The leaves trickle trail, trickle trail to the ground, windmill wandering seeking their final rest.  Wet.  Everything is wet from the nights unexpected downpours.  As I drive by the creek with my daughter the creek shows it’s swollen cheeks.  The street is paved with yellow and orange, with two parallel bare tracks where people drive their cars instead of walking.  Daughter and I are talking…about life, about everything, as usual.  The coffee shop is warm.  People smile at our bare feet.  Women grown old and young whisper and glance at my daughter because she holds her constant companion…a twirling baton-never leaves home without it.  I hold a cup of coffee just because.  The henna is in the car waiting for us.  She is going to be dropped off at a friend’s house-the henna and my daughter.  The coffee reminds me that this day is chilly and that I lived through the hot summer.  It reminds me that somehow life still keeps going, that this whole crazy thing keeps unfolding.  I close my eyes not to avoid the cacophony all around, but to sink into the lusciousness.  People are shoulder to shoulder and jackets make that “swish” as they lift and lower their cups, or as they gesticulate wildly as they talk about the only thing people talk about.  Love.  There is no harmony in this room.  Daughter and I both feel the harmony in it.  We sit in silence and listen to strangers talk about love, which makes them no strangers at all.  All we hear is chatter.  But I feel the way love is all they talk about, and it steams up the windows.

“Why did (so and so) do this to (them)?”

“How could (that person) do that to (another person)?

“When will (this and that) happen?”

“Do you think we should….?”

“I can’t believe…!!!!”

When you feel behind it all and you watch how sincerely the talking engages them, all you can see is love trying to find a way to make sense out of apparent disharmony.  This is what we do here.  The conversations they are having out loud, that is what they are doing all day long, in their minds.  We need each other.  Oh yes, we certainly do. Conversation is when the mind exhales.

People may think we are the most advanced species.  I disagree.  When sitting in a loud buzzing coffee shop I hear no difference than the language of birds.  We chitter chatter so fast.  Birds in a tree.  What are we actually saying to one another?  Like the language of birds that we cannot understand, we sound no different to a person who cannot speak our tongue.  All the sounds are repetitive, it all blends into human song.  Birds with cups of coffee and sips to break up the repetition.

What I smile about the most though, is that around the world this chatter can be heard.  Wherever you go where there is more than one gathered, this very same discussion is playing out.  What people want and need to talk about is how to find resolution.  We all want it.  We all seek it.  Even the silent beings are “being” with how peace is or is not manifest.  We speak the language of birds.

Transparently though, we do not really listen to what is behind speech.  We are disconnected from what birds are saying to one another.  We presume it is just instinct.  We do not consider them intelligent enough to have a conversation.  We…who have the same conversations for decades.  We who support madness every single day through the destructive ways we live.  We who, like birds, can fly.  When we live LOVE, more than we talk about how to live LOVE …then we will fly.

And that is a solitary thing.

The way of living that pulls you away and down into depth, deeper than you ever want to go, is not a way anyone chooses. If you have chosen, it can look the same as it is for someone that had no choice, but it won’t be the same.  The chooser stays present.  They remain themselves through the experience of choosing to leave things behind.  The person that does not seek solitude but has it handed to them like lead weights dragging them off the boat….that is a drowning into depth.  It is a spiraling death where you get to keep your body.   And that is when the chatter that you twittered about your whole life finally has deep meaning behind it.  And it is when you have many less things to say.  At the bottom of painful separation is the reality of deep connection.  Connection is too full to explain;  you chatter less.

You become the silent bird.  And you love the chatter all around you more than ever.  It wraps around you the way your hands wrap around the cup of coffee.  Warmth spreads as you feel all those friends reaching for the bottom of separation, trying to understand harmony, knowing that something isn’t right somehow-and working to grasp at what it may be.