Taking a Walk to the Store

I leave my little house and walk through the garden, by the latent strawberry patches, by the budding rhubarb.  I can smell the saltwater and the ripe ocean water in the air. Feel the pressure change from my home to the open sky.

As I walk downtown, I am moving forward through space along the sidewalk, past the retirement community, by the babbling brook. One foot in front of the other. On the right is the house of the guy always dressed in white who I jokingly imagine is in the witness protection program and played in the movie by Robert Dinero. I have a screenplay in mind about my little village home with all of its cooky residents. He has a little public red and white wooden swing with a welcome sign to sit and watch the stream going through his yard.  From what I have observed, he has back problems, so he walks his dog in this three wheeled motorized bike around town.  

Moving through space, I am taking steps forward, but at the same time, I am not moving.  I can almost feel like I am retreating, going backwards as I go forward, like a vacuum with the world coming to me.  There is no coming and going. I receive the world around me. I am melding with the environment as I go, losing myself, space has no edges.  I am in continual spontaneous emerging.

The trees around me are out there, and I see them, and at the same time, they are inside of me. I can't tell where I end and where the trees begin.  They are inside of my body.  Or rather, there is no inside, but the trees are my body. Birds fly by, squirrels scatter around, I am sometimes bombarded by the advances of teritorial crows. They run this town.

The sounds around me are ever present.  I lightly feel gravity, I am pulled to the center of the earth. I am a leaf pummeled by the air around me, drifting. I am the center of all that is happening, and yet I am transparent, right on top of everything as I pass it.  It is delicate and taut. Inside and outside have no meaning. The wind is alive, the grass is humming.

I skip going to the Star Store grocery and head to the water down behind the old bar they have been renovating for ten years.  Looking out on the Puget Sound, on Camano Island, it is in the distance, but I too am expansive. I too am the waves coming in and out.  I am penetrated by the biting cold, the dampness fills me up. I am on the ground, but I am also in the wide open sky above the water.  The seals pop their heads up, I see their kind black eyes shining, curious.  The tide is high, the sun is setting, the water molten silver with orange shards of light.  My body is that light extending to the heavens.  I am a black hole, and yet expanding.  

I don’t want to be gone long, don’t need to keep feeling the environment. It's time to head back. I pop into the Star Store. The lights are fluorescent, the atmosphere tense and busy, chaotic, anxious. I meet it as a texture and harmonize with the raking energy, the self consciousness in the air, the maxed out cashier. I am inside out and also smack dab in the middle of the noise. Everyone is there, full of light.

After hitting the grocery store to pick up coffee creamer, or bok choy, or a loaf of sourdough bread, I head home. I feel a center line pulling me into the center of the earth in my lower body, and my upper body is being stretched to the moon overhead.  This is not an idea. I look at the empty moon and there I am, shining, extending, luminous.  I don't go an inch but am extending forever.  I listen to the sound of the trees, listen to this immense hidden language of it all saturating me.

I walk on home, greeting passing people politely.  I feel them, am penetrated by them. Feel their intentions, feel their heart. Their pain. I am a crevasse for them to fall into.  Feel their love. But I don't say a word about it.  I just walk and look like a normal wild eyed scruffy pacific northwest guy. I am half animated, half apparition, mostly alien, posing as a normal guy walking home in uncomfortable jeans, exposed, magnified, inspired to keep being devoured by light, devoured by this process of letting go, to make supper for my beautiful family.