May I be a medicine for the sick and weary, Nursing their afflictions until they are cured.

We know, darlings, that only one state of consciousness can occur at a time and that states of consciousness with mutually opposed ethical qualities cannot coexist. We seem faster to forget that the factors of consciousness -- feeling, perception, volition and all the rest -- must partake of the same ethical quality as the consciousness itself. Thereby experience is colored with the ethical quality of the consciousness it is part of and one moment of wholesome thought, speech or action produces a moment of purification.

And we are silly, indeed, if we forget -- as we often do -- that repetition confers strength.

Or, maybe it is not that we forget, but that we willfully deny. Thinking always that one day more, one experience more, one thought more, one moment more ... will not make a difference.

Because in the *next* moment we will ... in the *next* thought, the next experience, the next day.

Aversion binds.

****

Now, at 2300, I am finally "done" with this 18 hour day. I realized at 1900 that I had until tomorrow evening to complete my case, so I postponed three pages of drawings until then. I went and spent extra time breathing in the warmth of cat fur. And then I came home (because how adverse have I been to calling this home and why didn't you, lovie, remind me of what I told you when I first spoke to you years ago: the secret they never tell you is to take your home with you.). And I have done an hour and a half of yoga and it has been the first time in months that I have allowed myself the time to feel every muscle I am, and every joint.

And I breathed.

Not as necessity, as my breathing has seemed of late, but of choice. And of affirmation.

Someone spoke awhile ago about no matter how much noise there is, silence is always there. The noise doesn't break the silence. Noise isn't separate from silence. And I was not in a good place to hear that then because it was too *loud* for me to hear that then and do you remember what I said about aversion binding?

Tonight, in pigeon pose, I realized again that I was the storm. And everything around me was a symphony, because I was that, too. And I almost lost my breathing, being struck nearly breathless by the realization of how unified it was. And I buried into the pose, and into the floor, and let go of that story that it was ever discordant and inharmonious jangle. And it's not that tonight the slamming doors and competing musics and shouted calls and squealing tires somehow found their rhythm. It was that I was again awake to the reality of there never having been any rhythm that was losable.

That said, and speaking of rhythm, I'm off to press some tea and then listen to my play list while lying on tummy, full of joy.