Number Fifty Seven

Wind moves the branches.  We have watched this near the Nile, in the forests of the steppe, in the high divides where trees bow down in the raging air.  The wind comforts us because it has always been there, in every life, pushing across prairie and sea.  It makes the white out where someone, walking between familiar landmarks, is lost; and small waves that rock the boat we doze in.

Wind has been with us, an icon of how the world moves: taking and giving.  Taking a life and promising breath.  Always.  As if we had come here to inspect time: to see wind wearing away mountains, and that still place between susurrant movements of air.

Number Fifty Six

The current of time appears constant.  We seem further from the source and more alone as one-by-one our loved ones leave the river. 

But time flows only within the banks.  The villages we live in between lives are above the river, outside of time.  We enter time -- to forget.  To believe the river is all there is, cold and deep and roiling.  We can enter the river anywhere -- from the headwaters to the mouth.  Time receives us, takes us, teaches us -- till we drown.  Over and over.

Time was invented by consciousness.  To measure change.  We enter time to change.  To grow wiser and stronger in the water.  Whatever we become is taken back to the village, to the place we are becoming god.

Number Fifty Five

Peace is not a legitimate goal of life.  Avoiding pain by avoiding attachment is not a workable life goal.  While attachment is the source of pain, it is also the source of love and beauty.  Beauty and love are attachments.  Rather than detaching, our goal is to struggle to learn, feel, and love in the face of pain.