It was a slightly cool morning with a sporadic breeze--still, then a gust--
still again for awhile, then another push of wind, on like this, herky-jerky.
It was sunny and generally comfortable between the irritating shoves of wind,
but I wore a thin jacket that simulated a low-grade fever,
slightly too warm when the air was still, inadequate in the subtly frigid wind.

I slumped on a park bench with a view, a short distance away, of a whitewashed stucco temple wall
indifferently situated beyond a sidewalk across which leaves and the occasional litter would scoot.

I'd had a cold, my head was still a bit heavy, I felt a little tired or unpleasantly drunk.
My hands were in the pockets of my jacket.
I found an apple in one.
I pulled it out and crunched on it, sucked back its tart juice,
and my ears filled with the interior percussion of my own moving bones as I chewed.

I felt strangely disconnected from the wakened world,
more a reluctant, groggy observer than a participant in the moment's goings on.
The sharpness of the fruit's taste startled me with its contrast to my muddled half awareness.

Ahead of me, directly in my line of vision and barely registering
sat a small, simple shrine on the sidewalk, against the temple wall.
It was the size of a dollhouse, a miniature fascimile of the temple itself.
A marble bowl held the ashes of who knows how many years' worth of burnt out incense sticks
placed there wistfully by the superstitious who had muttered some kind of prayer while eye-stinging strings of smoke
would rise, lazily, in an indifferent and fatalistic upward climb, then readily dissipate.

I looked at this fragment of the world through blank and heavy-lidded eyes.
I caught my brain ticking out judgments, ridiculing the whole idea of temples, temple-goers, erectors of miniature shrines,
and those who make and execute plans to visit the things,
kneel, light incense, and hope or pray for some desperate wish to be fulfilled as a result.

And then I felt the warmth of the sun on my face as the wind again died away,
the same sun's light that bathed the temple's stucco wall,
that allowed for jerkily dancing shadows' play on the sidewalk and the shrine and the wall.
I loosened the tensions within my body,
and I realized, regardless of what they may represent--superstitions feigning as wisdom--
it isn't about the shrine,
it isn't about the stucco temple wall,
it isn't about my capacity for thinking snide cognitions,
it is the sun,
it is the light and the warmth of the sun.
It is the minor phenomenon of opportune shadows that play, shifting positions along the wall with each breeze...

It is the paradox of fluidity within each solid instant.
It is the shadows and the sun--
the shadows and the sun and me, walking away knowing,
with a relaxed face now, maybe even a smile,
that I too reflect the light, absorb brief warmth, and catch the dance of jittery, shifting shade.