The Mundane

Outside my window is a small, artificial pond. Drainage from nearby dwellings, roads, whatever supply the pond. On warm days, it sometimes has a suspicious smell. But on cold days, like today, when the water laps the snowy lips of the pond, the geese find it to be a nice rest stop.

The geese have been visiting regularly for a week. There two of them are, right now, padding along the perimeter. They are there, right outside my window, offering plaintive honks for no reason I can tell.

I sit inside at my desk swaddled in a blanket, attired in flannel pants and a white t-shirt. When I exhale, there is a slight wheezy sound. The antibiotics have helped, but we have a way to go. There is a cup of bitter coffee made from an ill favored bean (I must buy another brand next time). I have spent most of the last two days in bed or on the sofa, and I am glad to be in an upright position.

The worst part has been the cough. At times I have coughed so hard that I've almost lost consciousness. Thankfully, those moments are fewer now. The cough medicine prescribed for me is a narcotic. When I am drifting off to sleep, it feels as if my brain is floating on the swell and roll of an ocean wave. I think in half thoughts. Throughout the night I wake up and feel the waves washing over me. I hear bits of poetry. When I wake up I don't remember any of it.

I sometimes worry that I am missing something in these geese... in the snow outside... in the jet now flying overhead (where are those people going?). There, just on the periphery, is something true. Something twinkling on the edge of knowing in the snow bespeckled grass. There is Something that whispers the name of God again and again, but there is fluid in my ears. I can't hear a damn thing. I am not mystic enough.

But is that what is promised? That we will walk in the woods, read in a book, or listen to music and find something extraordinary? When we pray those wordless prayers, urging our spirits... somewhere... towards God or Nirvana or whatever... do we expect a payoff? A message? A voice from Beyond that will tell us what we need to know?

When the blinds open and the sunlight hits the watery gelatin of my eyes, that my brain is electrified with sight is more than enough. That my skin goosebumps as the cold seeps through the windowpane is reward in itself. That I can sit here and appreciate the faint gurgling in my lungs with every breath is all the Heaven I can demand.

Do I need something more? Do you?