The Flat Tire

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In the mornings at around five the birds begin their chattering. Their voices fill the ether with a mad and eager glory. I listen to them and its hard to imagine that there is anything at all wrong in the world.

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Look to nature. The answer is there. The whole of it throbs and sings with life, as if Whitman were the Wizard behind the curtain, insisting that everything give voice to worship- of the self, of the blue sky, of god and man and rocks and cold, empty space. The carpet of green that thrills the hills after the spring rains, the always changing, always perfect sky, the endless drone of the surf, the movement of the wind, the falling of rain and snow, it all seems a vast conspiracy of intended, celebratory love.

But let us not forget the shadow side of her. Tornado and blizzard, earthquake, volcano, drought, freeze, tidal wave, mudslide, fire, famine, pestilence, disease, predation, discomfort, pitilessness, inexorability.

The turning of the wheel.

Mountains rise and are brought down, the whole skin of the earth rises from the sea beds and is subducted down again in some millions of years, we are born and we die and turn to dust and are spun off into the blackness of space from which our every atom was spawned a trillion, trillion years ago.


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It's nothing personal.



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What would life be like if you could make each moment holy? If you could make a prayer of doing the dishes, of brushing your teeth or taking a shit?

If dressing for work each morning was putting on the vestements of your holy office? If each face you met on your daily path was the very face of god? Was your face in a thousand different guises?

If you stopped to taste each thing you put into the temple of your body and felt that food turning into you?

What would such a life be like?

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This is what I intend to discover.


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