No Recipe

Energy pulses beneath me as swells rise and then drop into troughs and then rise again into a breaking wave that rushes foaming up to the shore. I try to figure out how to do this, how to catch that wave, to learn how to ride it rather than roll and tumble into the sand when it crashes over me. I listen, puzzle out the methods that others have used to master the challenges that never seem to end. I watch and learn and practice. I pay attention and work to assimilate what I need to know to rise and master the chaos. "There is no recipe," he says. "But you have to learn from the masters and then practice." I have to jump in, mess it up, wrestle with all of it: painting, music, writing, love, money, dying. No recipe I think. At first I don't like that irrefutable fact and try to copy what others have done before me. But then I surrender, seize the scruff of light that pulses around and within, and then I release the brakes of reluctance, hesitation, and fear. It's one of a kind, this ride, and there ain't no way to know where it goes or how to ride it unless you jump on in and make it up.