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has it really been a month?

so much has happened. so much life, so much change, so much, so much, so much, so much.

right now: I sit in the yard of a dear friend's house, having witnessed their family for a week. here it is, these arcing lives. here it is.

I was in the desert. and before that, I was at the conference. and after that, I was witnessing O and M's lives change. and then after that, I was at the retreat. and before that, I was driving. and before that, I was sleeping with a cat. and before that, I was in the hogan, walking around with those dogs. and before that, I was climbing a mountain. and after that, I was holding a strong determination, feeling and falling into a knee. and before that, I was walking along a path, pulling myself up by a chain, through angels' landing. and before that, I was leaning over a railing, and even moving beyond it, to look over the edge of a vast canyon, canyonlands. and then after that, I was sleeping in the middle of nowhere, a lot of middle of nowhere. and then before that, the v_____ o_ t__ g___.

there is a before that, and an after that. myriad memories enter my mind. should I have documented them better? do I remember? is this for the future, or the present? all of these things enter and exit my mind. what I did is I fed my psyche, I dipped into it; I allowed, allowed, allowed, allowed, what needed to emerge to emerge.

yes.

do I hold onto these memories so that a future self might enjoy them? or so that my present self might understand them? or do I just let it all sink in? me, a sponge cake sitting in no-longer-iced cream, soaked through and through with me? am I here? am I here? am I here?

yes.

what emerges are so many simple truths, so many clear answers, where the answers are obvious but difficult. if you sleep well, you feel better. or: hiking is a practice, a continual moment, with the occasional strong view. the practice is where it emerges - a practice of being.

there is magic here.

the magic is of the moment.

what I know, I know strongly and surely, and find difficulty in communicating. some truths are not communicatable but only experienced. the path is the path; the hiking trail is knowledge, but to hike is an experience, and to follow it is the practice, and to persist is through determination. experience allows a wisdom.

I am brimming. and also a person. also the same person I have always been; also a different person. I am different because I am really starting to realize that I am the person that I have always been. I am the same person because realizing that I am the same person is a different act. to be who I am already is a question of discovery, not of invention; of following, not of thinking; of allowing the psyche to emerge.

what is at stake is a life, and a way of living a life, and of finding one's self. it's an archeology that was never necessary; it's about settling still so that the body can float to the surface, the level of water tracing gentle sinous curves following the cheek, the neck, the shoulder blade. I mean this so sincerely that I am willing to stake my entire life on it, to be serious about it; serious about the act of becoming, about witnessing, about examining this thing that each of us seems to be doing, in whatever ways we find. plants growing, I'd like to say.

I am trying to say something concrete, here; if this is poetic then it also involves budgets, careers, salaries, social dynamics, skills, macroeconomics, families, biological clocks, attachment theories, intergenerational trauma, pleasure industries, mechanics of the criteria of success, and so on, and so on. we live in no other society but this one, the one we happen to be in at this moment, heterogeneously shaped and distributed, different and varied everywhere --

what I want to talk about is this, this thing, this thing that we're all made of, the fabric of being, the operating system, the paper that we're writing these words on; I want to lift this between index and thumb, gently rub in circles, talk about this texture. do you fold it in half? rip it into small pieces? play paper-mache? collage? do you see, this thing, this thing, this thing, this thing, this thing?

where I am im my life I cannot help but breathe this in. this is the nature of my being. this is how I am constituted. this is what is at stake. nothing less. nothing less than a way of being is at stake.

do you see, I want to say; do you see? do you see this thing? do you see this thing we're doing, that we're made out of? you go to a concert; something happens there. you go on a trip; something happens during. but this thing, this Thing we're doing; do you see it? do you? do you?

maybe another way to say is that I am so grateful. so excited. so happy and glad and relieved that this is where I am. this is all scary, and terrifying, to be honest; what might be next? what might emerge? I don't know, to be honest; my life will take the shape that it will, but I will find it; I will discover it; I will let it emerge.

under the stones, the desert; beyond the buildings, the sky. a summer full of ad-venture, full of solitude, full of friends.

so many lessons in this summer. I drove across the country, and watched as the map dissolved into the territory. met people holding their lives, landscapes holding stories. travel as ritual. navigation as a practice of listening to the self. a way of being beyond intellect or emotion. allowing, noticing, learning.

these days I am filled with gratitude. it turns out that a traumatically hurtful experience two years ago was one of the best things to have ever have happened to me. who would have thought? but so these things go; so you step back a bit, watch the curvature of your life make intricate shapes that make sense in retrospect.

perhaps all that I'll say is about the importance of truth-seeking, both solo and together. in my experience, a truth is something that allows, or even encourages speaking directly to another. what is being said? what is understood? can we talk about it? if communication isn't open, then what's happening isn't about truth, but about something else entirely. often, instead, it's about power.

where I am now is that things are a-crackling; electricity in the air. amidst this is a life, life as usual; amidst this life as usual is the crackling electricity of a life, any life, manifesting into being. I do the same things; I go to bed, I wake up, I eat, I take a shit or pee. I am me. but I also see what's at stake, for a moment; felt into the magma underneath this mantle, this delicate and sinewy way of being that floats us; the inadvertent sanghas we constitute just by trying in the best ways we know how. what's at stake is clear; it's indescribable, but tastes a little bit like a nine-volt battery, or sounds like the inquisitive tone of a child who has just learned how to ask questions. you know, you know, you know, you know?

so: hello, hello, hello. we are all walking each other home. beyond the career, the job, the 'community', the scene, the intellect, is a field. as Rumi says: out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.