How can I feel the juicy, muddy swamp of my heart stretching for miles, the saltwater from it rising under my eyelids, how can I live there like a bird soaring above and diving into the wetlands, and yet my mind remains alive enough to form words to describe the experience?

I am listening, and yet I am the silence underneath all sound. So what do I listen for?

When I feel the paradox, the saltwater flows down my cheeks, my mouth opens wide, my head cocks at an odd angle, as if soaking up the rays of an invisible sun. Why are there tears? My mind asks this, asks it often the last few days. What do they mean? My heart gives my mind an answer it can chew on: the tears flow when the ice is melting, the ice that freezes me, stops my expansion, the ice that is my separation from the whole ocean of Being. But my heart knows no answer is needed. If the tears arise, then experiencing them is what is called for. No need to "understand" them. Let experience be, without judgement, and movement will happen, movement toward the truth.

I was walking down Middlefield Road in Palo Alto two days ago, and I came to a little street, almost like an alley. There was a sign on a piece of plywood, black paint on white. The sign looked several years old.

Persimmons 35c or 3 for $1.00
740 (street name)

I stopped to read the sign. I saw a couple people down the lane talking to each other. I wondered if they were buying and selling persimmons. I walked on. I stopped. I turned back. I wanted to follow the sign, even if I had no idea why. I checked my wallet, and got out a dollar bill. I made a reason: I could paint a picture of a persimmon. I have been painting fruit portraits lately, and have not yet done a persimmon. I began to walk down the lane. It reminded me of the little street in Santa Cruz where my sister lives-- tiny houses close together, looking like they were squeezed into an alley behind the full-size houses. And I thought they probably would fetch $500,000 or more, no matter how tiny they are. There were flowers blooming in some yards. I looked for 740 and soon realized it was going to be almost all the way at the end of the street. I passed the two men chatting on the driveway. The one who seemed to live there was wearing bicycling clothes. I caught a snatch of what he said, and it sounded angry, like he might have been mad at his landlord. I wasn't sure if I heard the word "fuck." I was glad these were not the persimmon people. I continued on. House number 740 looked like an old person lived there. There was another hand-painted sign propped up against a tree in the front yard. There were a lot of things stashed on the covered front porch. Maybe there were bird feeders. I am not sure exactly what gave me the old-person's-house impression. The persimmons were in a basket on the front porch, with an empty brandy snifter next to them, apparently for depositing money (was it glass or acrylic? It was so thick it almost looked like there was water in it. I checked. No water.) . Having come this far, I wanted to have a human encounter, not just leave the money and go. I rang the doorbell, and it made a little electronic "musical" song type of sound that I could make out faintly from inside. A woman came to the door in a housedress and bonneted curlers. I told her I was there for persimmons, and asked her how to pick a good one. She said, "They're all good." She was missing several teeth. "You know how to ripen 'em, don't you?" she asked.

"No, how?"

"You just set 'em on your cabinet, just like they are there in the basket, upside-down like that. And you let 'em get soft. I had to pick 'em a little early or the squirrels get 'em all."

"I didn't know squirrels liked persimmons."

"Oh, they love 'em. They'll get everyone before they even get all the way ripe if I let 'em."

"I think I might paint a picture of the persimmons before I eat them," I said.

"Oh, are you an artist?"

"Sometimes," I answered, shifting uncomfortably as usual under that sort of label.

"I took an art class once. Had to quit. Got too much pain in my back and shoulders," she said.

"I guess you'll have to learn to draw with your feet like some of those people do," I joked, wanting a smile from her, maybe wanting to move to a place where her pain wouldn't matter, or perhaps where I wouldn't have to hear about it. I think she did chuckle a little. I gathered up three persimmons and put the money in the jar. She stayed behind her screen door the whole time. I wished her a good day, and she returned the wish.

As I walked back down the little street, I thought about her pain. I remembered the tonglen meditation technique I just read about a few days earlier. I tried it again, while walking along. I breathed in thinking of all her pain and suffering, taking it into my heart, trying to imagine it as black tar or smoke. I let it settle into my heart like compost into a garden. Breathing out, I sent rays of joy and beauty to her, the light of my heart shining out and filling her up. Each time I breathed out the joy and beauty to her, I wept. Sometimes I couldn't take the next breath for a while, just needed to cry. I saw the flowers blooming around me, plumbago and morning glories, and the bright grass, all so beautiful I could hardly stand it. And I did it again. I did not imagine that I was healing her, that she was in her house saying, "Ahh, now that's better. Where did all my pain go all of a sudden?" I didn't pretend I was magic. I just noticed my own experience, the only reality I have to go by, noticed the expanding of my own heart with the willingness to give and receive, to connect compassionately. I just exercised that willingness, with each breath, crying audibly down Middlefield Road now, wondering in the back of my mind if people noticed, if someone might think I was crazy. It wasn't worth it to stop just because of what someone might think. The people in the cars driving past didn't need to know why I was crying. I didn't even need to know why.

As a matter of fact, I don't even need to know why I am writing this story to you right now. I don't mind not knowing. The story arose, and I told it. I have no idea what effect it will have on you. I have no specific effect on you in mind. I only want to be honor what arises in me, be honest with myself about it. And if I am totally honest, making full disclosure, I must admit there is a little part of me, a little person with binoculars and birdwatching books standing on a boardwalk above the wetlands of my heart, wearing raingear. It seems to be a little man when I look closely, a little man with a big sense of purpose and importance, who wants to figure it all out, who wants a reason for everything. And he wants this writing to have an effect on you. He wants you to feel moved and feel spiritual chords sounding in your heart, and then feel gratitude toward me (him), feel impressed by me (him). He wants you to say, "Wow, that is so deep. You are so spiritual, and you have made such a difference in my life. I can't thank you enough, but I promise to keep you on a pedestal for the rest of my days." That little man has a rich fantasy life. But he doesn't GET reality at all. Nor is he very real himself. So when I say I don't have any goal in mind for this writing, I mean the birds and the reeds and the muddy water have no goal in mind. I mean my heart wants nothing from your heart, because it knows and loves you already, because we are the same. That little man can laugh all he wants at the trite words, at the heart's difficulty in navigating in a verbal zone, which is usually the mind's turf. His laughter is swallowed up in the vastness of the wet plain, carried in the moist wind and lost amidst the honking of geese, the chirping of finches. He can laugh all he wants. He can laugh himself to death.
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