Experience is . . .

Experience,

when fully encountered,

is the grind of eventfulness.

That list of the hundred things

that simply have to be done

before death

with a kind of rigor,

that somehow qualifies one

as having lived a full life

yet perceptually etched

in movie like full recall

until memory fails

in its full task

of enhancement.

Experience, when fully assumed,

is the grand illusion

of spectatorship.

That experience is happening

as if it were happening to you,

sort of an outside-in type of job.

Something like

the report from our skin.

Namely we are over-focused

on surface information

by orientation

and yet quizzically challenged

by skin’s representation

from the inside-out.

That is to say,

we can easily account

for bruise, rash, or cut

but are challenged by

blush, tingle, or flush.

Experience, when full attended,

is the past confining the present.

The tasks of proof, documentation,

accountability, and authenticity

can fully consume

as an experience style.

It can become a form

of custodial imprisonment

just keeping the experience story

alive and lively to oneself.

Experience, when fully indulged,

seems dedicated

to prove its worth

by identification,

even if this is a manner

of duplication

that has become so primary

as to be just task and habit

tending towards repetition

as story strokes

formulated to be told.

And yet,

experience, when fully expressed,

is the art of gratefulness.

Yet gratefulness is not

a passive receptive state.

There is no time in gratefulness.

It isn’t a pause and reflect existence.

Gratefulness is a permission

to be as if channeled from on high.

And that gratefulness is upping

the self-presence in the moment

as if a radiance is put forth

in reverence to be wholly share.