The Rio Bravo del Norte

(Click on picture to enlarge)

A RIVER IS LIKE A LIFE; IT HAS A BEGINNING AND AN END

My life, as it happens, began at the end. That is, at the end of the river - the Rio Grande. Any further south in Texas and I would be a Mexican (in Mexico this river is known as the Rio Bravo del Norte.) Later in my life, I was living several hundred miles upstream in El Paso. Finally, last September during a RV trip to Colorado I found the chance to visit the streams and lakes that form the headwaters of the Rio Grande . . . its beginning. I am getting older now, and more frequently wallowing in a bit of comfortable reflection on my years past and possible years future; it was one of those moments.

At these times I tend to go mellow. Sometimes I turn on music; The Parson's Project "Time" is my all time favorite music for melancholic (not to be confused with depressive) reflection. It is a good background for contemplating the Buddhist teachings on the impermanence of life. The Buddha used the river to teach that life is series of impermanent moments - i.e. moment by moment death and rebirth - and made the analogy of wading through a river; you can do it only once, because if you try to wade back across it's not the same river - the water you originally waded through has flowed on and now you are wading through new water. (By the way, I'm not Buddhist - I once thought I might be - I admire many of the teachings - but I'm really not.)

I could continue to enjoy this comfortable soliloquy and progress to considerations of the cosmos and what we really are ( think Dust in the wind by Kansas.) You may not want to go there though, so I will end the blog, pour a short single malt, and turn on Joni Mitchell's Woodstock rendition of "We are Stardust," the original "Hair" soundtrack, or perhaps Leonard Cohen's "Bird on the Wire" and thoroughly enjoy the depths of my melancholy.

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