Coyote Running

The sun was up but behind a thick layer of clouds.  It was cool for a California morning and the windows were open in the kitchen. I felt a cold breeze on my arms as I looked up from the sink and was surprised to see a coyote running in the middle of the street.  It turned around the corner of the house and I dashed outside (in my slippers and sweatpants) to see if I could catch a glimpse of where it was going.  But by the time I peeked around the bend, it had vanished.  “Everything eats”, a voice whispered in my head.  “Yes, but not MY cat!!  Not today if I have any say in the matter.”  I argued back to myself in a non-psychotic two way conversation that doesn’t make me crazy, or perhaps it does.  After all I was standing in the middle of the street with purple slippers and sweat pants that were riding up my calves in some post-middle aged suburban dancing with wolves outtake.

But I don’t get to choose what the coyote eats or where it ballroom dances.  Not in the “real” world of flesh and broken bones.  All I can do in each moment is remember that despite how engaging the story is in my own mind, it can not compare to the wonder and awe of the next breath as it tickles the inside of my nose and brings me back to the present moment.  Its easy for me to get lost in the story, perhaps because I fancy myself as the old shaman story teller of the clan who I presume owned purple slippers.  But the egoic mind never ceases to put the grim in each fairytale that it broadcasts in the dark places of your brain.  Echoes of not good, smart, pretty, thin, rich, popular, or talented enough cycle through the neural networks like a broken record.  Different circumstances … same message. Woe is me …. until …. Whoa!  I SEE the lies and remember that which I AM.

The runaway cur dog in the middle of the street … the runaway mind searching for the middle way.  There’s a story in there for certain.  But enough said to point to the moon in silence save perhaps one parting howl.