Raising the blackout shades of my bedroom, I face the stark black reflection of window glass framing a navy robe crowned with picket-fence-white hair. All I can observe outside is a single porch light piercing the darkness. All by itself, it’s unable to disturb the stillness and silence within and without.
I’m up early because I want to experience the interior silence I occasionally connect with during meditation. I swallow and smile, pleased to think of myself as a solitary presence in search of stillness. I kneel by the window on my collapsible bench with eyes slightly open.
Gaze lowered, I peer out the window and marvel as I do each morning at the coming of light from the sun. Without noticing specifically what is happening, gradually, the window glass allows me to see through. Keeping my vision partly blurred, I notice that part of what I’m seeing in the glass is not outside as I had imagined, but a reflection of my bed sheets that are directly behind me.
The lighter it becomes; the clearer objects appear. The more apparent the inside-outside divide becomes. I muse that though I have been bemoaning the encroaching darkness of autumn, the darkness gives me a longer period of time to see the miracle of the planet awakening each day. I don’t have to get up quite so early to witness this miracle.
