What is really going on?

– by Madhuri.

When people tell me authoritatively that this or that thing is happening in the world – politically, sociologically – which they do a lot – I feel myself drawing back inside.

First, I have the sense that this or that thing is perhaps NOT happening just as described; and second, I feel bored and annoyed – though I do not say so.

So today on my walk high up on the side of the moors, under a muffled grey sky, walking, walking, a long way, then back down into the shade of the valley – I looked at this, and wondered, “Okay, if I don’t feel that that is happening – what those people say – then what DO I feel is happening?”

And I felt everything becoming as round as our Earth; and very much dilated, like a vast iris. And calmly quiet.

And so, it is like this: EVERYTHING is happening – right now – . All of it is going on – the immense richness and complexity of all that is. A tiny, tiny portion of it, I can see – nearly all of it I cannot see. It is just… going on. Right now. There is no huge cursor in the Universe selecting portions of it and saying, “This is more important! This is a pattern! Look at this!” Human minds and humans’ beady hunter’s eyes do this, in a manic, fitful way, picking up and discarding – interpreting and wilfully imagining – or helplessly imagining. Looking at portions, often far-away ones, and pronouncing commandingly on them.

But these selects are arbitrary and waffling, formed of subjectivities so convoluted that each being has a different cursor, and even those cursors change.

These are just ephemera.

Instead, everything is happening – somewhere – right now – with no greater weight on any of it.

The buddleia nodding outside my window (for I’m back from my walk) – purple as a grape popsicle – the quiet hill lifting over there – lichens growing in geologic time on roof-tiles across the way – my denim apron, tied round my middle – the mild tinnitus in one ear, usually ignored – the sound of a young person’s go-kart – the neighbours murmuring upstairs. That is going on. And around the globe, way on the other side, other things are cooking, exploding, murmuring. And the stars, that we cannot see right now because the sun’s light cancels theirs – are going on; in all their mystery and immensity. And the things inside our bodies that we cannot see – and the politicians’ thoughts, and the toilet flushing in some oft-scrubbed loo in a capitol building, and a plane flying towards Manchester.

There isn’t any division. It’s all happening right now – very round.