Wondering About the Possibilities

April fourth. Easter Sunday, 2021. The heating pipes bang repeatedly as the steam rushes to the noisy radiator in the back of the house. About one minute of hammering, then it’s just the pleasant rumble of a gas boiler below and the hissing of steam up here. I’m layered up though it’s already almost sixty where I am in the front living room. A blanket over my legs, a down vest and my trusty winter watch cap and I’m quite cozy.

My wife and I are settling into our new home here while we shuttle back and forth the quarter-mile from our old home, the Temple. The preponderance of nights are now spent here which means that the geography of my morning writing has altered as well.

When we first looked at this small arts-and-crafts bungalow nearly six years ago, we were both struck by how unique and well laid out it was. A small house with wonderful windows and a feeling of space. A large fieldstone fireplace greets you as you come in off the front porch with its picturesque angular columns. This front room is the heart of the house—a spacious room that runs the width of the building. Large square windows take up most of the wall space on either side of the central front door, two windows look out to the west and French doors between bookcases open the eastern wall to a modest porch, lawn and garden.

It all smelled like smoke when we came with the real estate agent. As an enthusiastic camper, that was fine with me, but was almost a deal-breaker for my wife. But what I remember most from that first visit is sitting on a couch in this very spot where I am now writing (to the right as you face the fireplace) and having a clear waking dream of sitting here with my laptop writing and looking out the very window I’m looking out right now. In that dream, I was writing poetry every afternoon with the sun pouring gently through the western windows.

The sun is not quite up yet, and this is not really a poem, but it’s all close enough to entice me wonder again about the causality of things and who is doing what to whom. I mean, is this moment of writing a manifestation of my dream or am I a realization of the dream of the house itself? Are the energies of this building and of this spot of the earth expressing themselves through me? (I can certainly vouch for the fact that though ideas come into my awareness and I tap them into the laptop, I have no clue where these ideas come from nor why one arises and not another—this earth spot and this building are as likely a source as any.)

Does the gardener coax the reluctant seeds to life or do the seeds somehow entice the gardeners to be their hands and feet? Enlisting willing humans is a wonderfully ingenious strategy to spread one’s seeds to wide and gentle geographies that may likely be conducive to the flourishing of the next generation. I imagine the committee that came up with this strategy: ‘No more relying on the birds and the bees to spread our seed, we’ll persuade these two-legged singing creatures to carefully collect us, put us in packets with our seductive blossoms on the front to attract other gardeners, sending us around the country and even sometimes starting us indoors to give us a head start on the season.’ I imagine the delight of the planning committee as they came upon this idea and then realized the best part of the scheme was that the two-legged creatures would most likely think that they themselves had decided to do this. A brilliant reproduction strategy. Inert seeds able to take full advantage of humans—their hands and feet and their latest technology—to enhance the chances of survival of the next generation.

So is buying and eventually moving into this house and sitting here on the couch looking out the window as the radiator rattles and writing—is this me manifesting my dream? Or is my presence tapping out these words while occasionally glancing out the eastern French doors to a brave pot of petunias sitting on the railing of the porch, is my presence part of the dream of the house? Perhaps the fieldstone fireplace is an antenna receiving the angelic voices of the universe and making them available for me to express as I catch fragments of their celestial words and tunes.

Of course, I don’t really believe any of this. But on this day where some significant percentage of the world is celebrating that someone who was three days dead, twenty-one hundred years ago, rose up and walked again…I do wonder about the possibilities.

(Excerpted from forthcoming book Wandering Close to Home: A Year of Zen Reflections, Consolations, and Reveries. September 1, 2024.)