They didn't realize that her clumsiness was not the ordinary kind, not poor coordination. It was just because she wasn't sure where the edges of her body ended and the rest of the world began.
And then, just when I know I can live content without Shug, just when Mr. ___ done ast me to marry him again, this time in the spirit as well as in the flesh, and just after I say, Naw, I still don't like frogs, but let's us be friends, Shug write me she's coming home. Now. Is this life or not? *I be so calm.* If she come, I be happy. If she don't I be content. And then I figure this the lesson I was suppose to learn.
So--I went on, on my own--deeper and deeper into the silent Tunnel of the Ride--not so sure of where I was and yet not anxious either, not concerned about my companions nor even about the nearness of--certain friends. The trees were beech, and the buds, just breaking, fiercely brilliant, and the new, the renewed light on them--intermittent diamond--but the depths were dark, a silent Nave. And no birds sang, or I heard none, no woodpecker tapped, no thrush whistled or hopped. And I listened to the increasing Quiet--and my horse went softly on the beech-mast--which was wet after rain--not crackling, a little sodden, not wet enough to plash. And I had the sensation, common enough, at least to me, that I was moving out of time, that the way, narrow and dark-dappled, stretched away indifferently before and behind, and that I was who I had been and what I would become--all at once, all wound in one--and I moved onward indifferently, since it was all one, whether I came or went, or remained still. Now to me such moments are poetry. [Randolph Henry Ash]
To study the self is to forget the self. Maybe if you sat enough zazen, your sense of being a solid, singular self would dissolve and you could forget about it. What a relief. You could just hang out happily as part of an open-ended quantum array.
He has never told anyone this story. He doesn't mind talking to Richard, to Rafe about his past--within reason--but he doesn't mean to give away pieces of himself.
Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father's face, for behind your father's face as it is today are all those other faces which were his.
You must step forward, Arutha. You will never be the man for whom you were named, and you will never be your father, but nature didn't intend for you to be either of those men, no matter how worthy they were. You must become the best man you are capable of.