Dear friend,
There’s a tiny cut on the first finger of my right hand that’s less than a millimetre across. Its pinky-red tone crosses the scored lattice of my skin. I got it washing a glass that has the tiniest little chip taken out of its rim. As I turned the glass, twisting my hand inside it to wipe it clear of marks and streaks with a sponge, I noticed the blood before I felt it.
I didn’t throw the glass out. It seems to me too small an infraction to warrant being thrown out of home. I drank water from it today and noticed who the glass was.
The one who cut me.
It has made its mark on me.
Carved out an identity in my mind as “the glass that cuts.”
I’ll pay more attention to it from this point on.
Zara came to stay overnight while Katie visits a Christmas comedy fundraiser at the Pleasance Theatre. She’s happy staying with us in general, but there’s a time in the evening when Zara starts to look downcast and sad—when she realises she’s not going home. As she comes to terms with it, we sit with her and gently ruffle the feather-soft fur around her ears, and, if she’s up for it, help her relax with a tummy rub.
She’s followed me into my desk and is curled up on the rug. I was here sitting, staring at the cut on my finger when she entered silently. I didn’t hear her but felt her presence. She’s just let out a little groan as she stretches out by my feet.
It is heavenly.
To be in such good company.
We ate late today.
Not Zara—her meals are regular as clockwork.
Chiara and I, despite our best intentions, both found more reasons to keep working on our projects than to take a break.
Ideally, I’d prefer to stop work earlier, but that’s easier said than done when you’ve got your teeth into something, and it doesn’t feel like work.
The day flies in.
I was reflecting on something Patrick said last night.
How indigenous North American culture thinks about intention.
That nature struggles to understand how to take care of our needs if we don’t know what we want. Or if we want so many conflicting things, She has no idea where to start with us.
Intention is important in the quantum world, as I understand it.
On the simplest level, we could talk about a decision.
To see the good in yourself.
To look for that good reflected in whomever, whenever you encounter another living being.
To learn to celebrate and appreciate the spectacular diversity of life’s outpouring. Stars, mountains, Chupa Chups, chipped rims, the depths of the ocean, the life on the street outside your front door.
A kid almost ran into me yesterday. A little thing with legs like pipe cleaners.
“Oops, sorry,” she said as she pelted off home or to meet her friends.
The seagulls wheeling overhead in the December twilight.
We can decide which world we want to create together.
We can decide to live in peace.
The intention is powerful.
The decision,
Is the hub,
Around which,
Our earth turns.
Till tomorrow,
Love,
Mikey