Distilled

Dear Sor Juana,

I live in a country where droughts and flooding rains co-exist across the continent. This land is my meditation and my metaphor never letting me out of Her grip.

Parched earth

Thoughts wandering

Looking for a home.

 

Banks bursting

Feelings floating

Looking for a harbor.

 

Dehydration

Drowning

Lost. Found.

 

The panic of rapid movement, expending energy, consuming oxygen that leads to drowning. The longing for thirst to be quenched and the relief that comes from a single sip. How do you breathe and not drown?

The inevitable moment of surrender to the elements arrives, and taken wholly, fully by what consumes you and you become that thing – the water, the air, the desert, the river, the ocean. These are the moments where thoughts stop swirling, land and are crystalized. Purification occurs when all the impurities are stripped away. Warmed up, cooled down, concentrated, extracted. Clarity arrives. Truth faced. There is only thirst. There is only breath. Essence of life. Distilled.

Only Breath

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi, or zen.

Not any religion or cultural system.

I am not from the East or the West,

not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all.

I do not exist,am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any origin story.

My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless.

Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved,

have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.

 

Rumi, tr Coleman Barks