Beginnings

The sun comes up over the ash tree in the garden at the back of the little blue house. There is usually a good pot of coffee brewing in the kitchen and a candle lighted on the table beside me. Shoyeido's fragrant Morning Zen incense is burning in a pottery bowl on the old quarter sawn oak coffee table.

A few days ago, Redondo Writer asked, "When you awake in the morning, how do you greet the day?" Now that I think about it (and I seldom do think about it), all my days begin in much the same way, and I have come to cherish this morning routine of so many years' observance: the early rising and small breakfast preparations, the slow settling into stillness which has the rising sun and the ash tree as backdrops, a resident choir of birds singing in the garden and the string of Tibetan bells at the back of the house adding their own harmony to ordinary affairs.

Deep even breathing and slow insignificant thoughts on a fine sunny morning (or a rainy one or a snowy one for that matter) are just random percolations in the great and nebulous field of what Michael Chabon once called mundology, and they are probably of no consequence whatsoever in the greater scheme of things, but each day has gifts and wisdom of its own to offer, and I try to see its unique colours, to approach it with gratitude and openness and accept without reservation what will be given.

The signature chop in the top left corner of this image says "peace", and the chop in the lower right corner says simply "joy". That covers just about everything, I think, the minute unpretentious world of the little blue house at day's beginning with its garden, its birds and its trees, the great thundering world of concrete, asphalt, glass and steel which lies beyond. The trick every morning is to knit up the various worlds, to put them all together and know that they are indeed one, then remember it for the rest of the day. In my book, it's all about connection.