Woke yesterday morning in an extraordinary state of grace. A feeling…how do I describe this…as if I were in the presence of a rose, in the delicate, exquisite space between the sniff and the smell. As if cradled between hands.

A feeling, this was, in the aftermath of a sensual and loving dream. I felt the softness of the pillows; felt every place they touched me. Felt my own warmth returned to me, held in trust for me by my bedcovers. Felt a heightened sense of touch in my left hand, equal, for once, to my dominant right. Felt the cat breathing against me. Felt the quiet.

Not a one-ness with things…but a connectedness to them. The tactile gone spiritual.

This was one of those mornings that makes the writer reluctant to move, to speak loudly or place a foot wrong, afraid to send any sort of ripple through the fragile inner air…afraid to make notes, thinking that even the benign act of pen-to-paper would shred an atmosphere as fragile as a smoke ring.

I wanted to hold the moment, to save it. To write it. To give myself a soft, forgiving place that I could call up whenever I needed its comfort. To share the feeling through the pages of the book-in-progress. The sensation didn’t stay. And not even these meager words can describe what held me so kindly for so brief a time.

Gifts from the ether, these alien, beautiful moments? The brief surfacing of something already inside us? The aftermath of gracious dreams? A visitation of spirits? The breath of self-acceptance and forgiveness? I wish I knew. I do know that I felt the treasure fully for as long as it was mine, this gift of human-ness, this thing that was absolutely nothing else but what it was. I may never feel such a moment again. I’m not sure that I need to.