Be Gentle: A Meditation

Be gentle with people, I remind myself. Do not be a lion. Leave that to them. Be a mensch. Be tender. Be patient. Even when the math is not adding up, even when the little goat does not want to be neutral, just get on with the work.

Today I saw a man with a car. The trunk was full of white and pink balloons. Close the lid carefully. I was curious. Wanted to get in the car and come along to the party. Walk away, walk away.

I have to be careful. One time I was in Glasgow and stopped a man to ask directions to a gallery in a part of town I didn't know. He had a box in his hands, like a cake box. I kept looking at it and for some reason I thought he was going to give it to me. He did not. He gave me directions and then he warned me not to talk to strangers. I think that in spite of his appearance he could have been quite dangerous. There but for the grace....

Last night there was a storm which stole my dreams. I had to wake up and go to sleep again so I could get them back. I dreamed I was moving from one house to another--always moving, a recurring theme. We had a house on the west side and the east side and I was relieved because I was so tired and needed a place to rest from all this traveling back and forth.

I love to go a wandering along the mountain trail and as I go I love to sing Valderee Valderah, but we are so tired, even in our dreams. Patience requires energy and strong, healthy neurons. I was on the bus, well fed and sunshined, feeling the bliss and a baby started to moan and fuss and I felt badly for the mother because I know how it can wear away, the sound of a tired and hungry infant who is on a bus on the way home and wants something you don't have to give at that moment. We all have that infant inside ourselves, moaning at inopportune times, screeching with unfulfilled desire.

We are all waiting for the bus to take us home. We dream about it. We demand a better transit system for our restlessness, for the being of in-between, when nothing could really satisfy. Or could it? Could we have a bit more Orient Express, a little less Greyhound of Doom? Could we be happier on the bus? Little Miss Sunshine.

What makes you happy, patient, buoyant? I like to be part observer and part participant, suspended perfectly in between the two. I want to go to the party but part of me just wants to watch. I'd like to be a pretty silvery pink moth perched on a swaying balloon, listening, observing and making a little bit of the magic.

What about those Golden Globes, eh? I didn't watch them, but looked up some of the gossip online. So many spoiled little butterflies. Breasts like balloons and dresses like jibs. I wasn't invited. Wasn't invited to that five ring circus either, even though we have to pay for all the foofaraw.