Four minutes later

4 minutes later

at 7:29pm tonight I screamed in rage in a nearly empty house as a pitcher broke on my bathroom floor, one of a dozen tools I was not managing well as I tried in vain to do anything but dig a hole underneath my house to warm the drain up.

My dog watched on to make sure I was okay.

I texted my wife “the water jug you dislike broke”

My friend Anthony gave that to me

A relic of his serene office left years ago and still somehow with me

The propane company called today to tell me that twelve hours plowing was not enough to get their big truck up

And I was struck how In that moment with soaked bath mats and piled snow and frozen pipes

That I had water in all the wrong places

That in my imposition I have not cried for us, or wept with joy

I have sunk sometimes into Duty, and skirt it twice as often, but I have not cried for the world

That too, my old tears somewhere reappropriated to cool an ai farm down, fueling this intimacy crisis

If we all stood there and cried could we bring the Colorado river back?

At 7:33 I was sitting silent, being guided to presence myself from toe to head to toe, from heart to cosmos, and at 8:37 I spoke my first words sinking deep

That I am not what happened to me today

That a moment later in time, a room just next door to the broken jug

was this space inside of myself

waiting for me, ready though I wrestled with all I was to prove myself unworthy of it’s kindness

Nothing has changed of my tasks

"One must imagine sisyphus happy”

I am allowed to cry for the world underneath my house

with dirty hands and cold feet

I am allowed to let my curiosity guide me striving to awe

To depth and gratitude and awe