I almost didn’t go. I awoke Saturday to a gentle rain (which we haven’t had in Seattle in awhile) and a flooded studio floor. I thought I had dealt with the water that sometimes comes down the back alley to the door. Apparently not! So I spent the morning mopping up and wringing beach towels. By noon I was tired, and could have parked myself on the couch the rest of the day. But I had a ticket to the Sounders game, which I’d bought a couple of days before for $20. I thought hard about letting it go – it wouldn’t be a big loss, wouldn’t it be more relaxing to simply watch on TV.
But the notion of entropy kept creeping in. A word I am experiencing in my mid-life moment, that encapsulates Reality that everything is breaking down (also building back up again, as all things are cyclical. But this is my mid-life moment to experience how I receive it). Diverting water from a structure? Simply delaying the inevitable – that Nature will eventually break down this building. My tired 48 year old body? Not as spry as it used to be.
After almost two months of ceaseless labor replacing my roof, fixing siding, and painting the exterior of my house, I have been yearning for rest. Not just physical rest, but a deeper yielding. A letting go, not needing to fix something, not problem solving in my head. Simply, being, I guess.
Why is this so hard?
I vowed to find some beauty this weekend. Something, anything, in which I could be still, and simply receive – – – whatever was present. To receive presence, itself.
The night before, while dining out solo at a quiet Indian restaurant in Roosevelt, I was reading Merton’s The Way of Chuang Tzu – a book on the Tao Te Ching. I’m taking my time with it – a page here and there, kind of skimming it, mostly breezing over the commentary.
I stopped on this passage: “The way of Tao is to begin with the simple good with which one is endowed by the very fact of existence (which vanishes when we look at it and becomes intangible when we try to grasp it).”
Something to ponder, like a koan. How to simply savor the moment, without clinging to it. I’m experiencing some of that in this moment. The Simple Good is here and now, which can’t really be held onto. It is here, then is gone. Then, here is now. Always. Something like that.
ANyway, I digress! Entropy! Resisting Entropy – that is my mid-life project. The paradox of both resisting my own aging (exercise, fixing a house) and accepting it (letting go and releasing into Reality, which also somehow allows for the possibility of renewal). I cleaned myself up and walked to the station.
I boarded the train at Northgate Station, already pretty full, even though trains run every few minutes now that the 2 Line is open. I did have a seat though (didn’t have to stand), and after awhile, I noticed the sounds of the train. Nobody was talking loudly, so no one conversation stood out. I couldn’t pick out a thread to think about. Which was perfect. It’s not that no one conversation wasn’t distinguishable so much as there was nothing to distinguish. The voices of multiple people, with the sound of the train motor and movement, were there all at once. Not noise but a hum, yet much more than a hum. A single, vibratory Sound, made by Life. A multitude of voices and movements, all happening together as One Sound.
I was mesmerized by it.
I recorded a bit of it on my iPhone, well aware of my contradiction of grasping the moment by documenting it. But I offer it here to remind myself that I don’t have to travel far, go to a mountain, find the ocean, to experience wonder. The Here and Now is here and now, and everywhere.