Precious Things

“There are things you can’t reach. But

You can reach out to them, and all day long.”

-Mary Oliver

The most precious things are the hardest to hold onto because they’re moments.

I’m experiencing this a lot lately. I’m in a weird no-man’s land between excitement for a future that hasn’t arrived and grieving a life I haven’t yet left behind. I’m left with a Now that is almost painfully sharp and breathtakingly clear.

Last night, for example, I went for dinner with the guys from the band I used to play in back in the nineties. It’s been years since we’ve all been in the same room at the same time.

It was a heck of a thing.

I want to write everything about it. About the way these men still seem so familiar to me in the way they talk and act and move their hands. In the easiness of the conversation. In the sound of the pizza place around us, clinking silverware and raised voices.

And none of it seems write-able. I can write around it. I can write about it. But I can’t write it.

There have been many moments like this over the past weeks. Watching football with my dad and cheering for opposite teams. Watching Mixed Martial Arts with a group of friends in a basement with the taste of Dr Pepper on my tongue. Moments with my nephews and family. Moments at work. Moments on my futon with someone I care about snuggled tight against my chest.

Each moment feels meaningful. Each moment feels like it deserves to be written down, documented somehow.

I want to write these things down on this blog so I can share them. I want to write them on my heart so I can keep them forever. I want them written in the stars so I can look up and read them on cold monastery nights.

Other writers have said things like this better than me. I’ll let them.

The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.

-Stephen King

Where Does The Temple Begin, Where Does It End

-Mary Oliver

There are things you can’t reach. But

you can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.

And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,

out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing

from the unreachable top of the tree.

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around

as though with your arms open.

And thinking: maybe something will come, some

shining coil of wind,

or a few leaves from any old tree--

they are all in this too.

And now I will tell you the truth.

Everything in the world

comes.

At least, closer.

And, cordially.

Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.

Like goldfinches, little dolls of goldfluttering around the corner of the sky

of God, the blue air.