Stillness

Sitting here in my cube there is a large desktop computer and a laptop both whirring away. I sit a couple of feet away from two 22 inch Trinitron monitors, XM Online is coming from the speakers. Directly behind me there is a rack of servers that hum endlessly producing a hot breeze. The fan under my desk drones on because the big air handling unit with the squeaky bearing located over my head is not sufficient to keep up with the heat generated by the equipment. There is the endless chatter of my neighbors only broken by the shrill ringing office phone. The obnoxious cell phones carried by the people endlessly burp forth a string of unharmonious tones adding to the cacophonous chaos that is daily office life.

At home the window fan endlessly hums replacing the stale indoor air with the fume laced “freshness” of outdoors. Children run and scream in the alley. The refrigerator clanks and squeals struggling to chill the beer and moldy baloney. A rolling wave of dog barks move toward the house as a police car blasts by sirens blaring. My boys jump to the window and join the fierce festival, teeth bared. Olbermann is speaking. Traffic drones, noxiously adding to the hot air. A jet flies overhead.

There is always motion, there is always noise…the body grows accustomed and weary.

The unnerving stillness surrounds me when I arrive at Bear Ridge. The sage and pines provide the only motion as they flow, moving with the wind. The only sound, the wind blowing through the treetops, approaches and moves on...doppler like. Wind chimes awaken with its arrival. As the sun leaves coyotes start their songs, rabbits dart across road, I hear a mouse scurry over the roof.

Occasionally late at night you hear the strange chopping sound of a CV-22 Osprey VTOL ferrying aliens between Dulce and the caverns under Mt Blanca. So low and slow you can see the human pilots. Sometimes the hypnotic drone of a C130 skimming the treetops awakens you. The dogs run to the window scanning for the cause of the foreign sounds, bark when they see the lights, dutifully attempting to scare off the unwanted visitors. I am woke by the humming bird searching outside my window...coffee time.

It usually takes a day to fully detox from the city, then I sink into the stillness like a comfortable chair, I can finally hear myself, I am energized.

"Through return to simple living Comes control of desires. In control of desires Stillness is attained. In stillness the world is restored." Lao Tzu