Dusk in the city where I live

Only one thing
made him happy
and now that
it was gone
everything
made him happy.
—Leonard Cohen, "Leonard Koan"

A wise friend sent me this “Daily Dharma” offering today. I have not yet reached the level of enlightenment it describes, but I laugh at myself for being the fool-for-love I am. I took this picture by reaching out the window with my left hand as I was driving home.

Before I loved as I am loving, I would drive home peacefully into the sunset, arrive in my quiet little home, and read a book or watch a movie, something easy and simple and full of gifts. Now, at dusk, when all the ways I have found to distract myself have come to an end and I drive home to the silence, a longing arises that has no boundaries: it is a longing as infinite, as pulsating, as vivid as that sunset beyond the city. It stops me from concentrating. No book will hold me, no movie absorbs me. I am restless. I pace. Nothing satisfies. The center will not hold. The vital spark is missing.

Yet the longing is held in a larger infinity (how is that possible? it is possible) of gratitude--that I am alive in this way, that joy has come to visit me, that for some time, we don’t know how long, for some time, there is this particular love in my life.

Bella will come back on the weekend. That will lift me up. And then, if the flights are on time, if the universe cooperates, if the winds blow in just the right ways and if all things work according to plan, on Tuesday this endless separation will come to an end. May it be so. One more week. It yawns before me.