pondering—progress.
Have we conflated progress with convenience? Could it be said that a microwave lasagna is progress in same the way the eradication of smallpox is? Different scales and impact, to be sure, thought it would seem, categorically, one is true progress while the other is mere convenience. And in what ways does ‘convenience’ display any semblance of ‘goodness’ or ‘desirability’?
poetry—collapse.
Collapse and erasure of precepts,
scraps of reality wraps in synapse lies.
Desire and aversion are traps,
where mishaps of separation elapse.
Two-dimension information the mind intercepts
and fills gaps
fabricating recaps
of certainty, safety, and concepts.
prose—crackling.
He poked the fire with a long stick. It crackled back in response, mimicking the calls and caws of some birds in a nearby tree. Sitting cross-legged in the sand, he watched the flames lick the teapot, urging the water inside to boil. As the sun retreated beyond the distant horizon, long shadows were cast across the arid plateau, the red sands took on a ruby hue in the dying light. In the stillness, he found peace—and more difficult to attain, presence.
Whistling from the teapot submerged in the orange flames signalled that tea was near. Accompanied by the spectres of steam emanating from the spout, he sprinkled some tea leaves into the worn mug, its patina bearing witness to yet another fire under the desert sun.
He sat, and tilted his head back, eyes closed. The tea’s scent stimulated his senses—a deep inhale bringing him face-to-face with the now. A contraction of time, a ceasing of the river. Illusory experiences emergent from ignorance. Awareness flooded him, cognizant of consciousness, all collapsed into a calculus of the limitless. The shimmering sunset, the ruby red sand, the smell of green tea, all—like blades—cut through the constructed world of thought, severing the thinking mind, and its burden of concepts, from being.
As the fire smouldered, retaining heat like the surrounding sands, he hung his head. Two heavens—the inner and the outer—united as one. All that is needed enclosed within the blink of eternity.
