This is NOT about politics.
This is not about anything historic or ideological.
This is not about the news.
Or soccer. Or the PTO.
This is not about what I did today, or yesterday, or about what I will do tomorrow.
THIS is about this tiny minute and nothing else.
This is about the rain slamming against the skylight and the leaves like kamikaze birds making a final flight. This about the three kids who think I can't hear them upstairs (in bed?) but I do. This is about me doing nothing about it and hoping someday, my gamble pays off and they end up loving each other as grown-ups.
This is about the hum of the click clack on the keyboard and how that sounds like the post office workers in Africa that I heard on a cassette tape once in a music class in college.
(This is NOT about worrying that I left a canvas bag full of soccer balls and other crap outside in what is now a full on downpour.)
THIS is about this tiny minute. It is about me turning off the radio and the television and the everything else and sitting here, in THIS minute, all by myself (at least in this room) (where I am, for now, all alone). This is about me listening to something other than than every one else and every thing else and just for right now, listening to nothing. But the click clack. And the rain.
This is about being quiet in a fury of sound, in a fury of hoopla and chit chat and emails and phone calls, and all of the other things that make noise.
THIS is about this tiny quiet minute, this one little bit of time, this thing I can have and make silent and untouchable. I wonder if anyone can relate to that, and I hope that they do. I wonder if life is about more than this -- tiny minutes -- and I think that mostly, it isn't.
Because right now, in this minute, this tiny minute, when my children are at last, finally asleep, and when I can hear in the quiet how truly lucky I am to be living here, in this house, right now, at this time, at this very stinking minute -- everything else can find the back door: I am just happy and grateful.
That's what this is about.
24commentsBrilliant Person Wrote...
Be here now. It's the only place to be.
first Miller Lite on me, P. Cheers.
So simple, so eloquent. Thank you
I remember that African post office thing — a very nice simile for the sounds of typing, rainfall, the quiet rhythms of the moment...
Nice, Ms. P. But I suspect it took you a bit more than one minute to type that, yes? Which means you had a whole TEN minutes, or whatever. Even better.
Nothing like a good keyboard meditation.
I always forget to appreciate those little moments. Thanks for the reminder.
Most of life is just those little minutes. I think that's what we do here mostly... try to write down the little minutes to remember them later.
Being present, easy to forget, but should always be Rule #1. That, and just breathe.
I'm totally scheduling a "this minute" this weekend.
Brava!
I like your Minute.
Mahalo.
You can find peace within yourself even when all around you is unpeaceful.
I wrote a bunch of these minutes down recently, in my cell phone, but they never made it further. Maybe because there were new minutes. The old had passed. I think it is a bunch if these minutes that make life, but most often we dont slow down to enjoy them.
Great piece and a great way to live too.
beautiful.
I had such a minute today. Sitting outside on a warm southern California morning,just being. Its really very hard for me to just be . . . I'm much better at being a human "doing". Thank you for the reminder to be on the alert for such minutes that are there in our day if we just will take advantage of them.
Right here. Right now.
It's the exception to my rule, unfortunately. That shit takes practice and discipline and a pause in the protests and rallies of the soul. Good for you for lining up those stars!
Beautiful! I love these moments. I have more and more of them every day. Wonderful post!
I'm gonna need a seminar to learn how to do this. Actually, do you teach a remedial class? I should probably start slow.
When I realize it's quiet and I'm actually in that moment, I find it so blissful. I also love the sound of the keyboard clicking. Sometimes I just strike my fingers lightly over them and not create words, just to hear it.
I'm pretty sure this is about you being a great writer. Nope, I'm positive.
Whoa. I thought that when I think to myself, "This is not about that."... that I was the only one who understood what THIS isn't...
Oooh. A mental whirly-gig.
It's good to remember that you don't have to take everything in giant bites.
Thank you, my friend!
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