seven minutes
In the morning...
We had been up all night in the celebration of a friend's wedding in Pokhara, western Nepal, and were down by the lake in the calm stillness of dawn. Light was barely coming into the sky as cows drifted aimlessly by, wandering nowhere. We smoked cigarettes in the silence. Her eyes were alive with the buzzing energy of a hive on fire. Walking up the dirt path, past the barber chair where I had gotten a shave less than 24 hours ago, past the deep cavern of a well, and onto a side street of pastry shops and bakeries, smells began to overwhelm and assault us. The sweet, the acrid, pungent, and stale all began to rise up from the sleeping village and I grabbed her hand, tossed the cigarette under my boot and stopped to face her, saying 'Can you SMELL that?'


twelve minutes
The feel of the rain...
Standing on the bow of our 200foot research vessel, we had been at sea for 50 days looking for a needle in a field of haystacks. It was early morning, before the heat of the day washed over the ocean, when a light spritz came over the bow, not sea spray but tiny droplets from the only cloud in the sky. We were less than a mile from an uninhabited atoll in the middle of the south Pacific, but this little land mass was actually causing a lone cloud to tear up and rain. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back to the light brush strokes of mist caressing my face. It was like a feather on my cheeks, sensual and ticklish, reassuring and comfortable. I couldn't get enough of it, like a drug, I wanted more, and then it stopped. As fast as it appeared it blew away and disintegrated. The cloud was gone, fully given of all of its moisture only to be carried by the prevailing westerlies. And now the boat came alive with activity, shaking my reverie like a child's rattle, before I knew it that fine mist had evaporated on my face and now all I had was a memory, but I still couldn't move. I was captured by the atoll, my own cloud now history and the onrushing thought that I'd be walking on the broken coral of a far out island in no time.
Being too deep to anchor, the captain launched a skiff to take us into the breakers and up onto the extended reef where we could wade ashore. The water was equator warm and upon making it to shore, I shuffled my feet in the detritus of age-old bleached white coral, hearing the rattling of calcium dentrified bones over the wind.


five minutes
Tomorrow I will...
Tomorrow I will open the door on a new town in a new world with a new attitude. I will look the day in the eye and tell it to stand aside as I have things to do and people to see. I will wear a clean shirt, brush my teeth, run a brush through my hair. I will have coffee, filling my cup with confidence as well as caffeine. I will stride down the street with purpose, shoulders back, spine straight and may even try to put a smile on my face. I will have hope. I will survive. I will join society in a productive way.
But that's tomorrow. and the day after tomorrow. and the week after the day after tomorrow.