Daily writing prompt
Describe your most ideal day from beginning to end.
I may have already experienced my ideal morning, waking from a beautiful no-self sort of dream of Kyoto, to find I was indeed in Kyoto. Having a savory breakfast with lovely friends before heading into ancient temple gardens. Taking everything in. Lingering slowly while enjoying matcha ice cream amidst a strong scent of jasmine. It's truly hard to imagine anything better.
There's a question going around the internet lately, which asks "If you had to choose one moment as a loop to be stuck in for eternity, which one would you choose?" Similar to this question, one gets to see what springs to mind first. The morning I describe was a profoundly out-of-context one, so everything was new and surprising. It was, more than most places on earth and certainly more than any other place I'd experienced, timeless. And everywhere I glanced, there was evidence of care.
I was far away from anything familiar, but also home.
When I consider an ideal night, it may have been laying in a field in Nova Scotia with friends, gazing at the stars. That too was primed by a dream, a deep black sea star dream that was among the most ethereal I've experienced. It was the trust I felt there between us all, I believe. We'd just walked through an old Acadian forest in a retreat exercise that had us wearing little strips of cloth on our backs--no lights, just flashes of the person in front of us and what sounded like crowds of deer walking alongside. The forest gave way to the open field and... nothing was missing.
Light pollution here in Miami has made it very difficult to stargaze, so anytime I can, I'm just so set at ease and appreciative, especially without mosquitos!
I feel full to consider that I my ideal day would be a patchwork made up of moments I've indeed experienced: delight at the kids playing in streams and sprinklers, bubbling over laughter, so many ceremonies and performances and Christmases... just so. much. bliss. There's been immeasurable love and joy in my life so far. These were just a few "ideal" scenes I thought of today.
P.S. After writing this, I'm struck by the connection between dreams and ideal-seeming moments. I think there's something to having experienced something in a dream first, as a kind of rehearsal, that makes one more ready to greet and savor an experience, ready not to squander the invitation of time.
On Time
And an astronomer said, Master, what of Time?
And he answered:
You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable.
You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.
Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.
Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness,
And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.
And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.
Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?
And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not from love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?
And is not time even as love is, undivided and spaceless?
But if in your thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,
And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
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