Offset

I'm trundling my way through my 1500 word essay this morning, fix a reference here, look up a synonym for 'difference' there, when I get leg jitters enough to need to stand up, and wander about the house.

Our house bears a strong resemblance to a big red brick refrigerator this time of year. The sun looks inviting, teasing it's way through the back screen door, so I take a moment to wander out into the jungle of our backyard.

I'm someone who looks in the mirror and frequently gets nothing less than shocked, shocked by the thought that it's only by the grace of this thing called an eye that I get to know that this thing staring at the mirror is me. Without that eye, without that functioning, that being-a-component within and as partner to many-other-components, there ain't nothing there to look at.

So I guess it's no surprise when I toddle out into the warm, soft, green backyard from the confines of the cold house and hard edges of my essay that I'm dunked into a mindsweeping sensation of graced-ness. What, all this?

In that moment, my breath itself is given up for God. It's an overwhelm that runs all the way from the depth of the deep blue Sydney autmn sky all the way through my body to the tiny green caterpillar that was munching its way across the weeds between the paving at my slippered feet. I can't, but I am, able to take it all in. It's all in the breath, without this, I am not here to drown, or drink it all in, down.

Living in the offset.