Tea with the Muse
Pink Clouds
In my body, a smile emerges without known consent. The mind thinks better of smiling in times like these, and the heart ever aching for a sense of something it knows it wants but can't quite find. When the smile of the body emerges, you have to stop and smile back, because if you do not, you will miss the opportunity. When I lean in to the opportunity of the smile that presents itself in the cellular structure of my very mortal coil, what I hear is, although these challenging things feel punishing and at times even cruel. These things are shaping you, an initiation, not because of something you've done wrong, not because of something you've done right, but because you're always and ever on a path toward that which is calling to you, calling to you from ahead of you in the future, calling to you from behind you in the past, calling to you in the present moment manifesting as a smile throughout your whole body. The sensation is that these things must happen as a form of self initiation, of preparation, a refining is taking place, and sometimes it just hurts, and then for no reason at all, on a glorious evening with a pink sky as a white bird fishes for its supper and birds of paradise rise, and children speak, and pink clouds emerge, the smile comes, and you just say yes instead of saying no. You agree to the smile instead of resisting, resistance dissolves, and existence emerges. But this evening, as the pink clouds reflect and the water, there is gratitude for another day to become, and to live, not to the fullest, not to the best life as if these are some kinds of goals, to achieve or not achieve, but simply because you are the song of existence. Existing, and it is good to be born. (audience laughing)