June 29, 2001

• Pause -

  
  

  Have you noticed how much of life happens in the pauses?  You never have a flash of insight except when you're paused at a stop sign.  Oh, maybe not a literal stop sign.  But you know what a mean.  As long as everything is going smoothly, flowing unobstructed, there isn't time to think through to the next level of anything.

  
  

  When the rock rises out of the water, and you have to decide "right?" or "left?"  That's the pause that leads to real thoughts.  Real thoughts can be scary.  From moment to moment you are too busy thinking about schedules, laundry, the project that's due tomorrow, the kids, the husband, the dog, the . . . whatever.  But, when you pause, real thoughts jump out at you.

  
  

  Real thoughts begin with Why?  Real thoughts move outside the box of time and space.  In Real thought territory you can ask and argue with the cosmos.  You imagine how life could be different.  You wonder about value, quality, happiness, peace, contentment, struggle and pain.  In the pause you step outside your routine and see everything from a different perspective.

  
  

  I have a greeting card on my desk.  It's done in watercolors of pale blue and yellow. Two children walk though a twilight scene.  The stationer sprinkled glitter across the background.  The glitter shimmers beyond the sight of the figures waiting for the decision point.  When they reach the fork in the road, your house or mine, they will pause.  And the glitter of the real thoughts will drift like fairy dust across their consciousness.

  
  

  I think I'll send it to a woman who is paused in life.  She waits behind bars for the hope of freedom.  She believes that someone else holds the key to her future life.  I wonder if she knows that poetry is born of pain?  She needs the fairy dust of real thoughts and maybe in this moment she can see them.

  • 1:45 pm
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