I wake and it’s already bright out,
sun spilling on the white rooftop making it look like a blanket of snow.
The first two durations are tiny.
I could barely light the second with the first without scorching my fingers.
Once lit, I watch the flame. At any moment they could topple and burn through the circle. So I start my day tending.
With the third, urgency faded but I could still do no more than record the shape of this duration with bluepea dye.
Fourth
Shitake mushrooms
Dried tofu skin
Dates, pitted
Goji berries
Watery coffee
There’s a heaviness in my core, a strain in my shoulders,
I wonder if diluted coffee can really wake me.
There’s plenty of time when I finish my meal, so I open Ruth Ozeki’s book.
An old nun Jiko says, “If you start snapping your fingers now and continue snapping 98,463,077 times without stopping, the sun will rise and set… and you will experience the truly intimate awareness of knowing exactly how you spent every single moment of a single day of your life.”
In the circle,
there are no drips.
The only visible accumulation are the tiny grains of soot that appear when I brush on another layer of bluepea dye. Some consumed part of the duration dissolve and smudge into faint streaks.
(excerpt from Two Days)