Finally Friday Week Four: I Am Alive

The Bird Totem on Puget Sound

Okay...It's Sunday! I'm having trouble getting here on Fridays, but it will happen. When Friday comes, I'm out experiencing life because.....well, I am alive!

I think it's easy to forget.

It's easy to get wrapped up in this drama or that drama. Thinking can take such a great hold on the mind that it's easy to forget that life is happening right now.

For the past three or four days, life has been pulsating and vibrating in me. It has been so blissful, rapturous even, that it has often felt overwhelming or hard to contain at times. I was afraid, for a few split seconds, that it would swing the other way and my thoughts would take me down a deep dark path, but it hasn't happened.

I know life has it's ups and downs, but if I stay here in the present and fully experience life as if it is happening to me for the very first time, I experience something indescribable. In fact, words don't often do it justice, but I'm here to write, so I'll do my best. This poem spontaneously came to be right now:

Totem of Life

Do you ever look at the ocean? Really see it.
Do you see the waves, the deep blue, the vastness of it,
A lone boat in the distance at dusk with just a flickering light.
You feel you are on that boat.
You can feel the solitude and peacefulness of the moment.
The boat reflecting back at you,
And you, a lone person on a cliff staring out at the sea,
Are also sharing a moment with that boat and its sailor.

And then, did you see that hummingbird?
The one that hovered above your head,
It's tiny green body full of life,
pulsating with it,
flittering, fluttering from flower to flower,
Did you see it?

And the smell of those flowers....
Of lilies and lilacs.
The sun beating down on your head
Warming your entire body from head to toe,
You tingle with this sensation.

And then the sun going down,
Crimson and orange and pink—
Darker and darker.
The Bird Totem next to you comes alive too.
The outline of it,
Like a person, almost, watching the sunset with you.
A totem of life, of lives...so many lives culminating.
All of life's secrets, prophesies, legends and myths
Become known in that moment.

I didn't expect I'd write a poem today, but it came out that way for some reason. It's these pieces of life woven together. I am witnessing more, feeling more. Who knows how long it will last. I seem to have this curiosity with life these days. When I walk to class, I see the cherry blossoms looking at me like one thousand eyes penetrating my being. The purple crocuses hidden under a bush cry out for attention. I can't rush to class and miss them. All around is this beauty reminding me that I am alive. When I enter this space of now, I understand everything at once.

What have you witnessed about life lately?