Haibun: Underwater
The spring grass, fuzzy in it’s newness, sits under the water. Free to grow in the sun and spring time rain, until the rains come and the river submerged it.
I feel this way often. Things are going great, I’m feeling the warm spring rays, then suddenly I am under water, things at work explode, or things at home collapse, and I’m underwater. I’m not dead, I’m just not in a place I feel I can survive. “If this continues, I can’t.”
I think this because this is where the world is at this moment. The rains from a few days before, the snow melt from last week, are here now. “My world is this!” But in reality, the sun is out, the river isn’t as high as it was yesterday, and this river, right now, is only the reality of here, it’s a different experience in the bend up river as it is a different experience in the bend above that. It is also a different experience on the bank than it is inches closer to the river. It comes down to time and place.
I am learning to look out my windows. I am wired to be the center of my universe, as you are as well. I am wired to think the universe is only what is happening to me, the world is how I perceive it. But instead of denying how I’m wired, I am looking out the window that says, for the rest of the world, things aren’t what I am experiencing and feeling. The world is happening no matter what I think or feel. And the world isn’t stopping to pay attention to me.
And so I can let my need to be the center of the universe go with grace and compassion. I can appreciate that I’m wired this way to survive, but there are other perspectives for me to look at through these emerging windows, windows I can only find through reflection and honest writing no one will read but me.
In the Easter, Passover, and Spring Solstice season, it is important for me to let the experience pass and forgive what I didn’t let pass in my past.
Grass can stay alive underwater long enough to be in the sun again.
the remnants of rain
each spring leaves the grass swimming
until the clouds move on
