This Moment - May 23 7:01 A.M.

The world waited patiently for me to awake this morning and make it real again. I turn my head and paint the trees vivid green. Decide it is too quiet for a Sunday morning and a cacophony of birdsong appeases my dissatisfaction. And yet, without my command, Cindy and her girlfriends have been pouting in short shorts for at least half an hour. We make our own reality, don't we? Isn't this the imperative of the age, to design our days? make up our lives moment by moment? Isn't it possible that we, meaning each individual mass of cells and awareness, are not the center of his or her post modern reality? Is it not possible that we are ants in a colony, drones in a hive with a finite number of days looming before us? And to our amusement, the carnival construct of a heaven or hell afterlife is crumbling like old bones. And still this beautiful world foists itself upon us, upon me. And there is the same pine tree outside my window, spreading its branches like fingers. There, the trees and branches shaking the morning rain from their leaves. And here, my dog is sniffing the newly washed sheets and whining to be let out for an adventure. Yes, it goes on, it all goes on. With or without us.