The Stop

“Listen to silence. It has so much to say.” -Rumi 

One summer day you will notice a wonder: the wind has stopped, but it is not needed, for the air is neither hot nor cold, but just right. The lazy clouds are soft and round, light and fluffy, and meander along so slowly in their sky path, that they barely seem to move at all. It is maybe still morning or perhaps early afternoon. The only sound is the distant drone of an old prop plane and the cicadas down by the creek, which has itself come to a standstill. The fruit of the apple tree is bright red now, and almost ready to pick. Nothing more needs to be done. The cat is asleep on the porch swing, and the moment is absolute. 

Perfection. 

Completion.

“The pause is as important as the note” -Truman Fisher

I wish I could put it in a bottle, to be cracked out on some cold windy drizzling November day, when the worried world is rushing by, splashing mud in my face. I’d scoop out a bowl of it and gently feed it, spoonful by spoonful, to my nervous and sleep deprived pimply faced twelve year old self, hopelessly stuck in a blinking fluorescent lit windowless room, as I hunch over those long awful test papers where you fill in the little multiple choice dots for endless hours. 

I’d hand out bottles of it to the scarred and scruffy red faced veteran on the hot corner in an oppressive cloud of car exhaust, with a sign about how anything helps, but what he actually has in mind is a cold beer. To the jealous tight mouthed woman at the market who obviously knows all the things I am doing wrong today. And a bottle to that angry fellow on the radio who feels he needs a small arsenal to feel safe from the contradictions of his own mind.

A small branch on the apple tree quivers, as if stirred by a secret bit of breeze known only to itself. The cat begins to lick its underarm. 

The moment passes.

“If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat” -Lily Tomlin