The Asking: The Carrying

21

No quiet house is coming, and the practice was never waiting for one. What is actually here today — the messages, the tired body, the errand still not run — is the entire material there is to work with. Take the next ordinary task, whatever it is, and give it the whole attention that gets saved, usually, for some better hour that has not arrived yet. What happens to the task itself once it gets that attention? And has the better hour ever actually shown up before?

22

A mirror can show a face that feels like a stranger wearing a familiar coat, and a hand can close around the one it expected to find there instead. Look at yourself for a moment today, in glass, or next to a photograph from some years back. Is an older face being held at arm's length in favor of one that used to be there? And what does the face in front of you actually look like, once the comparison is set down?

23

Something good can turn up today in a small size, a warm drink, a good light, a joke landing in the next room, and a closed hand has two ways to spoil it: gripping so hard that wanting its return becomes a hunger of its own, or bracing early for its end. Notice the next small good thing, however brief, and let the hand stay open around it instead, the way an open hand carries a cup without crushing it. Does the good thing get smaller for being watched that closely? Or does something else happen to it instead?

24

Every life ends, and nothing here can say what, if anything, comes after that. What is available to look at instead is the grip beforehand, the fist that closes around a fact that has not arrived yet. Try a smaller ending today, in place of the large one, a visit finishing, a light going out on a place not being seen again. Held with an open hand instead of a closed one, what changes in that smaller ending? And what is the closed hand actually costing, in the time that is still here to have?

25

The last question is about this book. It has asked you twenty-four others, and not one of them was owed an answer, least of all to these pages. A question can be clutched as tightly as an answer, kept for its weight instead of its work. Which of these did something when you carried it into a day? And which are you still holding for no better reason than that they were written down?

These questions are not answered here. Carry one into an ordinary day and see what it finds.