A Joy Impossible to Delete

And all the while, there is a deeper, wilder, simpler life that is happening, right at our feet, yet in an entirely different geography of consciousness!

More and more each day now, I have been listening for the quieter, subtler rhythms of my city.

My daily walks are along the large lake that sits in the middle of Oakland, stretches through whole neighborhoods, reflects the downtown high-rises, the homes, the humans, the trees. On one side, there is the relentless urban bustle, the tires screeching on asphalt, the roar of engines, the human cacophony. On the lakeside, there are only the small, almost inaudible sounds you can hear only if I choose to. The sounds and rhythms under people’s voices, under the city buzz, under my own thoughts.

Do you know that subtle murmur of water birds? The gentle clacking of beaks together, those little honks and whistles they make as they go about their business, the little splashes of feathers on the water. The long-legged heron, a master of stillness, stands knee high in the marshes, hunting alone, but her body is tuned to every invisible movement around her. In the water’s reflection, it looks like we are quite literally living together– the humans, the birds, the buildings, the trees, and the city lights, swimming among one another, our bodies merging in a fluid world.

But most humans who walk by here have no time for this, and I’m often one of them: We are here to do the thing, quickly. Walk briskly, get the workout in, walk the dogs, think on the go, get that vitamin D, you know, the benefits. We drown out the birds’ conversations with our own, more important, of course! We come here to talk about the intense political edge of the new presidency remodeling our world quickly, painfully, with much, much consequence. We talk about displaced humans and wars paid for with our dollars. About the despair felt in the community, and the tension we cary in our bodies. About how we grapple…

And all the while, there is a deeper, wilder, simpler life that is happening, right at our feet, yet in a different geography of consciousness altogether! And that life is playing a symphony for the senses. It tickles the body with its sounds and sensations, it pulses with a wild and animal mind. There is a possibility here for the whole body to come down a few notches, to get slower, to rest into something precious and alive and ongoing, perceivable only if one is present enough to hear the music.

If you have the time and the patience, for example, you can watch a single bird’s movement on the water make ripples that will change the entire lake. The entire lake. You can watch the ripples pulse out and widen until they meet the ripples of another bird, and how these perfect circles merge and begin dancing together, the whole lake responding.

Here, I can sit quietly, outside if time, and feel it all, the tenderness, the ache, my losses, the griefs that live among us, the things I could never say. And all in the same breath, I feel the jubilance of being here, deep in the flesh of life, my whole body raised into a gratitude full of sensation. A gratitude for something so precious and so transient that I want to hold it, like a baby, in my arms.

It is here, with my body melting to the touch of sun on my skin, that I can feel the reassurance of the wild and quiet ones– that albeit all the ache of the world, there is always joy here.

A joy unforced, unimposing. A joy impossible to delete.