knowing and understanding, even solar systems and that which we think of as being more fixed and permanent; it all ends, and it all begins with change. In every change are death and rebirth, a passing and an opening. For some reason though the death feels so much more real right now, perhaps because I’m still living in the space I’ll be moving out of, a space that no longer holds visions of future happenings for me, but the ending of the life I’ve led here. I’m in a window, a portal, a doorway, an open space that feels fragile- I don’t know what lies on the other side, only that this change makes the passing of time feel real and concrete. In some ways I’m in a heightened awareness of the truth; for in the these moments I’m aware that the future is indeed always a mystery, whether we understand it to be or not. The passing time inevitably leads to upheaval, settling, upheaval, settling, and endings.
I wonder if Amy felt safe the night she went home to take a bath. Did she know something was ending? Did she look back on her lifetime of memories with all of us and know that she was in transition? We can’t know the consequences of our choices, the shifts in course and what they lead to. Do we as a culture look around us today and notice the signs of transition? Do we wonder what it will be like on the other side of big changes, or do we stay here, invested in our dreams of a future that exists only in our imaginations even as a new future, a different one, makes it’s presence known? In the dark, around one am I find myself lying on the floor wondering if I’ll make it through another year, if I’ll die, if I’ll pass on to other service in another lifetime or somewhere else. I wonder what looking back on all of these fleeting moments at the end of my life will feel like, what mysteries await between now and then? Will it be soon? Will I be old? What will happen in this world? I think of people who have lost everything they know-and I wonder, will the world be turned upside down for me too? Surely it must, for all of us at some point must trade our luck and good fortune for whatever catches up with us. Will everyone I know and love be lost? Will I be lost sooner than later?
Life Together 