MIND SEASONS

It's interesting how, when I'm freewheeling down the road these hot summer mornings, glad for the breeze of speed even at this early hour, wearing just a t-shirt, sometimes with a shirt over it by way of temperature trial, the tasking part of my mind is doing its work of steering and braking the bike around the mountain curves, while the idle part of my mind sort of just rides up there on my shoulders in its summer self, can't-believing as we roll along in this heat that in the winter, on this same journey, this same body wears long underwear, t-shirt, thick shirt, sweater, thick jacket, scarf, gloves, thick socks under hefty shoes as it freezes on down the road, the summer mind then recalling that in winter it becomes the winter mind dreaming of those unimaginably warm days, when it thinks: is it really possible, did this same body actually roll down this mountain in summertime wearing just a t-shirt? The summer mind then comes back to its summer self and ponders the impossibility of wearing all that winter stuff in this heat-- Does it really get that cold? Ice on this road?

Impossible here on this ice-free road with flowers all around, golden rice heads drooping over the shoulders, overhanging green branches of trees, the body wearing just a light open shirt over a t-shirt and jeans, beginning to sweat in the morning heat, thankful for the travel wind, looking forward to the nearing days of autumn and winter as it becomes cool and cooler even unto cold, and thick jackets...

Thus my idle mind and I roll down the road through the years and the seasons of world and mind, never completely immersed in any particular season or world at all... Life will always yearn for summer in winter and back and forth... What would I do without seasons...

And if it isn't seasons, the mind will find something else to remember back and forth to...

THE SUMMER OF THEIR CONTENTMENT

Now that the cooling days of late August are here, the insects that sing of night are singing of day as well, full in the summer of their contentment… Here in a mountain breezy afternoon I can't begin to count the variety of choruses from earth, underbrush, tree and sky-- it is impossible to distinguish, into their exquisite threads, all the woof and warp of this skywide tapestry of song...

Last night a singing insect of a kind I'd not yet heard (i.e., not paid attention to) began singing through our screen door-- or rather, sounded, for it was not so much a song as an unadulterated call, unrefined for human ears of course, it was a summons to all kindred, with a rhythmic generation more sensation than sound, defying such mereness as ears, meant for entire bodies of the proper size and impulse, a vibration of greater measure than humanity allows... would that I could hear beyond our mundane range to the sonic rainbow this song implied, with its attention-perturbing power.

On and on it went as we do in our own conversations, but this was only one, giving all there was, awaiting a response in its brief turn at life and what it means to say... A little Zen master, unseen, offering nonetheless a cosmic koan. The same heaven was born in us, if we have not been taught - and learned - to forget…