I've been under the weather this week. There are certain smells that make me think of winter. One is the smell of fresh rain on a dreary overcast day, it makes me think of early thaws in March that precede another freezing. That earthy smell of wet clay. The pervading sense that the mist around you is about to freeze, leaving a spiderweb of frost on everything.
The sun has been blotted out by overwhelming grey, today. My body, too, has been cast over by the shadow of illness. I am struggling with the mental haze that encourages me to do nothing today. It is truly incredible what the mind can generate on such days, the nightmarish visions of looming expectations. Febrile images of anthropomorphized stress stalking about your ever more constricting apartment seeking to strangle you, miasmatic wisps of smoke. Suffocating.
Only the periodic showers of this gloomy day can clear the clouds long enough to brighten the blighted swamp I call my home. There is hope yet... in the rain soaked streets, potholes, cracks, in rotting sidewalks...
even a single blade of grass...
Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water.
The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.
Although its light is wide and great,
The moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.
The whole moon and the entire sky
Are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.
Dogen