staking an essential claim

In the early-morning grey-and-rainy -- where the colors are best and the silence has a tactile quality -- it seems to me that every (wo)man needs to stake a claim in life to a place that sheds imperatives and improvements, that sings its own song and is devoid of social harmonies, that provides a beginning and end without addenda, that declines to agree or disagree, but is simply relaxed and at home.

A place within which no "we" can enter. A place to touch base before moving on to the cares and caring, tears and laughter ... kind of like a starter-motor on a big-rig diesel truck... a place that makes all other places possible and gently declines to do so.

Why stake such a claim? Because, I think, without such a claim, this place that nitwits may acclaim will perch like a mountain lion on some strategic rock ... not attacking, not sleeping, not muddying the waters of action in any way ... just perching and waiting and being and ... and ... reminding the one who has yet to stake a claim that there is something left undone, that goodness and mercy and war and improvement are all well and good, perhaps, but what is left undone needs to be requited as well.

Stake a claim where and how...? The improvement books cannot capture or define. Blog posts cannot cut the mustard. One man's hermit hut is another man's contemplation of a Popsicle. One woman's kiss is another woman's 100-meter dash.

It cannot be praised, this whatever-it-is-that-is-essential, and it's never far away, nor near either. It is just the place to stake the claim ... and relax ... and move on.

I apologize for calling it "essential."