Notes from a meditation retreat

The paper’s got a mind of its own. Even the paper is mindful. My mind is in the process of waking up to itself. It’s a process slightly more painful than giving birth to an elephant—I imagine—but it’s a process all the same. Mindful? Hardly. Walking up the hill, trying to focus on my feet, and I find myself back home, having imaginary conversations in hypothetical contexts, and then down below I hear the flip-flapping of my sandals, the brushing of my feet against leaf litter, and I remember. This is where I am, not there. And I focus on my feet, and then find myself somewhere around last week, or was it last year? And it is another story, another place that is not here, another time that is not now. And I ask myself, “Where am I?”

I am a drifter. Theoretically, I live in one place and that is my home. But that is just what it looks like. I live in my head—or maybe my head lives me—and my head is seldom in the same place as my body.

Mindfulness? I could use some. I could use a healthy dose of reality. I would love to spend some time alone with this, instead of that and that and that. It could happen. Let’s see. If the paper can do it, so can I.



Breathe in. Breathe out. Life is a breath. It is just one short huff or a long slow wheeze, but it is just a breath. A candle flame flickering ever so briefly and PHOOSH, it is out. But the candle remains, and there is still flame, and nobody misses it because now it is time for cake! So life is the precursor to a party. Well, that’s a relief. All the universe’s mysteries revealed in a flicker, a miraculous instant. It is, after all, just an instant that I need. A single instant of clarity, and everything makes sense. But what of all the other instances? I suppose they cease to exist when that instant arises. Now is, after all, the only thing that exists. Even that is questionable. How would I know? All I know is that I breathe, and it’s not even me that breathes. All I know is that I don’t make any sense. All I know is held in the single flicker of a tiny candle on a great big cake. It is the cake that knows. In its ingredients lies the answer to those questions that haunt the minds of the sophists, the philosophers, the mind wanderers, the dreamers and the mystics. In that cake is a pearl. But be careful not to choke on it, for it is worth more than a meal, less than a life, and whatever that means will be revealed in the breath AFTER the flame is erased. And then common knowledge is all, and all is known, and nothing is left to chance. And nothing has ever changed, all stays the same, and I never knew a time I could trust or a belief I could kick far enough away. And for all this, the ink will still run out and we will throw away the cartridge without realizing its recycling value. And none of this could possibly make sense to a rational mind.

Could it?