The day it broke open

Before I opened my eyes, I was thinking of the rice that I left out on the stove. I was thinking of my friend, and her boyfriend, and the argument they had, and if they could speak more gently, and if it would help them. I was thinking about walking, about how I should walk more, about my shoes, if they only kept out the rain. I was thinking about my work, and the problems there, and how they each might be resolved, inventing resolutions that could never take place, resolutions that made use of laws that do not exist.

I am always dong that, in the space between waking, and opening my eyes - turning unsolvable problems over and over in my mind until they melt from the heat and turn to new problems. 

The morphing list of unsolvable undefinable challenges continues until my mind wakes enough to catch itself in the act, again. 

This morning I opened my eyes to a problem I had never even considered. 

I can't say that I gasped. Actually, I don't know what I did, because my awareness of my own body vanished. I entered a state of supreme unselfconsciousness - for me, this is an extreme and rare condition. 

The light was different, I should have noticed that before I opened my eyes, maybe I did, maybe that is what brought a final halt to my thoughts. 

It was like the whole world was dilated, like the pupil of the sun had burst open, and without eyelids, could not suppress its own blinding eruption of searing light.

I squinted, I do think I squinted. 

And it all changed. A reverse explosion. An implosion? A blink? Is there an eyelid? As though all this time the earth has been sleeping. As though it had just woken. As though the sun, watching over all this time, breathing life into its dreaming child, had just spoken.

And the light, now, softer, more white. 

It beams down on everything like sheaves of comprehension. 

As though while we have spent our lives not looking at the sun, it, finally, 

is looking back at us. The loneliness of the dream state, where each of us travels again and again in our own private universe, how it falls away at realities gentlest touch. 

So the loneliness of that giant old dream, separate form the sun, from the earth, a lonely cell not able to feel its part in the body, it fell away just as easily. I see you now, and I feel you. I hear you, through the sun, with its infinite touch. We are inside the same other dream, all together now, and your hurt is my pain.