Those funhouse mirrors and glass alleys were gentle amusement. It only cost a ticket or two, and I didn’t have to sprint through, I could pause when one of those distorted images was particularly entertaining. I liked the one that made me look like a pinhead pyramid, or was I a pear? It was just weird enough I wanted to figure out how they did it. It was physics, of course, so I can blame the state fair midway for leading me straight to Northwestern University’s Integrated Sciences Program, similar to a funhouse mirror, full of twisted expressions and personal compressions and an enlightening attempt to force myself into a shape my spirit simply could not acquire.

The wind blew through new leaves, now completely unfurled, southwest to northeast. That is the direction of the sun. I sat with my daughter and thought: “How I will miss my mountainside, riverside seat.” And then I thought, better: “How much I have enjoyed my mountainside, riverside seat.” One thought closed the heart, the next opened it.

When the night had fully fallen, I cooked myself a meal: I was contented with the vegetable flavors and the tiny torch of habanero. I poured the last of that bottle of wine. With glass at eye level (dramatically, for an audience of none) I turned and saluted my rooms. They were as they had always been: Buddha in the corner and Bible in the bookcase; a banner for the Earth in the window, while a guitar dreamed against the sill; the successful house plantings overflowing their containers; and chairs set casually away from the table where visitors, late for their homes, had pushed them. What I have watered, I have been.

Except in my imagination, I don’t pretend to understand the permanent blackness of those who have lost their sight. Even less, those who were born without that faculty, and so have no access to even the memory of color: to sense red, they must feel red on their skin, the subtle variation in frequency from one hue to the next.

In the landscape of the never-sighted, I imagine certain words lose their texture, deprived as they are of connotation. When I say “red”, I see flowers; I see blood; I smell the perfume of a rose, or feel my pulse quicken with desire, or deflate in despair; I see a red balloon, recall a single frame from a French film; I smell the stink of post-War fear, I hear the ruffle of Chinese banners over some Premier’s visit to Harvard Square; I see her body where it blushes with life, and from that color, her scent.

It is common to be pushed from one course to another by discomfort, or pulled out of place by desire. Some traditions would have you separate yourself from those energies, holding to the center and less involved in those tides. By creating a distance between ourselves and the objects of pleasure and displeasure, we are able to recognize our habitual reactions, and by recognizing, remain balanced.

Through this practice, we humans reduce the anguish of living, and support a measured and compassionate response to others and to the world around us.