[ the texture of life, dept. ]
The other day, in passing by an I-phone-engaged couple wandering remotely together in a store, I was particularly ‘touched’ to hear Elton John singing his Rocket Man as he’s circling the brilliant blue earth below:
“Some things look better just passing through…
And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time
‘Til touchdown brings me ’round again to find
I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh, no, no, no
I’m a rocket man
Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone”
Indeed, perhaps our mothership Earth does seem to look a lot better from a distance these days, but I’d like to suggest that it’s even more startling when we ease up and slow down here; when we stop circling life and more closely, choicelessly, lovingly, meet our self in the real textural richness of now, right here, yes 🙂
In pausing to simply watch the mind and feelings like the passing weather, we really can find the supposed man or woman we ‘think’ we are. It’s then in that instant of timeless clarity that everything looks, sounds, tastes and distinctly feels, down to our core, delicately beautiful and dynamically alive.
We stop racing to the next red light, and actually – without a lot of thought – look around, childlike, at the “heaven that lies around men but men do not see it”. When we, as the poet Walt Whitman says: “Linger long and long” with our Self, in quietude and plenitude. When we love what is, as it is, yes 🙂
“Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specter’s in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.”
{ Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 1892 }
** THE PARADOX
Life itself is you; you’re not a fleeting thing,
though it comes and goes like everything.
Taste whatever its fragrant winds may bring,
watch from love, and hear your self sing. 🙂
