what is body doing now?
my body is feeling gravity. my feet, the dirt. my hands, my tail, the metal bench. my body is moving blood. shake it down into fingertips. see the pink emphasis. my body is moving food. or is food moving, twisting and turning my bodies path. my body is moving air. feel the breeze in nose then throat. pressure inside. greater than. swallow the atoms we want to keep. see breath in cool morning air, reflecting out of me.
my eyes are seeing trees. seeing leaves, thinking autumn falling down, seeing stone made by hand, seeing knees, seeing hands. seeing a woman crossing the street, then two men. seeing bright across the street and above, seeing shadow, like thoughts sometimes. seeing birds, only in swift glancing flight. seeing the time of light, seeing change.
my hands are holding shapes. sculpting shapes. tenderness. curiosity.
here, come close.
skin feels air. more at the back of my neck when I don’t wear a hat.
my feelings feel thinking, but thinking does not think feelings, just impressions the way water does. horse and buggy would be an analogy. feelings feel in several voices all at once. feelings keep moving south and west and east and north. is it a matter of heart?
when a tree in the forest falls, the forest feels it fall. relationship.
relationship holds us to its breast. be at ease I inform myself.
and sleep becomes the mirror image of that breath.
wordswerepoemsfirst.com 
Here, you remind me of a Walt Whitman quote. “I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you. And you must not be abased to the other.” Although I didn’t understand a lot of The Whitman I read, at first, this line jumped out at me big time. I understood it, because I had come to know that I was two very different people. The one who thought and the one who felt. The one who spoke softly, or not at all, or the one who wrote. I am finishing up a book of poetry and I titled it “The Other I Am.” It has been in the making for several years. It scares me, but also makes me feel proud, all at the same time. That might be because as I put it together, I found far more than only two voices and know now that I also agree with another Whitman quote, “I am a multitude.”
Elizabeth
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good wishes making a book. what to do I now often ask. but better question – what to be? without losing balance, details matter. at least to me. and now, especially. I want to see only gratitude. there, that’s the tide.
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I laughed out loud at your comment, Neil, because the former writing Instructor immediately started creating a means by which you can do that. If you want to see and be gratitude, start each day by reminding yourself of things for which you are grateful. Write them down. Each day something different: people, places, memories, and occasionally a negative that you want to learn how to have gratitude for. We must put on that which we desire to become. And even if you don’t do as I’ve suggested, I must now follow through with this suggestion. One of my own personal rules is that I can’t ask someone else to do something I am not willing to do myself. Oh my! Wish me luck, I think I might need it. And thank you,
Elizabeth
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OK, I wish you luck! Lovely to converse with you. Being some radical perhaps, but my sense of gratitude is immediate, this moment now. Gratitude is the choice I make. Applies to all I see and hear and touch and feel (tho not always cause I’m not that good!). Here’s a question – if this, right here, is heaven itself, how willing would we be to see it honestly? Like that. thanks Elizabeth.
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That’s a hell of a question, my friend. Which is why I asked you to wish me luck. I actually wrote a journal page on gratitude yesterday. Started with just the simple fact that I’m still breathing. It went okay until I realized that the next one would have to be about something I might not be willing to be grateful for. Which brings me right back here to your current question. And that brings me back to another quote about having two kinds of days. Those that are loving (therefore grateful for), versus those that are learning days. There are times when the learning days far outweigh the loving ones.
So, if this right here is heaven, then I must first realize that each and everyone of us is perfectly imperfect and then must ask what can I learn from this perfectly imperfect moment, experience, day, or person? Instead of looking for the heavenly things, I must train myself to ask “What is it I need to learn from this moment?” And that is not always easy to do. Possible, perhaps, but neither easy or simple. Seeing it “honestly” might be a whole different discussion.
Thank you, Neil,
Elizabeth
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So, if we learn to love learning will they all be loving grateful days? (some days I even know that for myself. somedays.)
My teacher used to say, it’s not about being perfect (not even the Spirit) but being in a state of perfecting, an active attentive verb. Being on the path is the answer in itself. (somedays, somedays) Effortless.
thanks Elizabeth, reading me. Neil
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