The world swims along–get up, get dressed, get on the road, get to work–in a toneless hum.
My work entails a thousand unpatterned steps and hundreds of mindless arm movements a day.
But flashes hit, halting the me-machine, sudden quiet in chaotic movement that feels like a foot’s firm landing on the ladder’s higher rung–the one I climb ’round the clock.
Something short of an ephiphany but more than a realization. Like an incremental lift culminating from hours-a-day stuttering repetitive mantras: stay focused, present and observe.
Today motion and mind melded in the dance called machine washing at the shop, otherwise known as surrender to the method.
When thrust into each step of the process from disassembly to reassembly, acknowledged, full-felt respected, pleasant peace befalls the me-participant in the giving way to–
no resistance, no rushing and no disrespect for time and space yields a tiny nitrous oxide blast-like high in awareness of all is well and right and good–peace in the core, litheness in the limbs–and
confirmed in the machine’s smile.
In the gaze of the other 