Since I've been chiding a couple of slackers for considering this a "spiritual" forum but never posting about any of their own spiritual moments, I think it's only fair that I post one of mine. This is a short cafe rap from a few days ago.
Paris A spiritual teacher I once worked with taught me something interesting about the nature of time. It's that some moments in the past are so cool and so shiny that they're not really IN the past. They're still happening, on some cool, shiny eternal level, and if you know how you can access them and tap into something of the cool, shiny state of mind you were wearing during the original moment. Today in this cafe I'm accessing a few such cool, shiny moments spent walking with a silly, black, snaggle-toothed dog named Paris. 15 years ago, a friend found him in an animal shelter in Santa Fe, and his snaggle tooth was irresistible, so she brought him home. I was his first babysitter, and walked with him many times through the fragrant New Mexico countryside, which he clearly believed to be Sniff Heaven. Later I walked the same Paris the dog through Paris the city, when we all moved there. Paris loved walking through the Champs de Mars and took particular pleasure in peeing on the Eiffel Tower. A few years later we all moved again to a tiny village in the south of France, so Paris and I had many cool, shiny walks on cobblestoned medieval streets. And still later, moving to Sitges, Spain, Paris lived with me because I had a big back yard, and I took him on at least two walks a day along the boardwalk. We'd always go there because Paris liked to look at the topless female humans frolicking on the beach. At least that's what he told me psychically when I'd ask why he always wanted to go there. Since that time we've walked in many more cool, shiny places here in the Netherlands. And today we took our last walk together in here-and-now time, because the vet said that his kidney failure was near-total, and that it was time for him to move on. I'm sitting in my favorite writing cafe now, having just come from the vet, and that moving on ceremony. On a here-and-now level, I guess you'd expect me to feel pretty fuckin' bummed. Strangely, I don't. Sitting here in the sun, meditating on many of my past cool, shiny moments with Paris, I find that they're all still there. I can access them any time I want, just by shifting my attention to them. And when I do, that same cool, shiny state of mind we wore on the original walk washes over me, and I wear it again. There is much smiling and woofing. A song lyric written by one of my favorite singer/songwriters (and first real hero in this lifetime) Richard Fariña pops into my mind, as forcefully as if it were demanding to be taken as a koan. So I present it as one: "The gardens we share are never alone." Joan Baez ALL THE WORLD HAS GONE BY | | | | | | | | | | | Joan Baez ALL THE WORLD HAS GONE BY | | | | View on www.youtube.com | Preview by Yahoo | | | | |
