“Oh God, I don’t want to get out of bed. It’s so warm in here. Just ten more minutes, please! Just one more round of snoozing, one more round of lying down covered by the beautiful blanket. I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to write. I don’t want to meditate. I want to stay here! I want to press snooze one more time. The forecast is crap anyway — ten degrees, and cloudy and rainy — and even if it was sunny, I’d be stuck inside.”
“Get up!”
“Ok, ok, I’ll get up — just give me a few seconds, I’ll get up on the count of five. One, two, three, four, five … oh, this blanket’s so warm and my head feels so nice against the pillow. Come on man, it’s like jumping into cold water! It’ll hurt for like two seconds and then you’ll get used to it. Right — one, two, three, four, five … legs move, body follows — ah, ok, that wasn’t so bad. Right, now, pick up notepad from beside bed. Pick up pen as well. Oh God, where’s the fucking pen? Jesus Christ, where is my fucking pen? I left it right here! Who moved my goddam pen?! Oh, there it is, huh, I must’ve moved it last night. Crisis averted! Right, ok, got my notepad, got my pen, now sit down and write!”
Can I write anymore? I don’t think so. I really can’t write. I’ve got no heart. I literally can’t write. I have nothing to say. Nothing! Not a single useful thought! I can’t even be bothered with this, really I can’t. You’re hopeless, Jason, absolutely hopeless. Give up!
No, I will not! Who’s that? Is that mind or heart? It’s not soul — I’m very far from soul. Wow, there’s a lot of crap in here! Also, I’m hungry and I’m cold, and I’m clenching my jaw — that can’t be good. Breathe man, breathe, easy does it. And now I’m breathing and it’s getting a bit deeper and I’m reconnecting and, yes, the words are starting to flow and I can see the harbour from my window and how lucky is that?
So, it’s another day of lockdown in Sydney and the wind is blowing with some force and I can see the ripples moving south to north across the water, and there’s a tree rustling outside the window and it’s the same height as the two-storey, red-brick apartment block in front of it, and it’s hard to know exactly but I guess the tree has at least 3,000 leaves. I wonder how old it is? Surely it can’t be older than the apartment block? I really should change the water in this vase — it’s turned a sort of yellowy-brown and that can’t be good for the flowers. It was a nice idea to buy them last week, or was it a month ago? Ok, this writing is shit but at least it’s flowing a bit more, at least I’m moving and not totally stuck in my mind. How nice is the touch of my hand on the table — that’s a connection of sorts. But my jaw’s still clenched and that’s a bit annoying. I wonder if it’s painful but I’m just not aware of the pain? Could be. I’m loving all these pot-plants, how beautiful! Time to meditate, I reckon.
Wow, look at the sky. The clouds are filled with light! Write that again. The clouds are filled with light! Can you imagine having the incomparable joy of looking at one enormous cotton ball hanging against a backdrop of the purest blue imaginable and light is filtering through? It’s a bloody miracle! Here I am, little individual Jason, sitting at home on another day of lockdown in Sydney, and I’m looking outside and there’s a cotton ball stretching what, three, four — no, it’s more like fifteen or twenty — kilometres, all the way from the south to the north, and there are little patches of pure blue opening up in the cotton ball like lakes of wonder and through it all — can you even imagine? — through it all there’s a light, I see it as yellow, but really it’s white, a light shining through the seas of the sky and the cotton ball to my eye, and that light comes from one ginormous thunderball of heat about 150 million kilometres away.
Is this a dream? It certainly sounds made up. Apparently believing in witches and wizards is childish. Santa Claus is for kids. The tooth fairy is made up. But this, this is for real? I, a being comprising some 37 trillion cells, am looking out from behind a window onto a panorama of rippling blue waters, a tree with at least 3,000 leaves, and a two-storey rectangular prism made of red bricks that contains other beings also comprising some 37 trillion cells, and there’s a cotton ball filled with light hanging in an ocean above us, and that ocean continues for about 100 kilometres until it reaches a sort of translucent blackness which extends for some 93 billion light-years and growing and which contains, among trillions and trillions of strange and wonderful objects, one particular fireball that’s lighting up the cotton ball I’m looking at at this very moment as well as the flowers, the vase, the water I need to change, the red bricks, the tree and its 3,000 flowers, the rippling water in the harbour, and even me.
Bloody weather though.
Soulful Thoughts 