Expanding Circles of Being Light Upon a Lake

The lake is as still as I have ever seen it, a clear mirror reflecting the lights of Queen Anne hill. It is late and cold, the half hidden moon resting behind a translucent, thin curtain of clouds. From my perch on the fourth floor deck I gaze out in quiet delight over the rows of houseboats below. I am as still as the lake's surface, held in the trance of beauty's gaze nested in a surrounding fog of white noise rising as endless waves upon waves from the ocean of Interstate 5 behind me.

I stare at the lines of light reaching across the lake, pulled deeper and deeper into shape and color until my perspective flips into an imaginative portal of possibility. Now I stand gazing at stalactites of pure light hanging down from a cave's flat ceiling. I wander through this astonishing landscape, breath held in wondrous astonishment. My cells start to shimmer like the buzz of a giant bee tasting the colors of life. I sense the entirety of my physical being as a state of undifferentiated wholeness held as a subtle, wavering shape in the coolness of night's air. Each simple breath is enough to unpack the space surrounding each simple cell spinning this body awake.

My gaze is drawn to a presence in the lake just beyond the houseboats, a gentle disturbance on the surface, a ripple of light expanding. I scan for the source, for an explanation. A boat? No boats. No boat? What??? Expanding circles of fairly large waves move from a single spot upon the lake, as if something huge had been dropped onto the surface. Or maybe something rising from below? It doesn't make sense, but I've already moved away from interpretations, easily gliding into a direct experience of the exceptional beauty unfolding below.

The front edge of the outer wave expands into the stalagtites of colored light, soft curves rippling through the straight lines. A hundred nested waves follow the first, each one a bit smaller until they disappear at the center source circle. My eyes follow the front wave as it reaches the western shore and rebounds back into the lake. I am transfixed by the rectangular patterns of interference spreading as a deepening complexity in the open bowl of water. Over a span of five minutes (?? I am a bit lost in time here) the ordered patterns give way to a gently boiling cauldron of chaotic flow. I expect the surface to slowly return to the mirror of glass it had been, but for as long as I watch, the water stays swaying and bubbling in random waves.

Within the tangible softness of the night air, sound and light, awareness returns to my body, into a shivering coldness rising from my toes. I walk into the darkness of the house and sit on the big couch hugging my knees. An odd thought ripples through my being, a gently wavering interpretation that delights my imaginative soul. Perhaps, I imagine, I have just seen the same energetic forces responsible for creating crop circles. But instead of a painting or sculpture left in the field as a mysterious artifact, I have watched a live performance. I sit with a sensation of wonder, breathing into the echoes of motion shaping my well-ordered cells in ever-expanding circles of light in the lake of my being.