Eggs
Grace, sitting.
Waking, as thinking, what we do with time. // Spending or wasting, as of fixed amount, and therefore an imperative, to put to good use. (Better wake up now, then.) Using it. As time is material. Filling it, or, as time is container. A schedule, with slots of, empty blocks on a page. Empty ones to the right, can be filled; empty ones to the left, empty time-passed, and nothing.
A fantasy of time: if only one could have all of that empty time. And then fill it up, past overflowing.
Go to see Grace. How is it she is filling (her) time? What is the action? (I called it sitting.) The eggs (under there) are her contemplations. Or perhaps, she is bodies, these days. Night passes, cold passes, sun comes and light warms. She is still, in the green, gives me nothing at all. (Am I empty?) My time is not hers, or her time is not here. She becomes barrier, wall of the garden, as stillness. A being of no-time, mother-protector of inner-other(s). It is paradise, in there. (And ten tiny, red-blinking heartbeats. InsyaAllah.) I am the against-witch, (against-which), I am the hunger. I am the waiting and the wanting-to-know.
There’s only so much one can do, in the morning. Coffee-making, cat breakfast, floor-sweeping, some laundry. Nongkrong with Frankie, putting shapes on a page. Skip around the old playground, as if forever, then, sent, posted, past. Hang out the laundry, as shadows shorten. Seek shade and retire. Dust returns to floors. As daytime becomes, all at once, too much heat, too much light, too much everything.
μουσικὴν ποίει καὶ ἐργάζου. // Mousiken poiei kai ergazou. // Make music and work at it.
(This message comes to Socrates repeatedly in his dreams, as Plato describes in the Phaedo, (at 60e6), which takes place on the day of Socrates' death by hemlock. Socrates also describes himself as experimenting with his interpretation of the message.
This is an example of a daimonic message, in Diotima’s✨ sense of daimon, which is something that goes in between the human and the divine. One might keep it as a mantra, or reminder, subject to interpretation…)
An interesting thing, about (poetry, and) prayer, is how it can’t be reverse engineered. (Pretty sure, and as always, Aristotle points out something similar in the Poetics, using terms almost im/possible to translate.)
And everything remains equally important.
Awake, not yet twilight, cats causing chaos. I cover eyes, determined to go back. (Wow, it worked.) Hours later, waking as digging out from under concrete. It seems more likely I never woke up.
(The invention of prayer. Begin with sleep and the way it/you works. Body is not machine. Simple acts are a negotiation, while the deepest consist of letting go. Make yourself an offering and the infinite becomes kind. Practice savasana, learn how to fly. Īśvarapraṇidhāna.)
As if death were the missing half of wonder.
Aspiring to harmlessness.
When in doubt (which should be much of the time), mind your own business. The trick is figuring out which business is (truly) your own. So, self-study. So, politics (in a failing, always, because they always fail, democracy). So, the divine. Which is infinite business, but try to make it your own.
Tomorrow, as begins a new lunar year.
Bismillah Hir Rahman Nir Rahim.
May our homes and our passages between homes be blessed. 🌘🌑🌒