At this moment

At this moment, I am thinking about the importance and the difficulty of being in the present. A good way to check yourself out of the past or the future or wherever you typically dwell is to finish the sentence "At this moment..." Repeat this as many times as it takes to be exactly where you are, because only when we are still are we still moving into another intensity (ref. Eliot).

At this moment, I am sitting at a small table in the wood lodge style restaurant bar The Korner Market, drinking stale coffee with a combo of Amaretto, French Vanilla, and Irish Cream Coffee-mates. This goes against all my coffee philosophies, but since I am in Priest Lake, Idaho, the paradise of my childhood summers that has likely never seen the polished steel of an espresso machine and hopefully never will, I am content.

At this moment, the book "Life of Pi" is sitting in my purse under my chair with an imaginary bookmark in the middle. I am eager to return to it.

At this moment, I am surrounded by four flat screen tvs mounted on the wood-paneled walls, surrounded by the array of hunting photographs, american flags, ancient logging gear, and animal body parts that make up the Idaho aesthetic. Clockwise, the tvs are playing the Nascar race, the Tampa Bay and Houston someones football game, Tiger Woods putting, and the weather channel. It is difficult for me to think of four subjects that I am less interested in. The drone of a Nascar race, however, is familiar background music to my Sunday afternoons, and if I thought hard enough I may be able to find some Taoist philosophy in the circular track. For that, though, I require better coffee.

At this moment, for all of my teasing, I am grateful for the rustic simplicity and beauty of life here in Northern Idaho. I feel parts of myself, long denied or buried, stirred to life with the taste of huckleberries, the smell of wet cedar, and a smile from my slow-speaking, flannel-wearing waiter.