Autumn Thoughts (continued):

Who is restless is not ready to give in. I see so many stranded boats, and it is hard to go about a day without looking for rocks and sandbars. Or maybe these captains are all looking back at me, bow wired in swamp vines, anchor dragging, not exactly making waves.

I flew over Amish fields yesterday, soon to be dark green in winter wheat. Plowed. Just sown.  Over the Mississippi river, strained all the way north, heavy with barges and silt. I sat quiet while geese passed beneath, headlong into the opposite direction, and looked at a young woman in the aisle seat three rows up with her legs crossed at the ankles, reading fiction.

It is quiet tonight, in the way a home can be when the cold sets on the trees outside, and dinner has been cooked, the work done for the day. A quiet of time slowing down. A tantric Hindu slowness of realization. 

I remember waking up in a small wooden guestehouse on Lake Aititlan, in Guatemala. I crawled to the bottom of the bed, pulled back the thin sheet blinds. There was a tremendous volcano in stance above the black-pearl-deep lake. A single paddle boat cut across this vast calm desert of water.

One boat. It is quiet tonight, but tomorrow I go.