Follow up or the second half of the piece of trident

I just reviewed the clip of Jill Bolte Taylor and realize that part of what I was trying to say is that I got slammed into my right hemisphere by the early traumas that I sustained and that connection has sustained and motivated me throughout my life.

Like a murder of crows healing me only in my case it was the melting tar and the sparkling dew. And these things would make my heart dance to life and I knew that what was possible was barely acknowledged and that even though I did not know the boundaries of my own capabilities I was certain that the others around me did not either. I was certain that their perceptions fell far short of what we are all capable of, perhaps of necessity. Perhaps we need to evolve gradually for any meaningful integration to be accomplished.

Soft and continual support. There it is again. Open to grace. Soft and continual support. Receive it, imagine it, invoke it. And I want to invite Leonard Cohen to this dance where the vikrukti gives way to the illumination of new possibility as we dance on the edge of the universe as yet unfolded.

A half a stick of trident...

I've got my half a stick of trident and I'm ready to roll... What is this imprint of shock you keep dragging near to me? I see a chance to make my offering and there among the ashes she rises again and again reminding me that there are hurts that have not healed. Somewhere underneath the scars are buried and rise up to the disapproval of certain others.

I am not the kind one she thinks and seems to want to place her arc of feelings in front of me. What happens to make them keep dragging these moments up as I am trying to make the gift of love and healing. Is it in the eyes of disapproval that I must be released?

I stand before him questioning and he seeing my uncertainty becomes impatient. He seems to know how much I have been given to understand, but does he know that I have also had the pain of the world dredged up from the inside?

No, probably not the worst of it. Enough? How much? How can I know what it is relative to? And then I have the desire to show how beautiful those imprints are that cut into what never was a "normal life" Why do they seem to resent me?

I feel myself walking out in the cold but unable to withstand the harder of the two kinds of cold. My hands shake now? You have no idea how happy I have become. If you read this then how can you know how beautiful my life has turned out to be. But still she pulls from the inside of me to get out somehow to find her own place in it all.

I can't tell you who or what she is except to say that she is like the tangled strands of my own DNA and RNA the places where expression began. The places where I in haste shut down until further notice. How does the soft continual support reach in and soothe her? She accepts the offer with the edge of grief that is hope in a darkened corner.

I have failed to show you how beautiful this is, at least for the moment, but I will keep trying. Perhaps the day I can reach to the angriest youth in the room and make a difference, perhaps then she will accept my success as meaningful.

The day came and went. I did not think I could be happier. It was a day of devastation 33 years prior. That same cold and wet November day, even a Wednesday. Wednesday November 17, 1977. The punk rock scene was exploding in Bromley England, but I didn't know their rage overseas could match my own in that little room of confinement. That room that set the boundary I would never forget. "You are not acceptable to society as you are." Of course it was my behavior, but it was also my beliefs and it was their pathologizing.

Four years later she would speak from within, telling me of this future happiness that I knew was true but could not believe. And now that so much of this is behind me I am still searching for my place. I get little glimpses that I have managed to do somethings of value, but this pressure persists. Divine dissatisfaction?

Oh, I forgot I was trying to reach for a way to show how beautiful even the most painful parts are. No, I have not succeeded yet. I will try again, perhaps even tomorrow. The thing is that the cuts cut into what could have been a "normal" existence and there is a sadness to that, but they revealed not only the hard painful side, they also revealed the exquisite light and beauty in an immediate and breathtaking heart opening big gasp take it all in kind of way. I hope I do find a way to tell this story because it really is beautiful and it is the only one I have to tell. For now I will compare it to the contrasts in the Lord of the rings when the darkness threatens but the light of the elven realm shields the innocence at least for a time.

Kali Mama's Grace

Something's gotten hold of me and I realize I am dissolving into being consumed by her Grace. It is a very specific kind of Grace. She is the one who can digest all that is not wholly supportive to the emanation of my fabulousness. Isn't that a mouthful?
I don't mind feeling a bit weak at the moment. I want to be dissolved. And I feel this as the only way that I can be the vessel for change. I can only use my free will on the microcosm that is me within the macrocosm of life. And that is saying a lot! I realize I may be speaking gibberish to anyone who might desire for whatever reason, to be reading this post. I guess this is yoga/shadow work 101. On Tuesday as I was in parigasana (gate pose) holding the portal open to her (the illuminating darkness who can consume and digest even the most vile of dangers) I was envisioning my hailing her into the out there, but I guess I knew I was a little off in my perspective.
So, here I am this morning just dissolving and welcoming her into the places that scream for isolation. You know the spots? The ones that just don't want to engage or let go or feel just about anything at all. Well, maybe you are lucky enough not to have any corners in your being like that, but I think this work is bigger than just us. At least I like to think it is like the story I heard of the Buddha getting to the gates to heaven and saying "no, sorry I am not coming in until everyone else can too." Well, I am really not a Buddhist, but I like this image and I think there is a way in which we are all in this together, willingly or not.
So, I think if I let her clear and penetrate the darkest corners of my being that is actually doing a lot for the change I would like to see in the world. I hear my teacher's words: "You are sufficient unto your own joy. There is nothing which you are lacking and nothing you need to purge." And so I contemplate what it means to have a space inside cleared of stagnation. Well, I guess that is the point right there. It is about bringing back into the flow of Grace whatever has been resisting and dealing with the fear that made some part of me cling to the rocks (or whatever metaphor works for you).
In case you were wondering, this feels a little bit like being sick, but I think it is mostly an alignment issue. I wanted to offer myself into the service of what I can heal in the world, having been presented with a harsh look at some of the worst, the gruesome (murder and vicious cruelty in what are usually pockets of safety) and the loathsome greedy selfishness (Michael Moore's latest movie : Democracy Now).
And then I learned that one of my dear friends is recovering from a stroke. I just saw her in class on Saturday! I can't imagine her not coming back with insight, humor and tremendous courage. However, this sort of thing can really shake a person up or transform their lives forever! I don't know how to be of any direct help to these situations. So, I hope the work I am doing bears fruit in the world out there.
I myself am standing, sitting and lying in the best sort of Grace as I contemplate some of the hardest things about life. I can't speak for anyone else, but this is what I live for. Don't get me wrong I love the joyful moments too, but I love to watch the overcast sky turn to colors and hues of variant depths and shadings. I love texture and the amazing ability of life to evolve into something completely new and different and really, think about it! How does it do that over and over again exponentially?

Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight | Video on TED.com

Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight | Video on TED.com

Today I am a crocodile

I have the distinct impression that I am an old croc wallowing in dark waters. I

feel the heaviness of mud as my eyes hover just above the surface. I am cold of
heart and don't want to move. I only know a feeling of wanting to be near the
earth. I like the light that is gentle, not forcing away my solitude. I like the

company of others who let me have my space. I have no heart for idle chatter and

shy away from the busy-ness beyond my borders. I want less to sing than to moan.

I want less to move than to float. I own my own territory with assured-ness of

my own ferocity. It is not cruel it is merely protecting the sanctity of my own
desired experience. That life that became me this day wouldn't have it any other

way. For now I am this not that. Only for a while will I hold down the errant
desires that lead me toward glee. For now I honor the right to be dark and cold
and wet. For now I honor the distinctiveness of my own present moment
experience. And for now I am met only by those who know how to honor such places

in themselves.

The weighty one

I want to do my practice close to the earth. I want to let the light come in through one crack at a time, not all at once. I want to stay with these unsteady places, one moment at a time. I don't want to come into fullness just yet, not too quickly. Let me revel in this authentic moment, listen for the crackling of this page of my life as it turns slowly in one or the other direction. I want to be with her, the lonely one, the one whose heart bears the burdens of the world. Why does she do this? What message is she trying to scratch into the earth?

"I want to come home now," she whispers into my ear. I have to be gentle and slow or she will retreat. "I want you to know me just as I am. I don't want you to push me toward someone else's image of who I am. I want you to feel the cracks and crevices that have been etched into my form. I am humanity's soul and I am your own." I pause, grateful for little to distract me in this moment. I begin to remember why this flavor is delectable all on its own. It brings on the fullness of time. It pours on the slow and ancient wisdom like lava slowly descending to create a more fertile land.

Oh, I remember, I know some more of who I am than I did a moment ago. I am grateful the sun is not shining more brightly, grateful for the soft cloud cover that allows the shadows to be revealed in me with all that they offer up through my soul.

When I place my hand on you I hope you will recover some more of this in your own deep garden, in the place that was hidden from you once, but came home again when you were ready to listen and receive more, and more, and more...

Polishing the thin blue line

When is the bleakness the very substance from which we have the potential to brighten our expressions? Ultimately we are already full and bright within, imbued by grace as it were, since we come from the One expressing itself as the many.

When do we hold on to the raw ingredients as if they themselves were the final outcome? In my case, perhaps mistaking longing for love for the fullness of love itself.

As we notice places in the body where feelings have not been fully digested we cannot help but affect them, changing them by the mere act of witnessing, bringing consciousness to patterns of energy that may be on automatic pilot.

This morning as my kalyana mitra (spiritual friend) was extending the wisdom in her hands to such places in my body, I said that I had noticed how grief/loss of love was lodged in my ribs causing the pinch I feel there. She said I was holding on to it. Silently I first felt myself resist this responsibility. I thought of situations in which trauma embeds itself in the body as though we had no choice about it. At the same time as I was resisting I was questioning my resistance and she and I spoke about it and it shifted for me. Well, yes I course there is a way in which we hold on to our traumas like trophies or badges of honor and courage, but sometimes to our detriment. Sometimes it takes letting go of layers for a pattern to release. And yet there are times when something can make a major shift, like a whole paradigm change. Like a chutes and ladders transition on the board game of life.

Before class I had an instinct to turn on NPR. There was a story about a Native American tribe in Southern California who have a wind farm which they have established on leased land. There are complications with tax incentives and levies that prevent the native people from benefitting as fully from this green energy production as they otherwise might. There is a bill or some form of amendment before congress which could potentially change the fate of this whole tribe (just over 300 living members)while at the same time clearly help improve energy efficiency for everyone. I think it is absolutely appropriate for native tribes to take a lead in bringing us into a greener future and I notice how even the resistance they are facing could become the grit from which we polish ourselves into a brighter nation. The Obama administration has made promises to help pave the way for this eventuality.

And then I dig deeper into my own psyche. I had work done on the very spots my friend was working on this morning by a healer in Colorado who, among other things studies with a Choctaw medicine man. He told me that there was a native representative who attended a meeting at the U.N. wherein he refused a suggestion for financial compensation calling it blood money. He said we were all responsible for the the way things turned out and even said that they had to turn out this way. My point about this was that I have long held the circumstances of Native Americans in this country as one of the greatest injustices of our time. I am not necessarily or at least not entirely changing my mind about this, but...

Let me put it this way: that which is at hand is what life is offering us. What we get to choose is how to engage with what is. (Full credit for that statement goes to my teacher Douglas Brooks.) The Native elder was calling us higher in terms of honoring all of life and learning to integrate the wisdom teachings of his ancestors. So what if we let go of an angry shout of injustice and choose instead love, and choose instead to recognize the value of what was passed over and how martyrdom has made so many wisdom teachings more evident, clarified for posterity.

And what if we look into the very patterns in our own bodies, hearts and minds as vehicles for the transformation of the human psyche, the collective consciousness.

Let us welcome in a paradigm shift toward the greatest expression of the gifts of all of the bright beings within the earth's atmosphere. Now wouldn't that be something to behold? Would the thin blue line burn brighter? I wonder.

The Bliss of being Vikrukti

As I have been working with clients and students on various levels of healing as well as on my own healing/transformation new parallels have arisen to the world around us, etc. First of all, my primary method of working with people is through their embodied form. What I mean by that is the body and all that encompasses. As my former physician (who had a holistic background)once told me, regarding body/mind/spirit: "It is all one." Anusara founder, John Friend has taught us that we can align spiritually and emotionally by aligning the body and that our attitude (mental/emotional construct)is the primary vehicle through which to address our asana practice (asana translated literally means seat and refers to the dynamic shapes and positions most people in the west associate with the term yoga).

Having just heard about the grave concern being presented in the movie Gasland, about the threat to our water table from new natural gas drilling techniques and having Jon Stewart humorously draw the connection to the huge problem of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, I am seriously alarmed about the consequences of both of these actions. At the same, time I feel there is much to be gained by the world, in particular the U.S., having to face the effects of these sources of "energy" production.

I mentioned to one of my friends/clients how I knew while driving home the evening before Bush got into office for the 2nd time, that he had gotten in and that a clear voice of intuition rang out that this would seem very bad, but that it would set the stage for a major swing of the pendulum. My friend said that she had the very same experience that night. We feel certain this is how Obama got into office.

Circumstances are bleak indeed and should not be ignored by any means. However, I also feel strongly that those of us who can hold the strong conviction that this is setting the stage for unprecedented evolution in the way we see and do things as a species, need to act as a bridge to a new paradigm. We need to vibrate with the balanced action of concern for our present circumstances and belief in the potential for evolution beyond anything we have even yet conceived of while also holding lightly to our own hopes and dreams for change in its specifics.

Life will find a way. This heart of mine will find a way. Grace has chosen us and we will offer our broken, and beautifully twisted selves up as guiding lights for the field of human consciousness. May every asana create a spark that kindles the embers of humanity's reaching for civilization that truly enhances life and its fulfillment.

My guy found a quote that was spoken by JFK the month and year I would have been conceived (ie 9 months and a day before I was born): "I look forward to an America that will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment... an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength, but for its civilization as well." We need to envision that happening now via the obvious revelation of what really does not work for anyone!

As Narada, the sage transformed the child of a demon with his civilizing influence via music and poetry and other forms of beauty which require civilization to emerge and be sustained, so too will those of us who uphold these values and believe in their worth transform the children of corporate merchants bent on holding profit above the importance of nurturing life. We also must transform ourselves and hold ownership of our own contributions to what is happening under our watch. We are the adults of our time and need, as such to take responsibility for our share of things. I am encouraged because everyone I talk to agrees with this sentiment of shared responsibility.

JFK, like MLK, jr. was martyred. His legacy will live on all the stronger because of this. Wounded healers arise and heal and, as Ram Dass once said, "Don't wait until you are all the way healed to offer your healing gifts to others, or you will never offer them..."

Water is often equated with emotion in many systems of philosophy. Let us take a look at what habitual patterns we can/need to heal (ways of thinking and feeling about life and our role in it). Let us turn habitual looping into an act of seeking the grace of aligning to the currents of our own best interests. Profit and power over a healthy and beautiful environment creates a bleak image indeed. May we brighten this image by seeking every possible avenue to bring change that enhances and supports the unfolding of grace and beauty in every possible corner and through the cracks left by abuse and neglect.

So many are expending energy about holding BP and others responsible for their past actions. I think this may end up creating new Rakta Bijas scattered about in the form of new angry young people. OK, let them hold them responsible, but let us roll out our tongues and consume the whole of the greedy appetite, take it in as our own and transform it into an appetite for the richness of who we can each be in the good company that we can and do keep. (Sorry if anyone doesn't understand the Kali reference above. I just didn't think I should rant on any further by way of explanation).

The quote from JFK can be found on a plaque at JFK park in Harvard Square, in the people's republic of Cambridge Massachusetts.

Searching for the Bridge

When I created my first blog I only meant to name that first article "The Brightening Bleakness". I can't imagine this can be very entertaining for my kind and supportive followers, but it is a useful place to turn when I feel myself out of alignment.

And what does this mean?

I guess right now it means several things. Spots of physical pain are cropping up all over my body, enough to make me a bit irritable. Then there is that. Irritability creates a lens that makes it hard to see the brightness. I guess I have ordered a lot of my life around this state. During times of irritability I try to do the things that will not ruffle my own feathers too much and still be productive, like laundry and putting the dishes away and walking to where there is abandoned wood.

My life feels like a mess, my surroundings cry out for more order and beauty and I do some of what needs to be done. It amuses me to spend some time dragging future firewood along a path spotted with obstacles. Mud and puddles, branches of wood no good to burn in my wood stove. I ask myself am I a bit ridiculous? Are my priorities all mixed up? How many people would do this with their precious free time? And finally, what is the most important thing for me to cultivate, to live for?

And the answer is clearly love. And this act came out of my love of life and wanting to have the least heavy impact on the environment, to reduce my dependence on oil, to reduce the cutting of healthy, beautiful trees (which I dearly love), to give meaning and purpose to the discarded maple, birch and beech trees that I drag back to my house and to ease the financial burden of the aforementioned sources of home heating. I also like the simplicity of spending time quietly doing something that helps a little bit. I think this sort of action may bring me back a little closer to alignment.

I am toying with the idea of using the "bleakness" as a bridge to the "brightness". I think this may be something my teacher, John friend would consider beneficial. I wonder, when is it better to go straight to the mat and when is it better to do something, anything that feels like it brings more order to my outer surroundings? Here is my yoga off the mat. In this moment this is it, this is the offering. It may not be exciting and I can't imagine anyone would actually want to read this, but that is really the point of this blog, to deal with the hard things to look at. Not the things that are hard because they are gruesome, but the boring, gray, dull and dim and what to do when we are faced with these.

I don't even think that there is a rasa for this. Maybe this is like getting so off the track that there is no flavor. Maybe it is an approximation of that which is tasteless. And this is sort of the kind of pain I feel most often, a dull aching all over. So, yes a little asana is clearly in order. It is probably what deters a lot of people from getting out of bed to come to class or to engage with anything at all. And oh, I just realized that what I am talking about is clearly the description of chronic depression.

When I was about 17, one of my earliest teachers was a siddha yogini who had lived at Muktananda's ashram in Ganeshwari. She knew and loved Gurumayi when she was baba's interpreter. She had found Siddha Yoga when she was a professor of psychology at Ann Arbor Michigan (or it found her, but that is another discussion). I studied astrology with her: basic astrology, karmic astrology and chart construction. Her background brought the wisdom of Carl Jung into her teaching as well as the wisdom of her Guru and his lineage of grace. She told me, while assessing my natal chart that it was important for me to realize that other people did not necessarily have my ability to pick myself up from my bootstraps. It was my sagittarius rising that she was pointing to as she told me this. In any case, I am beginning to think of this blog as one yogini's struggle with depression and figuring out how and when to pull on my bootstraps. And I hope it will somehow be of use to someone else, even if they would not be considered clinically depressed, a label which I would abhor to attach to anyone, let alone myself. I know many people feel better with diagnosis, better because they can use it to understand themselves and hopefully to find help with their "condiditon". But I resist this. Don't we all struggle with this to some extent?

I found it very helpful when one of my recent teachers, Jamie Allison, said that I had big spanda. I suppose she could have diagnosed me as manic depressive, but I prefer to think of my wide swings as a gift that I can learn to engage in the most sri way possible. By the way, if anyone has any non clinical pointers from their own experience please feel free and encouraged to chime in.

Getting back to my narrative, after collecting a bit of wood I came back and felt an urge to write. This in itself clearly represents a brightening of the bleakness I was feeling, or at least a yearning that reaches toward dragging myself out of the muck, like those pieces of future firewood that will brighten some cold moment.

Oh, I hadn't recognized the metaphor inherent in the activity! Well, if that is not a brightening moment I don't know what is.

Blessings one and all, may we find the ways to bring healing to the hardest of things and therefore learn to celebrate life more fully, to receive it more graciously and to savor every flavor as we learn the upaya, the skillful means of turning ingredients into recipes for divine bliss. And once we get there the offering can again be that of divine nectar!!! Aha, a little taste of delight and the horses are off and running from the gate.

Shanti and Sringara, neck and neck.

Just like Robert Smith

The pain is back, now where is my muse?

I read an interview with Robert Smith of The Cure. He said he wasn't always depressed, but that was when he wrote. I sometimes find myself reaching and finding inspiration and perhaps the deepest of revelations from the point of pain. As I have heard it said this is the place where the Anava Mala forms like a thin veil over the the heart making us feel unworthy and therefore sad, but in that moment if we reach in to the heart, we have the opportunity to clear the clouds over the light of the divine. The divine which, as Baba Muktananda used to say, dwells within us as us.

I pressed my Hanuman heart out in defiance of the harm being done. I would do what it takes to make things right. I would reach into the practice, dedicate my efforts to the healing that is needed as the earth and her creatures groan with the strain of misplaced priorities. I would jump over that ocean that holds the earth's creatures in captivity of human selfishness. There can never be a bottom line. This can never be in the best interest of anyone.

I brake off my tusk and record the stories line by line to make the offering. I am stumbling in the pain of my own offering, but I am determined that this must do something to make it all worth it and then some.

My heart aches with my greatest fear of my own insignificance and incompetence. With all the gold strewn about my feet will I flounder in the indulgence of appetites that gore the lives of the helpless? I stagger at the thought of this and shudder as I examine the evidence of my misplaced intentions and wasted energies.

I have to use this, but how? I will ask her, them, seek the light of the devata, of those who can help, of those who would help. What is the best that we can become given all of our freedom? And how can I best make a difference that matters?

Sometimes I think I get a clue, but right now I have to be truly open to not knowing.

I pour away my righteous indignation. I pour away my sense of what should have been. I melt the frozen walls that protect my heart from suffering in the world of creatures. I bless the wild darkness that the Maha has created. I offer thanks for the opportunity to be mortal and taste the light of divine awareness refracted into multifaceted vantage points. I stretch my capacity to love around the vastness that has been offered even through the extenuating experiences of love and loss and missed opportunities to protect and serve the beautiful lifeforms manifest in this sri world.

The closet where all that is not spectacular must go

It's good to have a place to go where we don't have to be so spectacular all the time. It's good to know where to turn when things feel inside out and backwards. It's good to feel welcome in my own domain, just as I am without trying to hide the blemishes of neglect and despair. My heart always wanted this little corner, the dignity of this cavern of relative discretion.

We all want a place in the sun, a stage to dance and sing upon, but nothing could be better than a quiet little corner to soften the stress of even the happy excesses. This is the toxicity after the bliss of deep integration, the hangover if you will. It's not really all that bad as hangovers go. And in a few days I will remember what I learned.

Holding court for the underappreciated is an underattended event. Yes, well I dabbled in my glory and now I feel the dismal drift of disappointing ambience, disappointing connections and falling short therapies. I guess when you hang out a sign like this one you don't get people waiting in line overnight just to insure admittance.

Regeneration

It's a reach, but I'm sure I'll get there.

I awoke to a new morning. When I looked out the window I saw the grass shining like jewels woven over the earth. Fog hung in the air like a tapestry. I wondered how the sunlight could make the grass shine so brightly while the fog was thick and textured.

In Vermont we take our life into our hands as we drive through the splendour of the seasons. Seasons of snow and black ice, mud season, deer and moose season and the season of pea soup fog, so thick you can barely see a foot in front of you. We are white knuckled drivers who must throw caution to the winds and get on with life as it unfurls.

The Brightening Bleakness

Here I sit, my throat tightens around a feeling of remorse for nothing in particular. I know this pressure will yield to something new and so I wait, not patiently mind you, but I wait. I reach for whatever might tend the garden of my dreams, but nothing seems to offer sustenance, only a sense of futility, more density to make heavier the desperate weight inside of me.

I breath in the crispness on the air and I feel the sweetness that is just around the corner. "No, not there. Stay here." I remind myself, but I cannot help the wanting to leave this stagnant pool of my own lack of inspiration. I could turn to memory, but how do I not? How do I turn in to meet the bleak offering that life has made just for me? Could this be a resting place? If only I had been so fervently and passionately involved before it was here. I have too much time on my hands at present.

Now is the time to learn to find the entry point. Here is the place where I am invited to begin. I know there is something in this for me. It keeps coming back. I know how to spread my wings and fly into the joy of a well lit sky. I even enjoy falling backward into the deep darkness. How do I make my peace with the gray nothingness, the waiting place, the unspectacular mediocrity in myself? The lack of peace or passion represents a dullness of mind, of spirit. Is this the middle ground?

I open my mouth to no one at all. I am listless. Give me more of this, the cardboard flavor of life without meaning. Stuff me until I invert or revert to my original state of reverie. Or is this the most common experience, just sitting, trying to receive something from what feels empty, nil, indeterminate?

I heard there was a way to say yes to everything. So, I try. I expect something will happen but this is really just wishing this nothingness away, entering in to move through. I remember that boredom is my least favorite desert. Why is there so damned much of it? Oh, I remember it is because my life isn't hard enough to grant me no respite. That life would surely transcend this feeling, or would it? And why would I ask such a thing anyway? Have I not learned not to tempt fate this way?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The gray cover settled over the land, insidiously shrouding every corner of life in its lackluster haze. My brain was a dull ache of wretchedness. The taste in my mouth stale, like old grains. Nothing too dangerous or too exciting ever happened here. So we turned toward the box to view someone else's story. Even the box itself was gray, but the colors passed over it, through it and entered into the field of our perception.

We were neither young nor old. I couldn't bring myself to dye my white hair. It felt like a badge of passing and surpassing time. I wanted it to tell you that I had worth beyond your years. You looked on and saw it as the laziness of neglect. Well, I would not yield and you would not open to my vantage points. We were quite the pair of old contenders fighting with the very fabric of the life that surrounded us.

My heart gave way long before yours. I had to know what they were planning, had to ask for more information. You were always so stolid, sober and contained. Well, let's just say that I was not. I always ended our silences first and rarely managed to pause before bursting out my own ideas. I don't know how you listened to me all the many times that I railed at you for everything and nothing at all.

My complaints seem so trivial now. If only I had really understood how little time we had to live our lives. Well, you know what they say. "Hindsight is twenty twenty."