Brand New

There’s that familiar trepidation thundering- 

that nexus between an astute and beautiful observation or the wall that kills creation 

before it even begins. Although that trepidation feels like thunder, it’s as subtle and relentless as a heartbeat. As for the observation itself, is it found on the other side of the wall, over it, right through it, beneath it, or in another direction entirely?  

Where and how does the nexus want me to move? The answer is only found in the Now, the inescapable and unspeakable name of God. 

Now, now, now is yes, no or maybe. Now creates or destroys. Now messes up. Now makes better. Now is something it seems I may never comprehend.

Earlier in the week, I was listening to a Youtube video about how to manage being a multi passionate person. A piece of advice that the creator gave was “Don’t wait. Be a self starter.” For some reason, the statement stuck me, and I proceeded to write it in my notes app, the ultimate drawing board for the modern genius. My clumsy thumbs didn’t type the advice quite right. I accidentally wrote, “Don’t wait, be.” There She is. That Now, in Her awesome terror. 

A past version of myself might’ve dismissed this typo as a flimsy sentiment worthy only of mass manufactured journal covers or instagram infographics, but, sometimes, 

Power wears a humble guise. 

Be. How do I expect that of myself, what with all that trepidation buzzing its stinging atoms at me? When that frequency of freedom is jumbled up in the same Now. When my mind doesn’t want to look Her squarely in the face, so past wounds and future fears pollute the pure waters of Her weeping stream?

I’ve learned to start from Now. I make a point to clean up my perspective on the past, and bring to conciousness the best pieces of my present to inform a better future. 

Now, I’m losing steam. I pull out my collection of books by Alan Watts. I’ve not read any of them yet. I want to start one, but I’m already in the middle of too many books. I haven’t felt the right Now to finish them. I flip randomly to page 12 of Zen and the Beat Way and read: 

“The concept of time is one of the great ways in which we are fooled. We believe that the past and the future are, as it were, more solid and of longer duration than the present. In other words, we live in a sort of hourglass with a big bulb at one end (the past) and a big bulb at the other end (the future); we are at the little neck in between, and we have no time. Whereas when our vision becomes changed, we see that the truth of the matter is that we have, in fact, an enormous present on which we live and that the purely abstract borders of this present are the past and future. “ 

So Alan Watts said it before me, and countless Zen masters before him, and other mystics and laypeople alike throughout this thing (that is apparently also no thing) called Time. I love bibliomancy. Like other forms of divination, it cuts through time, tempting and teaching me. 

Don’t wait. Be. Trepidation and it’s thundering is actually the drumbeat of creation in disguise. Power is pulsing Now. And Now. And Now.