Will you pass through this night?

I came home last night and stood in my hallway for like 10 minutes before just sitting down on the floor. I just sat there. Everything was quiet, it was around midnight. I had turned all the lights out except the one in the hallway in anticipation for going to bed. I suppose it was misleading to say I came home and stood there. I'd actually been home for an hour or so, and had done a bit of emailing and drank some water and let the TV run, as if it was a faucet, and not actually using the water for anything.

Sometimes I feel so detached, and I don't know, it's like I was just sitting there feeling my life. I don't have a better way to put it. Like falling into ice cold water and instead of flailing and thrashing about shivering, I just surrendered to the chill. I felt very calm and in the moment. Still. If I was happy, I'd say peaceful, but I don't think that word applies.

I stood upon a frozen lake at night, dark clouds a low ceiling, walls of barren trees, like blackened skeletons circling. They maintain their distance but I see no opening, no exit. No light in the dark wood. And I slip into the freezing black water. Sinking. I'm sinking.

Now this is all very dark and dramatic, but you must understand this is a metaphor. This is required to properly convey the feeling. Sometimes a word or two simply will not do. "I covered myself with a blanket, and I was warmed." That's nice and you get the point. "The blanket wasn't large enough to cover me, and I curled into a ball." Oh, you didn't know that did you? "The blanket was thick, and had a furry texture to it that produced lint, but also held the heat and kept it close to my body. It felt almost like a pelt, sort of primitive." Hmm, not bad, you're getting a bigger picture. How about this? "The blanket wrapped around me, I felt calm and secure. My mind drifting through the gates to sleep and gentle creatures leaped through a beautiful nighttime forest in my dreams." How pleasant.

So, in fact I was merely present in that moment, sitting in a most improbable place for a human to be sitting, in my home. And these are some of the things I felt. Some were internal. Others felt like the stuff of the planet, massive below me, my life and all that I am, everyone alive everywhere yet quiet, maybe even ghosts of the dead swirling about, and heavenly particles rocketing in their divine clockwork play through my very body. No ticking of the clock was present. No sky circling, sun rising or falling. Just a perfect moment.

It wasn't altogether a bad thing.

I wonder if that's what zen feels like?