To Your Stations

[Continuing]

Mutual indwelling.

That says it all, he says to himself. 

He takes another long drag off of the handrolled he was given by his brother. He finds the chocolate milk in the fridge and guzzles it from the carton and sits down on the couch to open an empty page of the spiral-bound notebook.

To his own mind now he is radically present. He is completely embodied and available to himself, to the divine or to anyone. It is a helpful thing to receive an almost immediate sense of relief within and straight through to the fingertips. He wants to be able to center in without breathing in the one long drag or two. Thoughts are strewn before him about true contemplative's. He should be more able, he lacks legitimacy, unless… He suffers them. 

He lets them go. He continues to attend to the flow.

Held in God, holding God. Here together. Mutually indwelling.

Had he been putting a worm on a hook sitting on the cushion in the front of the fishing boat in shorts and sandals with a Ludington State Park ball cap on his head, would you not have been able to smell the lake, the waters aroma that was of earth and fish and moldering leaves and red pine with a touch of old rusty penny at the finish?

Mutual indwelling.

These were your horses and this one was truly your finest Buckskin companion for trailing in the forests or making your way out to a rustic camp. This one has eaten from your hands how many years, has such charge and also great balance at the edges where the switchbacks narrow steeply down near the foamy rapids.

Later, you will bring a fire into being with dry kindling and your ax and great love and the thrill for all things primitive. You will use your spectacles as a magnifier and point the suns rays into a small bundle you have assembled beneath leaves and snapped off twigs and a few pinecones.

Now squeeze the creatures black mane and hold onto those reigns or you'll be thrown on out to the thickets in the ditch without your hat. Spend the whole day with that horse and stay awake to tend to him lovingly.

He went into the workshop with scotch. 

He worked with clay, slowly giving shape with his bare hands to what he had seen and appreciated in myriad forms and at odd angles so freely throughout the day. He filled the small Cool Whip container with cold water and placed it beside the crude sculpture. He then turned the pedestal it was secured to and it revealed a slightly more human form … 

Oneness found manifestation. A ruddy piling of chunks taken warmly down to smoothness would be added through his careful tracing of fingertips gently up and down in a soft line that led to a dimpled finish which he pressed the ball of his fingertip into with a circular pinch near the top, each time adding just a bit of water to his finger, transforming the clay with one touch at a time.  Mutual indwelling.

Back to attending, yes the basics.

Creative's to your stations.

Drummers learned rudiments; triplets, flams, paradiddels, different assortments of accents among sixteenth notes and so forth… Playing them out in different patterns and variations was a blast, but first you had to know each of them by heart and how to keep them clean and tight with syncopation otherwise you spoil the show.

It was a twelve-year-old scotch and it was serving him very well today especially as it was coupled with the handrolled.

Tending felt effortless. 

Every now and then he would throw on another piece of wood. Become counter of the stars, wonder waiter as the moon went down and the sun rose high.

He would remember the days struggles in the boat to get the anchor down low enough to settle in near a spot he knew there were bass and perch and maybe even some northern tucked in behind an embankment where the tree crossed over had maybe been dead fifty years. 

He ate smoked fish and drank beer he purchased cold from the mom-and-pop down the street beside the one gas station of the small town.

He took out his guitar and sang songs about a Burmese Cat with great intentions and profoundly attuned intuitions, especially when it came to relationships. Yes, Zoe had agreed. Laura had overstepped and it needed to be talked through, just basic boundaries stuff, of course. 

Zoe's point, however, was that no matter how he looked at it, both of their experiences with the photograph served as sacred and somehow of influence… Her best advice was to let things unfold and stay in touch and to both remain genuine with each other… They were each recipients of something special… Nothing to be selfish about whatsoever…