Three words rang through my head today, walking through Sky Harbor. I am at peace holding his hand and feeling. Just feeling. I am so at peace with this feeling….

Everyday this woman, who barely made the effort to really know herself in the past, she wakes up and she makes two decisions. One is to live and the other is to love.
To live she has to look past the looming threat of illness, remember that all of life is precious and forgive herself then for killing the poisonous spiders so her cats don’t get sick when they eat them.
To love, she overlooks the worries that someday she possibly could be alone, that impermanence exists. She remembers also that a heart is capable of great things, but also that without respect, very little happiness can be attainable.

This woman, myself, looking at my eyes in the mirror, I am more at ease and more comforted by my own presence than my past self could have verbalized. And even now, as I finish the post I started over a week ago, mid-month, I still think about this possibility of loneliness.

Right now, the house is dark. Outside, the night has shrouded the trees and the earth in its gloom. I pulled up the blinds so that I could share the sunrise tomorrow. And as I did that, a fear crept into my heart. What if I awoke to see someone outside the window, the fact that they would have to float only brought the undead to mind. All of these thoughts came in and then left by the time I was under the cotton softness.

But the house is still dark and the feeling of loneliness is in that darkness. But is it only our individual consciousness that gives us the ability to feel loneliness? My cats know when I am not here, but do they also feel alone? Well, I never said cats don’t have soul…

I am in the dark tonight, but my heart can reach out there to those I love, and think about how they could be feeling tonight in their individual consciousness. I can call my cats and think about their deliberate decisions- as individual creatures- to ignore my invitation. The funny thing is that, at the beginning of this post I talk about decisions to do two things that I am not sure are actually conscious decisions.

Suddenly, Tansy cries out into the darkness and loneliness is totally shattered (even the darkness was shattered when I picked up my devicey thing) I wait to feel her weight at the foot of the bed and I also feel a weight in my chest. My heart beats, reminding me of love, reminding me of life… And how, these two things are really no different for me than they are for her… They just are.

Unconscious decisions.

Gentle footsteps turn in a little circle and weight settles against my ankle. A thought crosses my mind that maybe it is not her, but a monster. Then I hear her unmistakeable breath. Basil will be here soon, lighter on his toes.

Goodnight world. Goodnight Internet, I admire how your existence can alter loneliness with every key stroke.

But that is a different post for a different night.