Seattle dawn

Do you ever feel just alive?  Just embracing fully this distinction humans have of consciousness?  I feel alive.  I mean this in a very profound sense.  It seems obvious that if one has any feelings at all then that implies being alive and is therefore redundant for a person to claim being alive.  There are many adjectives that approach describing the feeling.  I feel the most brute description of being 'alive' is appropriate.

I was up on the wheel house again.  I need to make a habit of doing this more often (not that I don't go there often as it is) because it is there that I feel the most.  I came up the stairs and was progressively immersed in this Seattle dawn.  It began with the fresh scent of the sea.  Then the cool air combined with this scent.  And I was convinced that I had what must amount to the best air on Earth as mine for the taking.  I felt it deep in my lungs and ahhh.  Then I noticed the half moon overhead pulling our tide toward it, suspended by God's hand.  And like the wind that can't be seen, but still blows the trees' leaves, I saw His hand everywhere.  I know He won't leave me.

I felt special.  I felt blessed, not only because of the renewal that comes with every realization of His love for me, but also for having the temperament to embrace this.  I considered how fortunate I am to have a curious intellect.  That His mystery compels me is a joy to me.  I am blessed to be able to play a piano and express myself in another dimension.  I remember being frustrated as a small child (one of my first memories) because I couldn't talk and express myself.  My world, which consisted of the looming faces of my parents and the universe in the great beyond outside of my crib was beyond my ability to interact with.  So this expression is very dear.  It is a language unto itself, like a tongue offered up to heaven.

I remember learning in college of a case in which a man had no memory.  He could remember only a minute or so.  His journals reflected a perpetually blissful state.  He talked of being born anew continually.  While this might not be the way we choose or wish to live our lives, I believe strongly-now more than ever-that there is a kind of salvation in living the moment.  Not in a drink and be merry for tomorrow we die way.  In a be merry and glad kind of way. 

A philosopher who was very interesting to me in school had a theory about this type of thing.  It was called Aesthetic contemplation, where aesthetic is having to do with beauty.  His name was Arthur Schopenhaur and he was a very pessimistic sort of fellow, leaving his thoughts to linger mostly over the tragedy of human nature.  But in this, he did notice that there were moments of respite.  The tragedy of human nature, in his mind was the human will.  That we were always searching in a perpetual game of conquering and seeking to sate various hungers.  He felt that we couldn't enjoy things for what they were because everything we encountered in life was put into a category of some utility, as in this thing will make this or that part of my life better or worse in some way or another.  But, he conceded that art could move people to just take it in, not wanting to do anything with it but just be.

Some of us have experienced this with lovers.  When you don't have any lustful desire with a person, but are happy to just quietly enjoy their presence.  Also, in nature we get this feeling.  It is when we are at a loss for words, generally.  And music.  Not the base contemporary music with so many messages of sex, but the classical style music.  This is in large part because without lyrics there is no message to apply to life.  Anyway, the point is that enjoying things as they are without relating them to life is entirely fulfilling.

I am fulfilled.  I would trade hardship for these moments.  I choose to have them even in hardship instead.  I am loved by the author of love.  And I am humbled.  And I am glad.  He has made me glad.  Amen.