I cry for the world. I cry for myself. I cry for my friends who cannot find their tears. I cry for my friends who can. I cry for the people I don’t know and for those that I do. And with this weeping, I come eventually to the center. When I can raise my head and look out from this center, I see how I am encompassed in life. It is in me and out of me, simultaneously part and whole, substance and vibration.

I have always had trouble singing certain songs without crying. Perhaps I can find a way to accept that they are one and the same. Singing, crying, laughing, breathing. These are the truths I hold to be self-evident.

Words are petty distinctions — clumsy snips and pauses imposed on the natural order of inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Language is illusion. Superimposition. We might understand each other better if we could just shut up.

Inhale, exhale. The back and forth of the spiritual ocean. The rocking of the great chair. Sit beside me. Press your cheek to mine. We will ebb and flow together, ears like shells creating the sigh of waves each for the other. The tide is the breath of the world — not the clock or the freight train or the roar of human consumption. The cricket is our counselor. Skin is our conductor.

That we should become so ashamed of our magnificence that we sacrifice it willingly to rhetoric and fear makes me wretched. But here, in the center, with my soul on straight, eyes turned inward, hands open to receive, I think I can hope for the world again today. I think I can manage to accept the strange burden-gift of life and offer it back with a willing heart.

I think I can breathe.