Journal entry #1

I look out my window as a man vomits underneath the bridge.  He is homeless and filthy.  Plastic bags, membrane thin and torn hang from his body like lifeless kites.  His hands on his knees he struggles to maintain his balance, his human stature.  The coal train on the other side of the brick wall is motionless the only other witness to the suffering of a man whose headphones separate him from the rest of the world.  Kolkata arrives outside of my window and I am transported to another continent in a faraway land where this sight is commonplace and just as invisible.  
I feel the swelling ache of the world’s hungry, the despair of the homeless, and hopelessness of the imprisoned.  My heart beats in time with theirs and my relative comfort feels empty and shallow.  I breathe long into the awareness of this life so blatantly brief.  In this precious moment, in the silence of my abode I bow to the grief that bends the world into twisted form.  I absorb the suffering into my own Being and I feel it dissolve into the spaciousness that has no end.    
Santi Devi