Go.

William Ackerman has been playing nonstop on my cd player since school ended nearly 10 days ago. The cd is called Imaginary Roads, and it is one that I is loaded with many, many moments of serenity and peace when I lived in a cabin on the western shores of Chesapeake Bay. It is there that I learned how life and love transcend all that swirls around us in what Kesey calls The Machine…Every day, I do what I can to hold on to that feeling. It reminds me greatly of the opening to The Four Agreements by don miguel ruiz. In it, he writes about the smoke and the mirror, where he was given a glimpse into the transcending beauty of the world and how he fit so beautifully in it. Living on the Chesapeake was very much my querencia, my home, and I miss it greatly.

KC wrote me today and shared such similar feelings about life and love. I think we do this so much more often than we realize, and when it bubbles to the surface, we are left with this feeling of desperation, where we know it is out there, we know it is attainable because we have experienced it already in our lives. And yet, we can’t meet this feeling with desperation. When it comes to the surface, we must treasure it fully and see the beauty in all of the feelings, even those that bring sadness in that these elements are not a part of our lives right now (or so it seems…they are always a part of our lives, I believe). And when it goes, we must let it go and treasure all the experience had to share with us at this time in our lives.

It is such a hard thing to do, to let things come and go. But resistance and desperation only breeds resistance in others, and the more we are relaxed and flexible, the gentler and more fulfilling will such experiences be.

That which offers no resistance,

overcomes the hardest substances.

That which offers no resistance

can enter where there is no space.

~~tao te ching, 43

The living are soft and yielding;

the dead are rigid and stiff.

Living plants are flexible and tender;

the dead are brittle and dry.

The soft and yielding will overcome.

~~tao te ching, 76.

Let us all go a little more softly into the day…and may the discoveries be many.

Stop.

A note to my readers: 15 on the Fives is written twice-daily at 5:16 a.m. and 5:16 p.m. At times, I write these entries online. These entries are what I call “vomit” or discovery drafts, where I write uninhibited for 15 minutes. There are no rules about topics, content, form, grammar, or spelling. The only rule is that I don’t stop writing. By following this one rule, I almost always discover something new in my writing, and more often than not, I find a seed or two for future pieces I feel I can take to publication. Give it a whirl; there’s nothing to lose (but 15 minutes, of course!).