What is Real?

I'm sitting on the outdoor terrace of a woman's giant apartment.  She has two cats I feed three times per day.  One of them has hyperthyroidism.  I can relate to this. 

There is a piece of a garbage bag draped over a tree and all of my attention focuses on it.  When I realize that, I let my attention spread toward other things too, like the rumbling of machinery next door in the building being renovated.  And the almost rainbow flirting from a gray sky.  There is a yellow and orange table on the stoop in front of me.  It is made for very small people.  Two blue chairs, similarly tiny, rest in the corner of the landing.  The small people for whom they are intended probably don't sit in them for long. 

Morning glories are about to bloom.  An orchid blossom, most elegant of things, droops its head toward speckled, tongue-shaped leaves.  This is my world right now.  What's yours like?

I listened to the radio for a long time this morning because I was cleaning.  I thought the woman was coming home today, but it turns out it's Monday.  I finished unloading the dishwasher anyway.  Today is Friday.  On Wednesday, after a possible government mandate, a village in Syria was massacred.  I say "village" and not just "people" because most of the animals there were also killed.

So often I don't realize where I am.  I don't realize I'm sitting on a terrace or riding the subway or having a conversation.  I keep thinking I'm working toward something, I keep reaching out from back then to over there.  If this terrace were to crack, if a great pain were to surge through my body, if a small person destined to fill the seat of one of those blue chairs were to look at me and wave, would I find this moment?

"Come here," I say to myself.  "Sit and look around.  This is what is real."