"One day closer to death" 10/29/09

One day closer to death,

The autumn leaves barely holding on to their branches this October day

Remind me of my own tender grasp on this life.

The wind coming out of silver skies seems to expedite the deterioration of my mountain like sense of self...

Blowing the cellular dust off my exposed skin...

A hint of smoke from a passerby's cigarette, a touch of rainbow in my eyelashes, step, step, step, cars moving,

A breath under too many clothes, too much epidermal 40 something flesh,

A glance from some anonymous Arabic guy,

"Was he saying 'hi'?"

The day and its moments unfolding, they are stacking up...

Fleeting something’s,

Someone’s,

I don't know who or what's or whose…

Sparrows seem restless with the scent of winter in the air;

Trying to fatten up,

Scooping up someone's tossed donut or meatball sub in the gutter....

It's not frenzied for me…

The coming of Winter…

I attend to the changing of seasons with sober deliberateness;

Layers of cashmere,

Scarves,

A change of shoes,

Reintroduction of socks…

Death is a little harder to prepare for,

But I feel equally unmoved about its relative imminence.

What's to do?

I reach to the moon

And the sun,

To jazz and Aretha and the JB's

And the open sky over the Hudson,

In the space between my fingers,

In my breath

Little moments and big,

I look to the Guru

And my own Ordinary Mind…

I'm always being born

Pure,

Every time I look,

And Feel,

And Inhale,

And Exhale,

And Touch my sweet dog on my left,

Or hear the cabs beeping in traffic,

Or moving my hips to the soul music in my studio or rubbing the bristles of my brush against a woven canvas,

Painting the invisible,

Looking for the beginningless spark that reminds me of my true nature

…

And when I'm doing,

When I'm letting it all hang loose

And free,

And I'm seeing and knowing,

And living,

And watching and, well, the bones in my body, their weight, and the coursing blood in my limbs, my beat, beat, beating heart, blood red, I imagine, well, they soften up a little, lighten up…and my mind

Like the silver autumn winds rustling up those golden leaves,

Makes music

And my heart takes wing,

My eyes sparkle a little bit

Cuz I'm feelin alright about wherever I am...