Normality or madness?

Does the Earth chirp like a cricket in the symphony of the skies?
Where does the rainbow end, in your soul or on the horizon?

(Pablo Neruda)

We ignore essence, as it beckons and smiles. We know it is there, but we pretend it is not. We ignore universes of magic, essences of heart profound, moments divine, as we pursue this charade, these roles that we play, that we have memorized so well. These layers of inside/outside are where we have set our anchors, during this ephemeral passing by.

It is another day. Back from the lapse of sleep, where "el músculo duerme y la ambición descansa" (muscle sleeps and ambition rests).

I saw the potholes upon waking and managed to evade those minefields of my own creation. Jumped over them. Landed on the sunny side. Wow, a beautiful setting today! Same as yesterday, but then yesterday I had my eyes closed and was caught up in dark inner caves. They have their own beauty, I guess but are kind of musty and of course so dark, they grow on your mind-heart like mold and do not let go.

But not today, today I woke up on the sunny side. This morning upon awakening I wanted to go back into my night dream which showed me such dances of light and love, it was so whole and intimate and deep. I felt I had discovered forever love, and understood life, so much, so much. Then I woke up! No, no wait, I said. Can I record it?

Oops, here I am again. Funny because the setting is awesome, the miracle of life is amazing, and all these confounded loving atoms, molecules, galaxies, beings, relationships, processes, sunrises, arguments, peace, emotions, and concepts. Oh my God, so much drama and comedy, variety and doldrums interspersed, intertwined, infinitely inevitably. And then there is sister death with all her mystery, and the so many theories of the unknown, to be known, only when you do.

I am not complaining, just noting the awesomeness of this life again, on these last days of experiencing it. Last night’s dream was so beautiful and was just whooshed away, like a sandcastle to an upcoming wave. And I suspect that this life dream will too.

So, this blue morning of vulnerable silence, everything is still not understood, yet there is a profound pause of sentience, an eternal passing mood. Eyes are looking inside, pains are shared like rain in summer, like little children running, scared of the dark, from the shadows of nothing.

Judgments and definitions are frozen, in an eternally ephemeral poise of being, peeking out through life, forever, yet momentarily. There is somehow a détente of thought and differentiation, waking up in dreams, a suspension of the never-ending stream. Everything is silently vulnerable now, upheld by a certainty supreme. Innumerable notions and imaginations surround me now. Like a character in a novel, they define me.

Anxiously, my yearnings fly away, in search of a South of passion and enchanting realms. So many eyebrows have been raised at my doubts about convention. I have become a pariah by looking outside these windows of containment.

But what to do? Universes lay outside the consensus framework, waiting to be discovered, and perhaps even more important, there is a love so profound that seems to lie beyond all poets’ reach. So, while being in this body-limited shape, my intention is to orbit every cell and organ, every space that becomes available, to seek the producer of this magic, to surrender somehow, and get to meet the scriptwriter of this magic play.

Monarch butterflies fly continental distances, to and from their winter break. They erratically wobble northwards in dwindled numbers, assaulted by our greed and insensitivity. Yet, they fly in full color, reproduce with passion, and subject their beauty to admiration and awe. Their long flight is done, in such an absolute non-aerodynamic fashion, that even God wonders.

Thoughts are butterflies that populate the mind, harbingers of self-knowledge. They surge from dark spaces, behind curtains, in off-Broadway stages, perform in flight and song, captivate our energies, and lead us to ruin or laughter. It is said that these rascals are engendered by brewing instincts and impressions of yonder when we were wandering around in all shapes conceived in space.

So, who knows what my fingers are putting into writing now, as they dance through keyboard symbols aligned in rows, receiving wild sentience rushes from my mind. Like latitudinal monarch migrations, they are searching for warmth, life, and love, to express beauty, in a clumsy flight of random spontaneity.

Madness is usually defined as unconventional behavior stemming from unusual perceptions. Love-madness is a special case. It seems to come in singular explosions that cannot be predicted or accounted for, much less explained, or compared. So, who knows where all the inner turmoil comes from? But eruptions are there, and lava rivers devastate all pretty houses and pose. Yes, it is spontaneous combustion. One seems to be dancing on the rim of a fathomless well, feeling woozy, with a strange sensation in the head, and the skin burning.

There is a humming sound of the ocean in my inner ears, a deafening Silence, which doesn’t seem to cease. New life opening collapsed veins and visions of red wine nights by placid lakes. One has deep conversations, just by looking into someone’s eyes, deep longings for the most sublime, and moonlit spaces in worlds inside. Everyone seems to have moments like these, but few report them, as others would classify them as weird. One is expected to talk about the weather, sports, the latest war, politics, breaking news, indignation about some point of view, gossip, the latest measurement of science, taxes, money, crime, holidays, and career. Anything but the acknowledgment of the magic of life that one perceives all the time, like rolling waves on the shore by the sea.

That trembling reflection of water in a small puddle, where mind stops, and time becomes a blur, yielding silence, peace, a tranquility free of form, freedom of beliefs and definitions. The reflection somehow becomes an entry point to another dimension, everything comes to a halt. One dissolves in the puddle, no context, no self-definition. Just peace, a quietude imperturbable.

In that instantaneous trance, the most important things in life are revealed: the eyes that bring light into yours, the compassion that moves one to heal, the nurturing hands that caress the fallen, the sounds of laughter, the smiles that bloom like gardens in faces, and the humble recognition of our uncertainty.

Morning manifests all of the beauty, they always do, but we mostly ignore them. Shouldn't our hearts come out, in little jumps of joy, beating in rhythm to the awareness of this marvelous phenomenon called another day? Probably. But we do tend to take things for granted, such as life, and new days.

Sometimes, we manage to escape the ho-hum cloud and peek out and remember the so many days lived, and we give thanks for light, awareness, for the woven fabric of life. Our awe at the wholeness of everything is so overwhelming, that we bow down, quietly, unknowingly, inadvertently, like trees do, when they sense the morning breeze, in secret from everyone. And the self-conversation with the One inside becomes intense.

Now as I walk in the mornings, I can see the suburbs of the next station, of this interminable journey. This train ride is coming to an end. Joints are becoming rigid, the mind obstinate, and memory elusive. Maybe angels were waiting, perhaps. Or maybe a thousand demons, shaped after myself, who accompany me backstage all the time.

My mind is noisy with memories, names, theories, fears, and beliefs, plus all the blaring news with hype on the media. I sit down and ponder on the many thousand days of this journey. And how earnestly, I have pursued complex viewpoints and theories while being deaf to rainfall and to light in stars! Failing to see the oceans’ waking wave lullabies, and to awake to this beauty sublime, that is everywhere around in universal majesty.

You might say, we ought to be “practical”, and it does seem necessary that the show goes on. But at least, shouldn’t we be grateful for the collisions, the collapsing and the expanding, the dismemberment and remembrance, the losing and finding, the piercing pain, the healing, and the exuberance of, as we pursue in this eternal carnival the infinite possibilities of one perfect smile?

Sometimes I sense that Being is in constant labor, to deliver and fascinate Itself with infinite possibility. Its imagination gallops swiftly, through virgin never-ending cosmic plains, carpeted by magic light-dust sediments, covering fathomless oceans of nothing. As it trots, it goes on sculpting innumerable everything, vistas, settings, and character-silhouettes, in feisty and ephemeral columns of stirred-up luminous dust of nonentity.

For a transient moment, they surge, and live, like drops-bubbles in a mighty wave, to merge again in the sea. Yes, for an ephemeral while, Existence’s imagination, dissolves in its nothing shadow and generates a cascade of gestures, eruptions, passions, allegiances, affairs, frowns, beauty, heinous crimes, supreme love sacrifices, laughter, joy, unbearable pain, mustaches, roses, and wine. Plus, infinite shapes and plots and sub-plots, within infinite cycles of dust and possibility.

All emerges like a mirage -a majestic multidimensional tapestry that sprints nowhere in time. How much we take for granted as we play our role passing by!

Silence always hums silently, through this daily travel log, as our words run desperate, catapulting from mind recesses to the tips of fingers and tongue. We are dressed up in botany and blood, mushrooming out of radioactive star clay. A soup of life, a brew of existence, where deeper currents of beauty and joy compassionately manifest in silent embraces.

Yet rather than becoming aware of the magnificence of Being, we become a chorus of babble, spilling words desperately. Even prayer, that innermost aspiration of praise and awe, has become a thoughtless cacophony, instead of a heart song. Our swirling whirlwind of accelerated I-verbs multiplies, in this infinitesimal suspended blue bubble, and floods it with hot air, unaware of the vastness of the universe.

We continue to be lost in adoration of fatuous momentary images and sounds, and we prostrate in the mirrors and echoes of our vanity, missing that silent Silence that hums in all. Our materialistic worldview calls this confusion “normality” and the perception of the magic of oneness, “madness”.