I Am -- With No Punctuation

Everything that occurs coincides with a multitude of other incidences.

Can we therefore say that everything that happens is a coincidence?

One number would seem to be no more significant than any other. Yet our minds insist that some numbers are easier to remember, more significant than others.

It is the same with the things that happen to and around us.

When the electricity goes off, only on my street, the morning of the day when Sunflower Woman and I are to fly to the States, even though it has no significance I find it hard to go back to sleep.

If this was Baghdad and the middle of the night, along with the phones, even cell-phones, it is significant. It means the paramilitary death squads are coming to your neighborhood.

But I want leave you with something entirely different for what I hope will be your enjoyment.

On Thursday, coming home from work, officially on vacation, waiting for the train, a thought struck down in me. As soon as I sat in the train, I began to unravel this thought which had been seeded in an incident some thirty years back in time.

I am a Buddhist a Christian a Muslim a Jew
I am a pagan a heathen agnostic and atheist too

I am Buddha living on five grains of rice
I am Jesus on hanging on the Living Cross
I am Mohammed enlightened in the Hira Cave
I am Moses on the Mountain coming down
I sacrifice to Pantheons
I recognize not a single one

I am the drunk stumbling out of the bar
I am that which goes slowly but quickly and far
I am the emptiness between the stars
I am that which is imbued in every grain of sand
I am a woman a babe a child a man
I am a tightened fist and an open hand

I am a saint a sinner loser winner
I am a builder a breaker and a carpet maker
I am all of these and none and much more
I am your joys and sorrows your pleasure and pain
I am the sun the moon the snow the driving rain
I am bigger than life and deeper than death

I am the complicated symphony
I am the simplest of melodies
I am the ashes of eternity
I am the subtlest of epiphanies
I am the nail’s point of your agony

(and finally)

I am simply your common humanity

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Posting will resume again when we get to Illinois, but there may go a couple of days.