Tag: meditation

The Highest Seat

~ Richard Schulte ~ 2 Comments

I had a friend named Nick. We used to have long conversations in the city park while sitting on a bench: I on one end, he on the other.

Nick would sit there with his eyes closed, listening through headphones to what he called the music of the spheres. I never heard his music, so I couldn’t tell you what he meant.

While he was listening to his music, I’d sit on the other end of the bench people watching. Watching random joggers and walkers. He and I were quite different.

When Nick opened his eyes and they met mine we talked.

Nick loved to talk about astronomy. For many years he’d worked as projectionist at the city park’s planetarium, operating a unique device called a star projector. From the projector’s starball shined points of light. Thin rays of light formed constellations on the planetarium’s black dome-shaped screen. The starball slowly revolved like the Earth.

Space was his obsession. Nick knew the orbit of every planet and every moon. He could name hundreds of stars. He knew everything there was to know about comets, and Saturn’s rings, and Jupiter’s spot–I forget what it’s called–and far galaxies at the very edge of the Universe. He knew the date and time of every eclipse. All he ever talked about was space.

He’d been retired from that job as projectionist for years and now he sat in the park and listened with eyes closed to his music of the spheres. A few times I caught him on that bench after dark. He was staring up at the twinkling stars.

He used to tell me that the best seat in a planetarium is the highest one–right up near the domed ceiling. It’s the seat nearest the stars. But people seldom climb those steep stairs. People like the easy seats.

He finally retired from that projectionist job when the planetarium began to show nothing but documentary films on its giant, curved screen. You know, those movies that take you soaring above skyscrapers or for a ride on a roller coaster. The world around and under you seems so solid that you get motion sickness. He hated those films. I didn’t understand why.

He once told me he’d been born too early. He wanted to go flying through space. Among the stars.

After he passed away, I still would sit on that same park bench.

Whenever I walked past the old planetarium-turned-theater I wondered what the stars might have been like in there.

One day I saw the theater was showing a documentary film about outer space. I decided to buy a ticket. To see what the experience might be like.

I made my way into the dark theater. I found some ascending steps. It was so dark that I had to feel my way with groping hands. Nick was right. The higher seats were mostly empty.

Up, up those steep steps I climbed through the darkness until I reached the last seat. The highest one. The one nearest the screen. Still standing, I tilted my head back to examine the black, arching screen. It seemed so vast, like space. It appeared almost close enough to touch.

Suddenly the movie started. Stars appeared.

When I looked down, ready to sit in that highest seat, I discovered a faintly glimmering thing. A brass plaque.

Bending down to look closely, I could barely read: In remembrance of Nicolas, projectionist. His light made every star.

Twinkle

~ Richard Schulte ~ 2 Comments

Shannon carried a bag of garbage to the row of cans by the sidewalk. She shoved the garbage into an overflowing can, waved a fly away and turned about. She paused to look at the apartment building where she lived. The poor place was all she could afford. The front yard was nothing but bare dirt and weeds.

She looked down at the dirt. A single dandelion grew by her feet.

A child’s rhyme entered Shannon’s mind.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.

Shannon, her eyes fixed on the small yellow bloom, suddenly realized that the star-like dandelion was made of sunshine. It had grown from the sun’s light and warmth.

And somehow, grown from sunshine, too, was the busy worker bee searching the small flower for pollen.

And birthed from the sun’s heart was the nearby chestnut tree whose roots had badly cracked the sidewalk. And the flighty little birds that perched for a moment in its branches.

Shannon stared across the dirt toward her apartment building.

She blinked at late afternoon sunlight reflecting from the building’s half open windows. They appeared like half open eyes. Suddenly she remembered a thing she had learned once upon a time. Stars had made everything in the world. Even her home.

The furnaces of an ancient star had forged every element of the building: the half open windows, the peeling paint, the creaky wooden steps leading to the porch, the potted geraniums and tinkling wind chime. A star had created the ordinary buildings to her right and to her left, and the building across the street.

A star had created the complete world around her. From a child’s small red rubber ball that had been dropped and lost near the single dandelion, to sprouting green weeds around it, to the talking, smiling people who were walking their Yorkshire Terrier down the cracked sidewalk.

A star had created all that was and might be.

She regarded the dandelion.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.

The Pier

~ Richard Schulte ~ 4 Comments

A short wooden pier extends from a secluded beach on the northern coast. The pier doesn’t appear to serve any purpose. It’s too high for a boat, and it doesn’t even reach the surf. Fishermen seldom use it.

Sometimes during my long morning commute I’ll pull off the coast highway, turn down a dirt road and into the little parking lot by the pier, just to open my window. The sound of the ocean is very soothing.

When I have several minutes to spare, I’ll walk out over the water.

I’ll lean on the rail at the end of the pier, nobody around.

All along that part of the coast unbroken forest sweeps down from a line of hills to the ocean, and at the end of the little pier a fresh green scent merges with the salt smell. Seabirds fly overhead. The faint chatter of water on small round stones rises from the beach below. Standing there, I like to gaze down at the water as it steadily rolls in and out, then raise my eyes to the horizon, the ocean breeze on my face.

One morning as I stood at the end of the pier I became aware that a person was walking toward me.

A man my own age, dressed in a business suit like myself, was advancing down the pier very slowly. He moved with the aid of two crutches. It appeared to me that he had cerebral palsy.

Embarrassed, I looked away.

The man faltered and struggled along the pier and finally came to a halt several feet from me. He leaned his crutches against the wooden rail and stood quietly gazing out over the ocean.

I finally turned to him meaning to say hello.

But the man’s motionless eyes were so far away. They were riveted to the ocean’s horizon beyond the line of breaking surf. His face bore a complicated expression that I couldn’t quite untangle. I saw regret. I believe I saw resignation.

I looked again his crutches and kept my mouth shut.

The man stood for a while with fixed, unreadable eyes, then he reached a hand into his pocket and pulled out something small. A coin.

He turned the coin over and over in his fingers without looking down at it. The coin flashed in his hand like an ember from a hidden fire. Suddenly with an easy motion he tossed the coin from the pier. It dropped shining into the ocean and was gone.

The dropping of the coin seemed like a surrender. I yearned to say something sympathetic. I finally spoke. “It’s like a gigantic wishing well.”

He turned and regarded at me. “You’re wrong,” he said. “It’s a payment of my debt.”

With a sudden smile, he gathered up his crutches, placed one under each arm, and with a lurching effort began to walk away. He lifted his legs one after the other as he struggled back down the short wooden pier.

I watched him become smaller.

His debt?

I stood perplexed.

What could a man in pain possibly owe the ocean?

I turned to gaze again at the breaking surf from the short pier’s end. Beyond the line of surf the ocean pulsed to the horizon like an ethereal thing. So unfathomable. And I so small.

My thoughts turned to the ocean’s salty smell and how it permeated my life. How I longed to smell it, along with the green. How it made me feel alive.

I thought of the vast world that encircled me. Of the living forest rising up hills from the stony beach, of moving clouds and wheeling seabirds, and silver water rolling back and forth across rippled sand.

I thought of my daily drive up and down the beautiful coast highway, when I considered my life’s lofty goals, and listened to my favorite music.

Then I thought of my home halfway up a green mountain, with its porch swing and warm fireplace, its modest yard and few flowers.

I thought of my family. That very morning they had given me a thousand reasons to smile.

I thought of my friends who provided encouragement and bursts of laughter and a feeling that somehow, in this crazy mixed-up world, I belong.

I thought of sunshine and rain, good times and bad, the mixture of pleasure and pain that constituted my own life.

As I gazed out at the surf crashing beyond the pier’s end, I realized that all things obtain their life from a churning ocean–a generous ocean whose depths lie beyond any man’s reach.

I took a coin from my own pocket. Thoughtfully I turned it over in my hand.

I tossed it into the water.

All Things Will Speak

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

When tongues are silent the stones will speak. As will the trees and the rivers and the rainbows and the stars.

When tongues cease, all things will speak gladly, freely.

The stones will speak of crumbling and the crucible.

The trees will speak of their unquenchable thirst and deep roots and seasons.

The rivers will speak of the ocean, and the rainbows will speak of the sun.

The stars will speak their infinite wisdom in a twinkling whisper.

Eyes Unmoving

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

I’m old.

I find myself in an ordinary city park sitting quietly.

I see the sun fragmented by branches of trees; shadows flat on grass.

I see birds rising together like a curtain opening. The falling of leaves. The sun’s light touching faces that pass right and left.

I see a young man stepping smartly down the path in front of me. His confident eyes are forward. The day has begun. There is much to win. The young man steps around a boy playing with a ball and turns to hurry over the grass in a short cut. He does not see his own shadow among the fallen leaves.

I see a man who has come to middle age. Wearing a striped suit, he plods forward down the straight path. This man has created success and created failure, and he suffers a slight limp due to trouble with one knee. His forward eyes are fixed like stones. He still has much to do, but is uncertain why.

I see an older man creeping painfully, inch by inch down the path. This man’s back is bent. It seems he has been crushed by the burden of many weights. I cannot see his eyes. His head is gray. He moves through the ordinary park with eyes down.

I see beautiful roses in a far corner.

I sit on a bench with my eyes unmoving and feel the soft caress of the sun.

I’m old.

Handling a Harpoon

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

The student doodled, wondered why a whale would be white, made a note in the book’s margin, underlined a sentence.

His pen descended again but couldn’t harpoon words. The elusive whale submerged into unseen pages.

The young man slammed the book shut and jammed it into his heavy backpack. He slung the bundled freight over one shoulder and rose from the desk.

The white whale moved, too.

It swam inside inky darkness, from one book to another.

It moved through Physics, Biology, Sociology, Philosophy, Religion, Statistics, History. It migrated from ocean to ocean.

The student quickly navigated to his next classroom. Thinking of nothing. Thinking of everything. Suddenly he felt the whale slip into his bent back, shiver up his spine, then a whirl of awful whiteness in his head.

Anxiously he sought a harpoon.

But the whale swam away.

A Brief Note

~ Richard Schulte ~ 1 Comment

Even if nothing really matters–
and nothing endures–
and nothing counts.

Even when nobody cares–
and nobody knows–
and none remember.

Even when a thousand mouths snicker,
disbelieve, mock,
pummel with scorn.

Even at life’s end, twisted with regret,
thinking I might have–
could have–should have–

Even though a world becomes dust,
I did a few things
I felt were good.

A Long, Deep Drink

~ Richard Schulte ~ 1 Comment

A painter stepped carefully across tumbled rocks to the very end of the jetty. She placed her easel on a flat table of rock.

She opened the menu:

Sea-splashed rocks stretching back to the shore. Glistening cubes of jello.

Blue ripples of water on the sheltered side of the jetty. Spatula-dabbed blueberry frosting.

The mast-filled marina. Toothpicks in marshmallows on a bright silver tray.

The lighthouse at the end of Moondown Point. A peppermint stick.

The clouds above a shoulder of mountain. Whipped cream.

The contours of Earth. Spooned chocolate pudding.

Nearby cottages. Gumdrops.

The beach. Gently rolled, sugary white fudge, with a mouthwatering variety of tasty sprinkles.

Umbrellas along the sand. Tempting lollipops.

Her eyes turned.

A rimless bowl of water. Only water . . . and formless light.

A long, deep, quenching drink of simple water.

She drank.

The Perfect Snowflake

~ Richard Schulte ~ 1 Comment

Sanji was aware that he was dreaming.

He was walking through a silent white forest. Pine trees blanketed with snow rose on every side.

When Sanji was a young child, the lucid dreams had been frequent. That was a lifetime ago, when he spent his waking hours pretending to streak past a billion billion stars as he traveled in a spaceship to the far end of the universe.

As a middle-aged man he slept without dreams.

Until this night.

Sanji moved through the white forest deliberately and searched the snow with devouring eyes. He turned his feet in every direction, crushing fresh powder with every step, and at last halted on the bank of a frozen river. He could hear running water bubbling beneath the emerald ice.

Sanji had searched the unknown his entire adult life. Somehow, after many dreamless nights, he had become a leading theoretical physicist. He lived in a small world of unending numbers, odd symbols. Penning equations, scratching them out. Now he gazed down at the frozen river and knew for certain that he was asleep and dreaming, and that what he saw before him was absolutely real.

Looking up, he saw white particles floating from the trees. One drifted down, landed on his fingertip.

He held the snowflake next to one eye.

He stared at its shape.

The tiny snowflake was an infinity of jigsaw pieces fitted together into one seamless whole. Pieces of infinitesimal essence.

He caught his breath in the airless cold.

He had found something that he had never seen before. A perfect snowflake. The most simple of all possible truths.

The crystal snowflake was an unbidden, elegant revelation, like inspired strokes of chalk on a newly-cleaned chalkboard: a brilliant equation of white: a mathematical certainty that explained all things.

All Sanji’s life he’d grappled to unravel the truth. He had fought to weld together that desperate mathematical Theory of Everything.

Now it was on his finger.

In the perfect snowflake he saw the precise truth that was written at the beginning of all things. He saw the origin, the movement, the destiny of the universe. The final equation shimmered before him. He saw each finite number distinctly. It was simple. He’d found it.

Sanji heard a patter of rain.

He listened to the rain and was aware that it was dark. And that he was warm in bed.

Outside his bedroom window streaked dark ghostly rain.

Suddenly he remembered his dream.

Despair.

He had to write it down. That equation.

He knew there was a notepad on the desk by the window–and on top of the notepad a ballpoint pen. He jumped up.

The ghostly rain outside his room drew his eyes to the window. Softly glowing raindrops were coursing separately down the pane, like pulsing atoms or universes, flowing, colliding, combining, accelerating, vanishing. The raindrops followed defined courses, courses easily formulated, with destinies known. And yet each was a mystery. Each drop was birthed out of darkness–each was a vision beyond his reach.

Sanji blinked. He’d forgotten his dream.