I swabbed the deck in the kitchen today. The white tiles get dirty real easy, and Mme Reclus is finding it harder and harder to do the job on account of her back. It takes me about an hour, I move all the mats, footstools, carts and other appliances and furnishings out of the way. I sweep and then swab, just like all tough sailors do when they’re far away at sea.

The old lady didn’t even know what I was doing, she was absorbed with her Harry Potter RPG, and without her hearing aids in could tell nothing, even when I dropped the toaster oven on the floor, making a great racket. I put on some appropriate tunes on the juke box, the Bach Cello Suites, and went to work.

A simple household task, with a simple but honest reward, and a quick tour through the head of the most profound and inspired musical mind the planet has ever produced. It was a perfect Zen moment, a real Alan Watts time, a time of peace and flow and physical and mental meditation. Geometrical perfection and infinite harmony: fugue and counterpoint of just one instrument. I was at peace with the cosmos, warm and comfortable in my secure little piece of the universe, surrounded by the chaos and horror just outside my door. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the moment of space and time I inhabited, perfectly conscious of its impermanence and yet knowing it was just as real and timeless as the rest of the world arrayed about me. We are just dust motes in an infinite continuum, but just as real and worthwhile as black holes, cannibal galaxies and exploding supernovae. We have every right to be here, and we all carve our little bubbles for ourselves, brief, yet eternal. We have the privilege of creating our own universe.

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