Glimpsing Death...on a Near Horizon

I feel like I’ve showered in pure water. No residue. No need for drying. Or for clothes.
I will be embraced. Wrapped inside the day and the hour, eventually brought home again.

The day is long. The day revolves around the day, and around me and my thoughts that cannot be contained. And why should they be. The world isn’t a closed vessel. It spills endlessly. We are creatures meant to spill out and to spill in.

Maybe this non-death is a reminder to me of how messy life is, is meant to be, not to be contained in mind or the flesh. Won’t stay inside the lines. Won’t stay neat, polite, presentable.

On the other hand, always ready, prepared or not. 

What can my ear hear, what can my eye see if taken off their leashes? Where will my feet take me if taken off of leashes and out of shoes, away from the concept of leash, away from thinking about shoes, and socks and paved pathways, and unpaved ones, even the conceit of walking.

The animal inside us moves, it sees, it eats what its tastes guide it to, unapologetic to life for ingesting life, for loving the taste so much it licks the lips clean. That natural ecology of longing.

The universe just keeps opening up. Maybe that’s what I was learning , though I wasn’t thinking of learning, of getting anything right, except not to leave anyone out, thinking I’d forgotten how good those stolen moments were, how closely we touched on those uncalendared days that we didn’t know were passing from time and even from memory, but leaving a mark always, as messy humans do, as unblaming hearts and unanalysing minds will do.

That’s what life is, that holding onto life forgets, but that death knows and reminds and reminds and retells until we will learn it.

Don’t worry about the shoes, or even the walking. Just being the animal inside.