Day 63
breath
Use your breath to sit down, and to wake in the morning. Use your breath to reach for that pen or for that glass. Use it to render that song you have been hearing lately into a composition entirely yours. Use your breath to move into the work and use it when you cash that check. Use your breath to pay your rent and taxes and use it when you make frivolous purchases. Use your breath to bite, chew and swallow; to sip and to gulp. Use your breath to drink wine and use it to slow the spinning room when you have drunk too much. Use your breath when you are thinking of ten things at once, to sort and prioritize and un-muddle the confusion. Use your breath to empty yourself and then fill yourself and then empty yourself again, inhale to exhale.
Above all, use your breath to love; to access and regurgitate that deepest affection that you have for your mother, or your child, or your friend or lover. Use your breath to take in more love, more love and more love from that sky above you (which you can even see when you lie down on the concrete between two close and very tall buildings.) Use it to take in love from the experience of breathing itself (which you can have even in a padded cell.) Use your breath to use and recycle and recreate love, that you might live longer and in peace.
And finally, use your breath to die—to release and to relinquish all ties to this heavy world. Let that final exhale carry you where it will.
For breath is your anchor and your sail. It is both the suddenness of epiphany and the vast dark of unknowing. It is the first and last gift of life and threads itself through every inclination, emotion, thought and deed. It is there in the unconscious sleep and the sub-conscious dreaming and the full awareness of waking life. Use it.
