all the trees are dancing
After I have drank coffee and sat in the small blue recliner and read, I experience vivid gratitude for getting out of bed, when I didn’t want to. Today it took me eight minutes to get out of bed after the 4:35 phone alarm. And even if my life remains small and often invisible, and all I’ve done is sit in a chair without moving for 15 – 22 minutes and quietly bowed and drank coffee and looked at the weather on my phone and read pages from one or more books, when I’ve finished the coffee and almost silently lower the recliner and go and open the blinds for the daylight to enter my room — inevitably, every time I say to myself, “Oh my head, I’m so grateful, I got myself up. What if I had missed this?”
So, see, it’s not hard to have big experiences in little moments. And if I want to say big experiences in my ‘little life’ I don’t, because I know that’s completely inaccurate. There is simply no doubt that today – right now – my life is as big as Joan Baez’s and the Pope’s and Stephen Spielberg’s and Madame Vice-Presidents. They just don’t know it. You can throw Thich Nhat Hanh in there too. Because, why not?
If all the trees in the world began dancing at the same time and I could not find Orion’s Belt in the night sky because it had gone to visit its grandmother, I wouldn’t feel so surprised. Not surprised like when my wife said she wanted a divorce. Not surprised like the other day when I had this profound realization that this life of mine ends up being about choices. I’m thinking of beginning a book about this distinct, vibrant realization (choices) after my colonoscopy. But I won’t title it “Choices”, which sounds predictable and touchy feely and boring. I think I’ll call it, “All the Trees Are Dancing.” Get a little energy into the book cover. A little oomph. And maybe the cover of the book, the art under the title, will be a picture I took a trillion years ago in Melrose, Massachusetts on the street where my high school friend Donnie lived, of a very large and tall October maple tree all decked out in New England colors. Absolutely still in a windless moment, but for sure dancing none the less.
And the coolest thing is it will make just as much sense, and be appreciated by the Universe equally as much, as any movie Spielberg ever made or any song Lennon and McCartney ever wrote. Like how I felt after coffee in the recliner this morning. The big “Wow”. Where “Chop wood, carry water” is exactly “Get up, drink coffee.” This knucklehead Dharma.