Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I become aware of the earth as it exists in a continuum of space and energy. It happens anywhere, between the striated clay mountains of Southern Utah, the grassy hills of Prospect Park, or in a bunk bed in one of the world’s oldest cities. It is a kind of spontaneous meditation, where I become part of the world around me, and yet I vibrate outside of it on a very specific frequency of awareness. As much as I’d like to say that it is specific to a time of day or relation to my past, it isn’t, so far as I can tell. Furthermore, it’s doesn’t have to be spontaneous; it can occur in times of focused concentration and heightened desire. It is a sense of simultaneity and atavistic understanding, a full awareness of time. The groove in a rock or the dust on a chain-link fence can trigger it, and the knowledge that it exists and is unable to be shared with anyone else reduces me to a state of puerile helplessness. I want to cry out and point but if I do, I will have nothing more to say; no one will understand and I will seem a fool or a weakling on the precipice of madness, which inevitably they try to rescue me from with a derisive offhand comment or an exhortation to follow the leader. Of course, if it is a sublime image that inspires me, such as a river in the midst of the wilderness, I can be forgiven, though an attempt at sharing the understanding comes across as forced, insipid and trite. The best I can do is justify this feeling by learning more about it, and to do so in writing is the best way since my page does not become impatient or bored or feel the need to respond. Only I have to worry about pressing myself to more fully understand this by writing more.
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