Sitting in the storm, I feel myself perched onto my designated morning meditation spot on the gray couch.Three pillows and a blanket draped on top. I sit, gather the blanket , and toss it aside. The wood stove, made in Germany,is across the room to my left.

To the right of it, I take a last glance through the snow frozen windows,feeling the weight of the branches now heavy touching the ground.

The wind is strong and constant, sometimes shaking the back wall facing the river down below. The snow coming down so hard and fast I can barely see the outline of the marsh grass at low tide.

Now, I have adjusted my body, and as always begin with my eyes closed and take a first deep breath, and slowly exhale as I find my focal point on the backs of my eyelids. The usual dance of where do I focus, breath?….or with my eyes relaxed, with patterns of infinite red dots . I have been seeing them as far as I can remember.

Settling, I stare into this point of infinity.The point remains while, what it is constantly changes, like a kaleidoscope as the wheel turns.

I am there.

Then I remember the remaining feelings from the phone call I just had with Uschi , who moved back to Munich full time about 7 months ago. We still speak daily, sometimes twice a day.We have such little to talk about. It’s painful when your best friend is your wife, and the last moment we made love was 12 years ago.

So we are apart and we are not. As a dinner guests at a neighbors house a few months ago said to me, “oh you guys are still in the orbit, you haven’t really separated.

That feels like a knife into the heart of my need to feel close, to be touched and to hold in my arms a woman .

I miss that warmth.

It is like no other.

Why can’t I have what I need?

And then I remember my breath.

As I write now, I take in a long deep one, and return to here, where my body meets the pillow, and my feet feel the floor, as the wind is picking up in sharp spurts which pummel the outside walls of the cottage.

I return here. It feels safe.

But doesn’t last too long My eyes open and I see the snow.

I remember I need to call the snow shoveling person to make sure he schedules us in for tomorrow’s after storm clearing of the sidewalks which surround the building, which was the location of my and Uschi’s third restaurant , which we are now selling because of being closed due to the pandemic’s labor shortage. I am late in calling and hopefully he still has an opening.

Another deep breath.

And back to here, among the countless specks of red lighted dots.

The wind outside is growing, as my awareness moves from sound, to the projection screen of my inner eyelids and to whatever sensation my body calls to me.. It’s called “choiceless awareness”. Here, becomes a dance between the five senses. No stories.

Until , I remember the couch which was delivered the day before and I started assembling in the back room. It is now lays on the floor, not correctly assembled and I have to start over.

Reading detailed instructions with many parts, multiple brackets and connecting braces as well as a manual which has the process spread out over 5 randomly put chapters….. is not my “superior function” as Carl Jung would say. I feel defeated and frustrated.

So much so that my eyes open, I take a deep breath , look out into the beauty of a potentially catastrophic event , and my hand moves to the right, taps the glass screen of my phone and I check out the time.

The storm outside will pass.