being here now
Note: A lot of the time I am thinking forward, worrying, planning, hoping, dreaming, stressing. It’s exhausting and frightening and unfulfilling in nearly every way. For a few years now I’ve been meditating and trying consciously, actively, to just, be, in the moment. Just be present. More and more often now I find myself slip euphorically, deliciously, fully, into what can most closely be described as an altered state. This was one of those precious moments.
I stared into the sink. This is what it feels like right now I said to myself. The buzz of the walk-in buzzed next to me, the exhaust fan with the upside down switches hummed above me, she talking and laughing stirred the pots up front, on the burners blazing at full speed, clanking the metal paddle against the metal pot in a zig zagged hiss, and it smelled so, Strawberry. The stereo speakers spoke a mix picked by him today, hip hop with an occasional Mexican love ballad that he would translate for me later, and the sounds of the washed dishes I just finished clunked about in the warm blue water under my hands in the suspended stainless steel sink. All of it so comforting. This is now. I stared down into the sanitized water filled with tools and vessels and suddenly felt like I had X-ray vision straight from the comic books. This is what it feels like to see right through things I thought. This is what it feels like. This is past, present and future wrapped into one moment in a kitchen, on a street, in a city, in a state, in a country, on a continent, on a planet, in space, in time.