You ever see a leaf so small, articulated, and perfect and realize that if your whole life was lived as that leaf, so void of insecurity, question, or searching for meaning, that it would be as perfect as life can ever be?
I trimmed a monster hedge a week and a half ago and my elbows are still in pain. I got bruises on my arms and started smelling like a lumberjack somewhere in the middle of the job, but during the few hours I spent chopping and sawing at woody trunks and cutting branches I never once wondered about the point of life or felt insecure about my body. I cursed at the motherfucking evil thorned plum that attempted to eviscerate me and it was AS IT SHOULD BE. I inhaled the dust of purgatory, my throat half closing in allergic protest, and it was so fucking RIGHT and GOOD. I mean, I might have choked to death on that mold and must but if I had it would have been PERFECT.
That’s what being in the moment is and when you’re in the moment you don’t care how long it will last or if it will compare favorably to other moments or if anyone else notices the moment or if you’ll remember the moment years from now.
That’s the kind of shit you do when you slip out of the moment and get tangled up in human hubris.
Shed the hubris and get embroiled in the grit of the present.
I haven’t got time for my own bullshit.
I might have the body of Jabba the Hut and the face of your Polish grandmother but I’ve got a mind so sharp it can cut your expectations into paper angels.
I woke up this morning to chastisement from a stranger. Schooling I didn’t need. A sting I needn’t have acknowledged. I know who I am and if anyone takes the requisite five minutes they’ll know who I am too. I don’t have time for your snap bullshit.
I’m in the moment when I’m juggling earthly elements. When I’m putting seams together or plotting how to bring scent into harmony. I’m in the moment when I’m driving metal screws into soft wood. I’m in the moment when the characters in my stories are breathing loudly enough to annoy me.
When you live in the moment you catch fire without feeling the heat.
Every day I see a flower, a berry, or a leaf so perfect it takes my breath away. They live in the moment because that’s the only place they exist.
No one makes a funeral pyre for a blackberry, a rose, or an oak leaf. They exist now and then they’re gone. Just as we should be.
No matter what your substance of character is, it’s always at its most perfect in the moment. You evil? Your evil has never been more perfect than it is RIGHT NOW. You sweet? Your sweetness has never been more crystallized than it is RIGHT NOW. You a hall monitor? You’ve never been more annoyingly aware of hall passes than you are RIGHT NOW.
Whatever you are, whoever you are, you’re the most you’ve ever been
right now.
THE PRESENT IS POTENT.
You know what’s perfect about the present? It’s constantly renewing itself. Don’t like who you are right now? Every minute offers a chance to for change. Every hour is an opportunity. Every day can be a fresh planet of behavior. Whatever you are right now can be reinvented for the next minute.
Evolve.
Or don’t.
Fuck us all.