INDEFINITE

WORDS LIKE LIGHT

Tuesday, August 23, 2022

         It seems strange, sometimes, that the word ‘indefinite’ is so beautiful to me, since, to most people, it probably carries a somewhat negative flavor. We usually want our lives to be the opposite of indefinite – like understandable, and clear, and user-friendly – but I see, more and more, the beauty of obscurity and uncertainty. For me, at the ripe young age of 80, life has become more and more beautifully limitless, a reality without confining borderlines and constrictive explanations. In my younger years, I found it fun to apply easy labels in order to define and understand various parts of my life, but now I know that labels always overlook the vastness and nebulousness of reality. All of this life I’m part of is as indefinite as mist and smoke, as unfixed as breezes and sunshine. After my wonderful long years of searching and studying, I’ve come – happily – face to face with the immeasurable mystery of everything, and it makes me want to wave my arms in thankfulness. I’m a free-and-easy 80-year-old ripple in an unsearchable ocean, happy to simply appreciate the indefinite, open-ended grandeur of things instead of hopelessly trying to define and understand them.

ONE DAY OF  KNOWING NOTHING

One day,
no one knew anything,
and this knowing nothing
made a saintly kind of happiness.
Little lights of unknowing
shone everywhere. 
A silky sea called Ignorance crashed
in spectacular surf on the shore,
and thoughts were so light
they lifted off from people's heads
like light-hearted butterflies.
Broken lives were refurbished
simply by this awareness of ignorance,
and a gentle bewilderment
kept everything sheltered and hushed.
You could see something shining
inside you, because artificial
understanding was no longer there.
Thoughts were shining 
with the salutary light of simplicity,
and soft, medicinal 
explosions of puzzlement 
were everywhere.