the beauty and the awake

The many wishes and woes I'll never know, because I've got all my needs met on many levels... this leads me to believe that I am indeed pushing my luck when I wish that I could have an apartment that's more clean, a lover who is kind and attentive, a residence in a place slightly less messily cold. I've got friends, a nice job, a beautiful family, and I am in a position to do a great deal of good before I die.

I wrote in my journal this:

"I realize what I could not before comprehend. The nature of this question: What will you have wanted to accomplish upon your death? And now I see how the only thing possible is to have shown kindness and charity, to have shared deep love (not just this silly romantic kind) with even one other person, to have lived completely by beauty alone, and to have realized my true nature."

Indeed I want to have given my full being and my full presence to each and every nugget of experience. Then at least I will be able to say that my life has been full--and this is much more than enough.

Recently I find myself noticing the simplicity of deep beauty—sublime beauty. It is somehow underneath and encapsulating (simultaneously) existence. One who knows what I mean by sublime beauty also knows that what one experiences with one’s senses is much fuller than the images and feelings evoked by the senses alone. One can merely give examples to connote this reality—to point to it, rather than articulate it explicitly. I have come to believe that God resides in these mysterious, irresistibly gray areas of life.

And they are not happy-Kumbaya all of them—many of them are terribly horrifying and yet nonetheless sublimely beautiful.

One must know this beauty in oneself and in others first, before even considering taking any steps at all.

I strive to be this awake.

Here is a poem by Pablo Neruda:

Keeping Quiet
By Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about...

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with
death.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.


Extravagaria : A Bilingual Edition
by Pablo Neruda (Author), Alastair Reid (Translator)
Noonday Press; Bilingual edition (January 2001)
ISBN: 0374512388
page 26

For now,

Zachary