Rubies in Crystal

It is impossible for me to believe that I am entirely my body, that everything that I am is contained here in the cafe in which I sit, looking out the floor to ceiling full wall of windows at the rain gently pooling drop by drop into puddles or wetting the street with a sheen only rainwater can give. The world revolves around me, the musac with its forgettable music and chatter, the scrape of chairs of people arriving or leaving, the muted tones of conversation, someone who has a cold blowing their nose, the sounds of food being eaten off plates, knives and forks scraping, the clacking of a dishwasher being stacked in the back, tables being cleared and wiped, and all types of people who are quietly sitting except for one table of loud laughers. My feet are cold. The street is busy with trucks and cars and pedestrians. Umbrellas float everywhere like dark flowers

How can everything I am be contained here in this remote and anonymous spot? Located here in this curve of space and time, at this edge of the universe, that that's it, that's all there is?

Because most of what we are seems to transcend our bodies, it is not hard to imagine what travels with us, our memories, feelings, passions and desires will travel beyond our bodies into a deathless realm beyond our deaths.

One day perhaps we will understand how energy manifest into matter and how it unmanifests, the secret of life and death.

Perhaps we are runners passing the baton ~ our written thoughts, inventions, works of art, labour, children ~ just keeping the links of civilization alive even as we each appear and disappear, a living force for awhile, and then gone.