There was a beautiful moment a few weeks ago when I was prone on the couch. It had been a 12-hour day. I changed into my pajamas as soon as I came home. (If you don’t know this by now, pajamas are a big deal for me.)

I scooped up my sweet boy cat, Mr. Squeakers, and laid him on my chest. He stretched out fully along the line of my torso and started to fall asleep. His breathing was crackly at first, but smoothed out with deeper relaxation. His small head curved into my shoulder and his front paws splayed out into the space past my left arm.

It was a remarkable moment. I breathed at a constant rate, holding him, and he melted into me. His breathing wasn’t like mine. His was more forceful at the end of his exhalation.

I was still, with this wonderful little creature in my arms. I was in the moment.

The next night, I went for a walk. I hadn’t been on a walk for a while. I started the same route I took in the winter many times, walking up the hill. Only now that snow is cleared off the ridge top, I don’t turn back and come down. I walk across the ridge for a quarter-mile and back.

When I’ve lived at home before, I used to take a lot of these walks, mainly to get exercise. I think I’ve done the route hundreds, maybe thousands, of times. Back and forth.

This time, it had nothing to do with exercise, though I did get some of that. I had worked an eight-hour day on my feet, so I must have been a little nuts, eh? Well, I came home and wanted something more instead of collapsing on the couch. Dusk was approaching. The air was cool and a little cold, so I wore my mom’s sweatshirt.

Words were not needed in that space. Neither was much thought. I walked and stopped, looking at tree branches, fence posts, the road, the grass…anything…everything. I stopped, having discovered a ribcage and skull of a deer by the side of the road with a picked-clean purity. I stopped, looking at the descending orange sun behind a thicket of black trees. I stopped again, looking at the sky gradually layering from soft pink to blue above the dark green grass.

I walked again the next night and brought my camera.

I hunkered in close to the deer skeleton, focusing on the bleached ribs, vertebrae and skull. A foot was nearby. There is final silence in death. I don’t mean to be morbid or dark. After decay, bones remain. The body is finally released, but skeletal memory leaves its signature on the earth. You were here. I was here. We did make a mark.

So many people fear death, but I think once the pain and struggle is gone, it is probably the most beautiful thing to experience. This happens in life too, a painful struggle…an overload seemingly too much to bear, but once it’s over, the ensuing peace is deeper and truer because you went through it. So many people escape into other things to deny the struggle, like drugs, sex, and food. But if you are very still with your fear and your struggle, it will pass more clearly and cleanly. Even if you want to scream. Even if you want to cry. Even if the hurt is unbearable. Feel it, it will be ok afterwards. And even if the pain dissipates more slowly, you will have known it. But also be sure not to take the peace for granted. Feel that just as deeply. Perhaps I’ve written along this thought line before? Probably. But this is how I am able to be so resilient in my life.

After that skeleton, I walked a bit more, capturing the layers of evening I gazed at the night before.

To my right, I watched the sun deepen and drop behind the trees.

I encountered a second deer skeleton. It was so beautiful, the remains of this departed soul with the last hints of the departing evening.

A life is a collection of moments. This moment happens. Are you in it? Are you fully in it? Are you thinking about something else? The past? The future? I have been so guilty about this, worrying about what I will do in the future. I have looked back on things, and felt pain and regret. But those things don’t really matter as much as I think they do.

The moment with my cat. The moments on these walks. These are zen moments. My walking route is my zen place. It is mine. That part which isn’t altered. That part which deepens with every year. It doesn’t matter how awful the day is. It doesn’t matter what that person thinks about me. Because none of it touches my zen place. That place is the larger vaster picture of my life. What I will look at on my deathbed. None of it is as important as it was at the time.

Since I was in high school, there is a fragment of an Emily Dickinson poem I’ve always lived by. It was my senior quote in the yearbook.

  No Rack can torture me

  My Soul — at Liberty

  Behind this mortal Bone

  There knits a bolder One

You see, a million thoughts, things, people, or whatnot could assail me and I will still come out with a smile in the end. I am bolder. I am bigger. I am wiser. I am happier.

Emotions always happen. 100% zen calm is just not human. We search for it, but to be human is to feel everything anyway. A few nights later, I was on the couch with another cat. She was also stretched parallel with my torso, head tucked into my shoulder. Despite all of her big fluffiness, she is small underneath. For a while I was comfortable, then some anguish came by and said hello. I cried a little. I felt it for a few minutes, then my cat shifted. She made a small questioning noise, as if to say, “What are you doing, silly girl? I’m trying to sleep.”

I sometimes think God is smiling at us through our difficulties. He has a plan for each and every one of us. His plan does not line up with our plan. The pain comes from the friction of the difference. But he still wants us to feel the pain anyway. Or else we will never figure it out. We humans are really quite stupid.

We always keep hearing: Live in the present. Live in the now. Like the most enlightened are able to do that all of the time. I’m sorry, what? I am human. I have something called a memory. I go back and look at things again. And again. And again. And again. I shake the snowglobe of memory, and things fall a little differently each time with re-examination.

Going into the past is like unpacking a suitcase. You come back from your trip, and all of the clothes are dirty. You look at each article of clothing, blaming this stain on that person, this other stain on another circumstance.

But the clothes are still dirty. Never mind how they became dirty. You can either pack them back up until they smell awful. Or you can clean them. This cleaning is a metaphor for what? Letting go. Some of the stains need to be washed several times, maybe hundreds of times. Keep washing them.

My modification to living in the now is this: Don’t let the past get in the way of living in the present. But the past does have its own validity. It deserves examination. What is that saying? Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it? I think many of us don’t look into the past clearly enough, then go back out and make the exact same mistakes all over again.

There is a balance in life. Of knowing that in the grand scheme of things, something you feel isn’t so enormous. Of also knowing that what you feel is human and important anyway, because it will take you to the next moment.

I think I’ve cried every single night for the past week. I wake up the next day feeling a little more ok. A small piece of me is healed. I think I may do this for a while. Some things have been washed, others haven’t. I just keep crying.

Living in the present is not denial. It is not pushing away things that need to be felt at that moment. You may be somewhere, supposedly trying to be in that moment, but the truth is that you not always can…because what needs to be attended to is something else.

Living in the present is full acceptance. It is acceptance of what you are feeling. It is acceptance of who you are and how you see things. It is acceptance of your sorrows. It is acceptance of your joys. It is complete and perfect acceptance. That who you are is who you are, and you will be fine because of it.

Living in the present is also acceptance of the process. And loving the process. An entire life is process and change. So many people focus on the end result that they don’t enjoy the process. The end result comes, and after the high wears off, back to the process.

Bread is process. To make a nice loaf of bread, it takes HOURS. You can do other things, but in the back of your mind you are thinking about the bread sitting over there, rising. And you hope it rises well. Oh my god, what happens if it doesn’t? All that work and no rise?

Hahaha, welcome to life.

I made my zen bread from a zen book. It’s The Tassajara Bread Book, from a zen monastery in California. A cookbook from the 1970’s (I seem to gravitate to those), written by Edward Espe Brown. It comes with a great many instructions, which I read and attempted to follow thoroughly.

Bread is a bit daunting for me. I made it once a long time ago, and it came out a dense football. But I am beginning a phase. With any leftover energy I have after long work hours, I am going to try things which daunt me. Bread baking is one of them. I will stick it out, no matter how many times I could possibly screw it up. I did do a practice run two weeks ago, and here I go again.

I ended up making two loaves, with slight variations. One had more white flour in ratio to wheat flour and more sugar. The other had equal parts white and wheat, an egg, and some honey & sugar. When they were done, I forgot which was which. Oops!

I am not including the recipe, because it is so long and complex. I was flipping back and forth over twenty pages to understand everything. It has THREE risings. I ran out of bowls, so into the basement I went again. Thank you, Mom, for your kitchen collectibles business. As you can see, I never took the price off.

I kneaded and kneaded and kneaded. I wore my Audrey Hepburn dress because it was light. And I got flour all over it. I made a wonderful mess of the kitchen.

My bread babies rose a second time.

My favorite moment arrived. Punch!

The bread rose again. Into the oven it went. Baking bread started perfuming the house twenty minutes later. I bounced around, high on it.

Arrival. Beautiful. And delicious. The end result to be consumed. On to more process…on to more loaves!