A Chilly Walk on the Sabbath

I started a new book last night. The kind you have to write in order to read later. It's always exciting to me, starting a new notebook - it's an opportunity for a fresh outlook on life. It's a blue book this time, with blue-lined pages, written in blue ink. The blue notebook. Maybe I'll find something more than sorrow in those blue stained pages.

I also had a vision last night. It was a bit wierd (as visions tend to be.) You see, I've been spending some time lately dwelling on my own mortality, trying to connect with the visceral part of me - the flesh. I know some people that have a hard time connecting with the spiritual side of the world, even the spiritual side of themselves, but I'm the polar opposite. Most days, my thoughts reside in the eternal, lost and wandering in my dreams, and all too often I have troubles connecting back to this life - to the here and now of things. Lately I've spent some minutes counting the heartbeats in my ear drums and listening to breaths bated in the back of my throat. I think that Autumn is a good time to remember that we are from the earth, and that it is to this earth that we will return.

So, like I said, I had a vision last night. I was meditating when behind my closed eyes the darkness began to quiver. At first, the picture was blurry as if a child had dropped a single penny into a wishing fountain. The blurred lines bobbed along the darkness like waves in that tiny pool to form two small windows, skewed in opposite corners of my mind. The frames were bent into nearly perfect trapezoids and they were incased in brilliant white light. At first I thought that perhaps I was looking through a cloudy puddle; as my sight cleared, I realized that I was clearly staring through a reflection, albeit a dark one.

I'm not sure what the whole thing means. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything that I've really understood. And I'm sure after reading that last paragraph a few of you are going to say, "That boy, he's a bit off his rocker." and my answer would have to be, "yes. why, yes I am." And that's ok by me. I know that the whole thing left me fairly restless. I carried myself to the bathroom afterwards and proceeded to cut at my beard. (I've always found that cutting your hair is a great release of emotional build-up.) And I dwelt on the fact that I have been spending a lot of time with my own mortality and not a lot of time talking to God. Frankly, I'm a bit afraid of what He might have to say right now and so I've had a hard time opening my heart at all.

The whole experience left me disconnected from myself once again, and I had a hard time getting to sleep after that. There were all these images in my head - from the past and some from the near future - but, like I said before, I've always been a bit of a dreamer. I prefer to dwell there, in the not so distant land-o-make believe.

Mr. Rogers would have sure been proud.
-d.