A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek towards that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the skys stars as a pattern of perfect, concentric circles. I seek a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off. At the seashore you often see a shell, or fragment of a shell, that sharp sands and surf have thinned to a wisp. There is no way you can tell what kind of shell it had been, what creature it had housed; it could have been a whelk or a scallop, a cowrie, limpet, or conch. The animal is long since dissolved, and its blood spread and thinned in the general sea. All you hold in your hand is a cool shred of shell, an inch long, pared so thin that it passes a faint pink light. It is an essence, a smooth condensation of the air, a curve. I long for the North where unimpeded winds would hone me to such a pure slip of bone. But Ill not go northing this year. Ill stalk that floating pole and frigid air by waiting here. I wait on bridges; I wait, struck, on forest paths and meadows fringes, hilltops and banksides, day in and day out, and I receive a southing as a gift. The North washes down the mountains like a waterfall, like a tidal wave, and pours across the valley; it comes to me. It sweetens the persimmons and numbs the last of the crickets and hornets; it fans the flames of the forest maples, bows the meadows seeded grasses and pokes it chilling fingers under the leaf litter, thrusting the springtails and the earthworms deeper into the earth. The sun heaves to the south by day, and at night wild Orion emerges looming like the Specter over Dead Man Mountain. Something is already here, and more is coming.
amen
beauty
belief
consciousness
creation
curiosity
disbelief
energy
enoughness
epiphany
exploration
exultant
faith
fate
fearless
fire
free
freedom
gaps
god
grace
growth
hallelujah
humility
illumination
intricacy
joy
joyful
joyfulness
life-force
light
living-in-the-present-moment
mindfulness
multiplicity
mystery
nature
philosopher-s-stone
philosophy
poem
poet
poetry
power
praise
prayer
prayers
praying
religion
religious-diversity
ring-the-bells
science
seeing
seeking
soul
spirit
stalking-the-gaps
the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it
tolerance
walking
watching
wonder