I have always thought about the state of my mental well being and have maintained a low bar forever. I am not sure when you cross some invisible boundary and enter the Land of the Lunes. I have never thought of myself as sane, mostly because there is too much pressure to stay on one side of a porous border, which is so ill defined to begin with.

I have been thinking about this a lot more recently. Forced isolation is not the healthiest environment, unless conjuring is your specialty. It is never a really good idea to look outside yourself for benchmarks, because the goal posts keep getting moved by the jaundiced and grossly, under qualified referees.

I feel tremendous empathy for those people, who actually think they have their shit together these days. This virus has exploded right under our feet, blowing up any semblance of a level playing field for all of us. The stock market is having its best month in 33 years, while over 20 million people have lost their jobs and one-third of us can’t pay our rent or mortgage. Don’t you think there is something wrong with that? Does it make sense to you?

Well, maybe there is good news outside the borders of this capitalist perversion of ours, because the rest of the world can’t possibly be this crazy. Let’s see how things are going in Brazil. Deforestation on Indigenous lands within the Amazon from Jan.-April 2020 rose by 59% compared with the same period last year. We don’t simply need the Amazon to sequester carbon, we desperately need it. How’s that for whacky?

I am much more familiar with the inmate in Our House than I am with the selfish bastard in Brazil. You know, unless you are an extremely wealthy, horribly sexist, Christian male, I don’t understand how you could possibly think Le Grand Orange gives a shit about you. I keep trying to do a better job of being a human, knowing perfection is a sweet mirage, but worth the effort nevertheless. Why would anyone in their right mind want to emulate this guy? Yet, there is so much anger and disappointment in this country, even a soulless charlatan seems credible to so many and that is painfully sad.

So, here I am in the solitude of my living space, comfortably convinced I have always been nuts, worried about the rest of you more than usual. I know I can deal, which has something to do with having been here for quite a while. Man, I have put myself through the wringer over the years. However, if I trafficked in regret, I’d have a full menu of emotional entrees to digest me, but no thanks.

I did my usual Zen sit this morning, which I’ve been doing for around 30 years, most every day. I’m not sure when I began setting the timer for 25 minutes, but that’s been the deal for quite some time. Around 4 months or so ago, I started doing abdominal crunches on exhalations. I wanted to fight the primordial pouch making its presence felt around my midsection. I’m not sure it’s done a damn thing, along with adding a 60 second plank to my yoga practice. This morning, I just wanted to sit, following my breath in and out, allowing my thoughts to float, reclining on the rise and fall of the carpet of air.

The Buddha made a big deal about understanding the tenuous nature of this life and how truly accepting it marks all our choices. Following the path of Zen invariably took me to this place of not knowing, loosening my grip on trying to discover the ghost behind the curtain. As a young man, when Siddhartha set out from his family’s palace, I am convinced he was intent on trying to find the meaning of life, my favorite, hopeless travail.

All of our thoughts and feelings are reactions, each one linked to the one before. In my case, I always kept trying to go backwards, like a life detective, following the chain to the beginning, where I foolishly thought I’d find some answers.

I know I didn’t invent the word, preconscious, but that’s where I ended up docking my life capsule. There is an undefinable moment between reception and recognition and that is the beautiful void of the moment. I think it is where all life actually lives, regardless of the real estate on Darwin’s ladder. I think animals are there all the time. Have you ever noticed they rarely make any mistakes? Animals have a grace about them, because they are not distracted by thoughts.

Living in the moment is a beautiful thing. It is a special kind of sanity and you have to be insane to own it.

R.I.P. Russell Haluapo