Writing From The Center
writing samples
Out of Nothing #2
When we seek the center of our awareness, we bounce from what we point at as the
self to spaciousness, never landing anywhere.
When we seek the center of our awareness, we hit an area, a barrier we can describe
as spaciousness or opaque translucency or opening opening.
In an attempt to observe and grasp the center of our awareness, spaciousness (or
opaque translucency or opening opening) light and dark at the same time, is as close
to the center as we can get because we never have the sense we fully grasp the center
of our awareness in a tangible way.
When we seek the center of our awareness, we experience there is no locatable
center and we are left with the description “centerless center.”
We cannot locate the center of our awareness in the same way we locate our body
and, even as “we know we are here,” there is no specific content to the experience of
“
knowing we are here.”
— Trena Machado—
Could I have held out here? Could I have moved myself to the action, to the effort, to
the grindstone? I sold my land to Barbara and Dean in a moment, not a negotiation—
a moment born in Richard’s despair with the decay and isolation. I had been
hopelessly dragging him along with me as I held out, waiting for him, encouraging
him to see the hard work and beauty as fingers of the same hand. Yet what does one
say about the 25-year old green shag carpet, the sagging floors, the filthy drapes, the
water-stained ceiling…. I say nothing much. I see only 5,000 blackbirds descending
on the fields and rising up again in unison following the cattle in the late afternoon
sun, the long shadows of the old fence posts, the trotting coyotes. The black
mountains on a full moon night.
I’m loving this land, soon to be leaving it. The place is sold. We are moving to San
Leandro. Today, I don’t plan. Because I am sick? Or because I finally know that
planning doesn’t matter, in any universe?
— Pat Hughes—