With thanks to Glenn Wallis.
Even in the darkest of times…
Stone Tales
Conversations With A Stone By Wislawa Szymborska (Nobel Prize winner 1996)
I knock at the stone's front door "It's only me, let me come in I want to enter your insides, have a look around, breathe my fill of you." "Go away," says the stone. "I'm shut tight. Even if you break me to pieces, we'll all still be closed. You can grind us to sand, we still won't let you in." I knock at the stones front door. "It's only me, let me in. I have come out of pure curiosity. Only life can quench it. I mean to stroll through your palace, then go calling on a leaf, a drop of water. I don't have much time. My mortality should touch you. "I am made of stone" says the stone, "and must therefore keep a straight face. Go away. I don't have the muscles to laugh." I knock at the stones front door. "It's only me, let me come in. I hear you have great empty halls inside you, unseen, their beauty in vain, soundless, not echoing anyone's steps. Admit you don't know them well yourself." "Great and empty, true enough," says the stone, "but there isn't any room. Beautiful, perhaps, but not to the taste of your poor senses. You may get to know me, but you will never know me through. My whole surface is turned toward you, my insides turned away." I knock at the stones front door. "It's only me, let me come in. I don't seek refuge for eternity. I'm not unhappy. I'm not homeless. My world is worth returning to. I'll enter and exit empty-handed. And proof I was there will be only words, which no one will believe." "You shall not enter," says the stone. You lack the sense of taking part. No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part. Even sight heightened to become all-seeing will do you no good with out a sense of taking part. You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what that sense should be, only it's seed, imagination." I knock at stone's front door. It's only me, let me come in. I haven't got two thousand entries, so let become under your roof." "If you don't believe me," says the stone, just ask a leaf, it will tell you the same. Ask a drop of water, it will say what the leaf has said. And, finally, ask a hair from your own head. I am bursting with laughter, yes laughter, vast laughter, although I don't know how to laugh." I knock at the stone's door. "It's only me, let me come in." "I don't have a door," says the stone.
She Said: A Story!
The Wu of Xiang Gu
He insinuated himself into the room, weaving and turning, flowing and slithering. The moon was his friend, neither revealing nor hiding any aspect; it provided the perfect backdrop. She knew he was a Wu. Xiang Gu, named for the fragrant mushrooms that grew beneath the oak tree, had heard and remembered all of her Grandmother’s stories about the Wu, the Shamans who could enter your dreams, influence your life, and change shape at will. She was terrified, or was she thrilled? She wasn’t immediately sure.
“You are young.” He stated it as if youth were her particular failing.
“I’m a woman!” she heard herself tell him this sharply, and then felt herself blush, her courses had begun only a month ago and womanhood seemed a particular prize in her short life. She was, none the less, glad that her red face was hidden by the darkened room, as the moon was by a passing cloud.
He snorted. “How many years? Eleven, twelve?”
“It’s not your business! Leave my room.” Her voice ordered him like a clear chime, but she held her coverlet bunched at her chin, balled up hard in her fists to hide the trembling.
He smiled at her and she shivered. “Already feisty, aren’t you? But this is useless, a useless excursion.” He turned his back on her and paced the small room, picking things up at random and setting them down with a clink, like men have always done in frustration, or through a dimly held rage. Then he turned back to her, and held out his hand. She shrank from him and he laughed again, the hand held steady, not touching, as if to cup the air around her. “They will bond you to the unworthy ones. Those will mark you for better things; your wounds will illuminate, you will SHINE!”
Timidly she lifted her eyes back to his face and saw the light that emanated from his hand, reaching toward her through space. His eyes glinted and his face held something vital, so odd and confusing. Xiang Gu gasped. Not at his demonstration of power, though that was shocking enough, but at the uncanny feeling of knowing him, recognizing him from somewhere she could not place, as clearly as she might have known one of her father’s fellow merchants or a teacher from somewhere nearby in their province. As she drew the next breath, the breath that was filled with ‘who are you?’, he was gone.
In the next month Xiang Gu’s life changed, again. Her mother had died the year before, shortly after her father brought Second Wife into the home. Her mother had only borne one child and that a girl, which had been bad fortune enough for all of them. Some said she died of that sorrow. Xiang Gu never agreed; her mother’s contorted face was caused by physical pain, the foam on her lips attested to the fact that something bad had entered there. Her Grandmother had agreed, but kept her council, carefully watching the new wife.
Things would have been very hard were it not that Xiang Gu’s grandmother loved her so well, and that her father treated her so kindly. She had been her father’s only child, and though a girl child, he delighted in her, he saw she was bright, curious, and laughed with ease, just like her mother. So, he gladly brought her into his life of merchant, letting her play in the boxes and bins of things ready to be transported to some far shore. Seeing her curiosity, he eventually taught her to read and write and add figures, to the outrage of his wife and mother. He shook his head at them, but agreed that it would be their little secret.
Her father, however, though still kindly, had grown distant, with her mother gone and the new wife at her own zenith, he stayed longer at his work, alone with his sorrow. Xiang Gu spent most her time now with Grandmother, she always knew she was safe with her. But, sadly, Grandmother died as well one night, the same month that saw her stepmother conceive. Bad luck, but after all, everyone said, she was a very old woman. Before the month was finished Xiang Gu found herself contracted as the third wife to a man whose life was all but spent. His first two wives were long gone and he lived with his eldest son and that son’s two wives and children. When her step-mother told her this, she wore a very happy little smile, as if she knew some small joke. Dancing a gold bracelet between the fingers of one hand, her step-mother displayed this piece of her mother’s jewelry and then hid it away, over and over; a mesmerizing sleight of hand.
“I know your new husbands’ family very well. I am certain they will enjoy you.” The sound of her voice smooth and sweet; the mice in the walls huddled together and covered their eyes. Second Wife smiled her slim, uncomforting smile, and turned her back with a swirl of silk, to glide away.
The day that she turned 13, Xiang Gu entered her husbands’ home. The eyes, of her new step-son’s first wife, were narrow and hard as they welcomed her, the second wife was quiet and distant. The step-son, the man whose home this really was, assessed her top to bottom, without any hurry. She drew her wedding robe close about her and stepped back, bumping into the chair where her husband had already fallen asleep. She could hear her step-mother’s tinkling laugh as she left by the door beyond, along with the departure the wedding party. Her father had held her hand and kissed her cheek, but she had not been able to reach him in his eyes.
At first this new life had seemed easy, if lonely. Xiang Gu spent her days caring for her elderly husband as he told her stories (the same ones over and over) or gently stroked her hair as if she were a cat. She slept alone in the small chamber within his rooms. Her new husband seemed to never wish for more. She sometimes wondered if he knew she was his new wife, or thought she was his first one, long gone. The other wives in the house had chores and children, so they mostly left her alone with a single servant to clean and serve.
Xiang Gu was still a child when she arrived, for all her protestations of womanhood. She was small and thin like a child who might run through the house or climb a tree in the garden. However, she grew quickly in height and in curves over that first year, and her step-son began to notice. She would find him waiting for her in the hall or he would visit his father and watch her as he spoke. He would look at her as if she were a thing, not a person. He would run a finger down her neck and smile. It made her sick inside.
Then change followed her here too. Xiang Gu began to read aloud to her husband. It was a simple thing; he had found her reading one of his scrolls to herself, and since his eyesight prevented him from working out the words himself, he was thrilled.
“Read to me, Little Cherry (as he chose to call her, she decided he could not remember her given name), this story is old and full of magic. I always loved it!”
And so, they would sit for long quiet hours in mutual happiness as Xiang Gu read book after book, quietly finding more to read from the family library, so they were never, yet, forced to read the same story twice. Until something very bad happened. As she read aloud, a sound of something falling to the floor caused them to both look sharply up. Across the room stood the step-son. He had knocked his father’s walking stick from where it rested against the wall, but he did not bend to retrieve it. His eyes and mouth were open wide as if in some sort of horror, as he stood watching them. His father began to giggle.
“Yes, son, she can read! You have given me a gift indeed in a wife who can match my mind.” For once her husband was not wavering or confused and his son’s face changed from horror to outrage. His father leaned forward as if to make sure of hitting the mark, “She reads far better than you ever did. I imagine she will be able to aid me in checking your book work as well. I know you have troubles with the numbers.”
The son kicked the stick into the room and turned to depart, pulling a tapestry from the wall as he left. Xiang Gu felt a cold wash of fear as she sat, unmoving by her husband, who continued to chuckle to himself for some time, before falling asleep in his chair as he often did.
That night was the hardest one of her brief life, not even the deaths of her mother and grandmother could match the pain of what came next. After the servant had helped her put the old man in his bed and cleared away their supper, Xiang Gu prepared herself for bed, alone. He was waiting for her within her alcove; the son and his lifelong hatred of his father, his fear of being unworthy, and a rage he could no longer house within himself, were all waiting to fall upon a girl who could read.
She did not call out, at least not that she remembered. A life of having been taught the movements of respect and honor, for family, for men, for elders, did not contain the instructions for fighting back. To cast your eyes down, to obey, to bow, to kneel, to self-efface; those were the actions of a good daughter, a good wife, a good step-mother. In any case, he was too unsure of what he wanted himself, for there to be some sense to his actions, something definitive which she might have acted against, or even objected to. He wanted to beat her, to rip her clothes from her, to own her, to destroy what she was, to bewhat she was. He was confused, and when there is no direct path, it is difficult to find your way to where you are going, or to avoid what is there when you arrive. In the end he raped her and this probably saved her life, since the change in his body chemistry brought him back to himself somewhat, and shocked at his own excesses, he departed, pulling his own torn robe, bloodied with innocence, about him. She lay there, bleeding from her mouth and a long cut by her ear, where she had fallen against something, and from between her legs, where the dull, then sharp, then dull, beat of having had everything intimate and sacred striped from her, refused to be forgotten.
In the morning, the second wife found her, Xiang Gu chose to call this one ‘Elder Sister’; she was the kinder of the two, and so, out of respect and because the words ‘Second-Wife’ had already left a bad taste in her mouth, she had called her Jeh-je. Xiang Gu might have been surprised on an ordinary day, since Jeh-je had never entered these rooms since her wedding day. As it was, the thing that did surprise her was the gentle concern that creased the young woman’s face, and the sudden softening of her eyes.
“Come, Little Cherry” (Did no one know her real name here? She thought wearily through the haze of pain.) “Come, I have dreamed of a Wu in the form of a snake. He told me how to save you.” The woman tenderly washed and bandaged her, then left to tell the household that Little Cherry had a fever and must rest. When the son woke at last, from his release of expansive fury followed by deadening alcohol, he did not question when Jeh-je told him Little Cherry was ill, nor when she informed him how much it would cost to obtain the correct medications. He hung his head. She wordlessly laid a cool hand on his neck for a moment, and then swept the coins briskly into her bag.
It was said that Little Cherry died of her fever. Her husband was briefly, but sincerely stricken. Although she had never borne a child, he insisted that her name be included in the family records, an unheard-of concession. Confucius taught otherwise. His son did not object, which caused his father to draw his lips very thin, and to eye his son with a momentary and calculating contempt, before sliding back into his own distant thoughts.
Jeh-je had made many trips out of the home, during the time that Xiang Gu took to heal from her most superficial wounds. The scar by her ear would be spoken of all of her life as an identifying mark and sign of courage, the deeper, unseen, scars began the galvanizing that would make her into something powerful indeed.
At the start of her 14th year Xiang Gu made a brothel in Canton her home. It was located along the coast and was patronized by a somewhat higher class of clientele than some, occasionally foreign, mostly not, nearly all traveling by sea and busy in the world of trade. Jeh-je paid the Madame well for the privilege of keeping Xiang Gu away from the customers until she was older, or until she, herself, agreed. The Madame was intrigued with Xiang Gu’s story and was happy to use the girls’ scholarly skills to maintain the other quiet business she kept: trade of luxury items, including, but not limited to, the unsanctioned trading of Turkish opium for tea, and providing miscellaneous silk, art, and trinkets of any kind for the foreign traders.
Before she left, Jeh-je bent and kissed Xiang Gu’s cheek. She whispered, “I will think of you. Your Wu will protect you. Remind him that I did my part.” Xiang Gu nodded and her eyes filled with tears which she angrily wiped away.
“I, too, will remember.” She told her. Then Jeh-je was gone, and only the story remained.
It is an uncertain thing to have a Wu care for you; is it a gift or is it a curse? Do the attentions of a Wu lead you into more dangers or protect you from them? Xiang Gu thought about these things, but then she was a bright and resilient girl who thought about a lot of things. She found herself happy to be far from anyone who knew her, and her position of book keeper, gave her a new and pleasing status. She was asked by one of the lady workers to teach her how to add up her earnings, another asked her to write a love letter to a young man. In return they would tell her their own stories, each unique, they would bring her special treats, and include her in the few hours they had of ease. She had entered a world of family and friendship. She tried to forget the Wu.
But a Wu is like a sliver in your thumb, or a grain in a back tooth that your tongue cannot dislodge. Xiang Gu would have dreams that she could not hold onto, that troubled or frightened her but refused the light of day. Once she saw a snake in her room and smacked it with a broom. This one got away, but at least it never returned in that form. In moments when she did not expect to see a Wu at all, such as in her bath, she would catch his face in a mirror and watched as he blushed and fled, or seeing him departing from one of the girls’ rooms, as he boldly frowned at her and stalked away, she would wonder what he wanted.
“Who was that, just with you, Mei-mei?” She asked.
Mei-mei laughed. “Him? Still a boy! But he brought me gold. She flashed the small ear hoops still in her hand. “Maybe he will come back. Why do you ask?”
“He looks like someone from home.”
“Then maybe it is better to not be seen?”
“Probably.” Xiang Gu nodded thoughtfully. She wondered if he meant to been seen, though, or not. Once again, she reflected, he had seemed flushed, as if caught out.
Xiang Gu worked hard for the Madame. She not only felt grateful, but she loved the freedom to write and calculate, to use her mind. Eventually she saved enough earnings to purchase the narrow scrolls and ink for herself. There she wrote what few things she knew; the story of her childhood, the story of her brief marriage, the stories of each of the women with whom she now lived. She felt at peace, she was happy for the first time since before her mother died.
Eventually, yet again, the one certainty of life caught up with Xiang Gu: change. Some men came in a group one night. There were six of them, all sunburned and strong from their shipboard life. They were generous, and the girls liked them. They came back two more times before leaving port. Xiang Gu mostly stayed above in her little work alcove and sleeping room, but on their last visit, on her way to the kitchen, she happened to pass the door of young Mei-mei, as one of them departed. He was beautiful and exotic in his way, wearing silks that clashed, but accentuated his slim form, and he wore gold on his neck and arms, as if it were of no account. Xiang Gu ducked her head and moved swiftly down to the lowest level where she shut and bolted the kitchen door, for this one had looked at her in such a way, and her traitor body had responded. With her back to the door, she placed a hand over a heart that beat too quickly.
They came back periodically, but Xiang Gu stayed in her room with great care. One of these nights, Madame came to see her. She stood in the room and asked Xiang Gu to stand, nodding approvingly as she walked around her. Xiang Gu had grown tall and she held herself straight, her neck long and sinuous. She was not haughty, she was certain, and the certainty had grown, bit by bit, story by story, from each girl, from her own story, and showed itself in her posture and her eyes. Xiang Gu knew exactly who she was, and she had, consciously or not, made up her mind who she was going to be. Not. Property.
“Will you meet with him?” Madame asked carefully. She remembered this one’s story, and was ready, still, to let her choose. Xiang Gu spoke with much more certainty than Madame had anticipated. It made her smile.
“I will take tea downstairs. Will you join us?”
“It will be my pleasure to watch you take tea, my child.” And she left with the message curling around her mouth as she went to find the man, who thought he owned his world, but was mistaken.
Her second husband, the one who had captured her heart, once asked her as they rested in his bunk, sated and sweet, if she knew a Wu.
She raised herself on an elbow and looked at him with a smile. “Why would you ask me such a thing?”
“Because there was once a Wu who foretold my good fortune. He described you to a T.”
“What did he look like?” Her husband wrinkled his brow and thought.
“Strangely familiar.” He said at last.
As her son bent over her to adjust the covers, Xiang Gu saw her Wu enter the room, weaving and flowing through the shadows, as was his way. She lifted a finger toward him to stop him from moving closer and he stopped short, a look of intense curiosity on his face.
“My Son” she said, her voice husky with the pain of cancer. “You have done enough.”
“No, My Mother, you will be well again, let me care for you.”
She only looked at him, waiting, watching. At last, he finished with his pulling and smoothing of her coverlet and looked directly into her eyes. He saw something there so strange, that startled, he went to turn and look behind him. With an effort, she grasped his arm to prevent him, and her old strength rolled through her. He smiled to see it.
“Ah, Mah-ma, see, you will grow strong again.”
“No Son, you have been my guide and protector, but you are no necromancer. I will not allow it.” Her eyes were focused beyond him and she would not release his arm. “The time is correct for this. You have loved me well. Now go.” And her son, the Wu, turned and wove his way from the room, leaving himself at her bedside as he did so. She released his arm and her son turned slowly to see the empty air behind him. “Simply an error in timing, my darling child. You always had trouble with that.”
“But Mah-ma!”
“No! I have only one more wish.” And here she stopped to pull in enough breath to speak.
“What is it?” He asked gently.
She quirked up what she had left of a smile, “Teach your daughters to read!”
Some of this is history, a true story, if vague, contradictory, and hard to find (she was called by so many nick-names, you may not find her at first); read it if you like. Some of it is retold with a look to magic in the ordinary, not that Xiang Gu was ever ordinary.
She negotiated her own marriage with the pirate she chose. She settled for 50% of everything. She spent her own, early life as a pirate, at sea, with hundreds of ships, thousands of employees. She made rules that honored women, as well as the rights of her employees, and she maintained the right to exact death if crossed; a pirate to her core. She ended her life where she began it, in Canton, now owning a brothel and gambling place, having married thrice, borne four children and obtained amnesty from the crown, (The Qing Dynasty who gave up trying to capture them), for herself and her crews. She negotiated to keep her gains and to allow her crews to find employment in the Navy. She flouted tradition and won, but was oddly lost to history.
Xiang Gu was born in 1775, became a pirate around 1800, retired in 1810 and died at home with family in 1844. She happily raised that family on stories, including her own. She taught that to love life, was to embrace change. She also taught that to survive life was to bend just enough not to break.
And Then Gone
“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. (Don’t Hesitate)”
Mary Oliver
The Step Back
The Small Backward Step
Stepping back, I see the body in all its animal certainty, it’s imperative command. Biological, dirty, gorgeous. Fears and longing surging, coursing through electrons.
Stepping back, there is the mind in fluid rush, cutting new banks, plummeting from heights, leaping to conclusions. Prodding the body through survival.
Stepping back, consciousness rests, seeing all. Unjudging, edgeless, aware.
Stepping back,
Only stillness.
Letting Go
“The entire purpose of a clean and well-ordered life is to liberate you from the thralldom of chaos and the burden of sorrow. (…) What is wrong with a life which is free from problems? Personality is merely a reflection of the real. (…) Once you realize that the person is merely a shadow of the reality, but not reality itself, you cease to fret and worry. You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown.”
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Moon Tide
Story telling is a pleasure, it is that simple for me, as long as I don’t let other things color it. For instance, I do not wish to see myself as your teacher, that is of course unless you will promise to be mine as well. It is not simple entertainment either; it is more like the out going breath after a moment of awe. Not all of my stories do as I wish, some bend or break in the making and I share them anyway, hoping the listener will see the wabisabi in them.
I remind myself, that to dance well, you must dance. So here is a story; rain after a dry patch.
The Manifester’s Dilemma
I have always been a capable manifester. Hey, that’s how I got the gig as a Bard. I can imagine darn near anything, and that is over 50% of any story or song. I was never intentionally careless about the results either, I made sure to get to know my audience and what it was they needed to change in their world, before any performance. But it’s not the sort of thing that you can really control. Manifesting, really good manifesting, comes of its own accord, and even the best of intentions aren’t powerful enough to prevent the roll of creative energy, when it gets going.
By now, I bet, you’ve figured out what the problem is here. There is no way that I can ever settle down. Sometimes I need to get going fast, before the sun comes up, before I see what the results have been. They will know, the people who heard me speaking, singing, playing, flinging a story sky high. They will know. They will blame me, and rightly so. I am the cause.
The reason this is true, is that I am weak. I want so badly to be a part of their world, to stay for a while, to be accepted and loved for my creations, for myself. I will meet with a few of them and hit it off. The mothers and shop keepers, the kids and grandparents, the old crones and gaffers, and occasionally there will be a special someone who smiles so beautifully that it makes your heart ache. It makes me long for the things that I sing about, for the things that I make true just for them.
Right there is the hitch. You can’t really manifest your own world. If you did, well, you would go around being some sort of demi-god and greed would be your amulet. No matter how determined you might be to be the good guy, most humans (and I definitely fall into the ‘ordinary’ category) slip right into greed when they have too much power. You’ve heard the saying ‘drunk on power’? This is where it comes from. Imagine someone, kind of like me, who can make things come out just the way they want them, out of nowhere, and being able to say “l’ll just have the one, thanks…”. It is not going to happen.
Manifesting though, that happens. It just pours out of me when I least expect it. It is not at all like the performances that I plan, the ones where I am thinking about how these people in the pub, in this little village, will be drawn together and see a common cause, or find a deep need to care for their elderly, or teach music to their children, or anything highly useful and remarkably prosaic, like that. What does happen, is I will get an audience that I really like, one who seems to get who I am and gives me the impression that they honor me. They get generous and friendly, buying me a few too many, wanting me to try some concoction that only this place sells: “we’re famous for it”! The evening gets on and only a few of us are left around the fire and someone asks for something special. They want a ghost story, or a warrior’s tale, something with a witch and a beautiful woman, and I am doomed.
You imagine that I should be able to stop myself, to hold back and put them off, but that is not how it works. I am not the creator; I am a conduit. Otherwise I would have a big house on the hill and six fat babies and a cow and someone else to milk it. Instead, before I can remember all the other times, it starts. I open and the story just rolls out into the air, clear and new and vulnerable and intensely dangerous. Sometimes I sing and play, sometimes I whisper and shout, but I have no way to stop it. I wish I did.
The last time was just six months ago. I was in a place very like the one I am in now, with a small valley, leading up to a more mountainous area. Plenty of grazing, a built-up place that does trading with the cities that are closest, it had a school with two teachers, and a hat shop. It’s the hat shop that really makes it, I think. An ordinary little village makes its head gear at home; they knit and sew and felt out all the pretty utilitarian things a community might wear for themselves, but a place that has made the next level has a real milliner all its own. I made the mistake of going into that shop and ended up talking with the guy who owned it for several hours. I will never be able to forgive myself.
I sang songs of love that night. I don’t usually do that right away, but the place smelled of springtime and was full to bursting with courting couples. The milliner appeared to be on his own. He was a widower of two years, I was told by the bartender, and you might expect that he would be ready to find someone to be with, but he was alone. I was so caught up in the mood that I had set, that when he asked me to tell a romantic ghost story, I fell right in to it.
I smiled and took a slow sip of my wine, heady, not sweet but remarkably fragrant. The lights lowered by themselves, blowing out with the opening of a door, or guttering in their own wax. The fire flared. All they could see was my face, caught by the flickering flames beside me.
“There was once a man who lived in a small village. He considered himself to be remarkably fortunate, for he had found a profession selling cloth.”
(Close, but not too close, there is a trick to including listeners in their own stories).
“It pleased him, because his character was such that he loved to trade and sell; he was a friendly, chatty, sort. Because he was also fair and diligent, his reputation was good and he became a success, both in his own village and the surrounding ones as well. This allowed him to grow in the esteem of all who knew him, so when the prettiest, brightest, and feistiest young woman in the countryside went looking for a husband, she came looking for him. His name was Rath and hers was Reeta. They seemed made for each other.”
(You don’t look worried, and you are right, these stories can only be told once, with consequences. After that they are only the husks of stories: beautifully scented, but empty.)
“Being individuals of romantic nature, they spent the days of their courtship walking the paths and ranging in the hills of their valley and resting under trees. In short, they spent their time doing what lovers have always done: nothing and everything without the slightest complaint or expectation. Each day brought them closer and they discovered just how similar and how different they were.”
“Both of them were bright and curious about every little thing. They spoke of their neighbors’ lives, the workings of a caterpillar that spun his cocoon, the flavor of cheeses and of the sweet tips of grass pulled along the way. Where they differed was less obvious, Rath was very driven to work hard, as was Reeta, but she displayed, over and over a turn toward adventure, a way to expend her vast energy, that he did not understand. As simple as a race up a hill or leaning well out on a limb for the ripest fruit, Reeta put the tiniest bit of thrill in, wherever she could. When she found out that Rath held back from these things, she began to implore and then to pull him into her world. Mostly he only smiled at what he thought she would outgrow in time, but sometimes he let her have her way, and bemused, follow her on some inexplicable route to a cave or (in only the warmest of weather) out into the river to tred the rocky island there.”
“Eventually, but not before the years end, they were married. Rath may have expected Reeta’s vibrant wildness to fade after they began a family, but that was not to be. A year went by, then two more and no child was born. The baby things that her mother had given her were put away, but Reeta danced all the more, laughed, and ran as if nothing should stop her. Rath agreed in his heart, but he also knew this person, his sweet friend, and he worried. He worried that she danced a bit wildly, laughed a fraction too loudly, and ran with such abandon that he wished to simply reach out and sooth her. If only he could catch up.”
“It was on a Sunday ramble, a picnic carried up to the highest view of their village, that she fell. Just out of his reach, she stood and followed a butterfly, leaping as it fluttered up. When Rath saw the direction of her leaps, growing wilder and more energetic as the butterfly rose higher and higher, he called out. He jumped up and shouted as he ran. In the high grass the edges of the cliff were hidden.”
You can see how this was going; the solitude, deep sorrow, the ghost who renders his soul whole again. His playful lover returned to him for all time, so that his neighbors thought him mad. I did that to him, a lonely man who might have had a life, a future, a family if he had not had the bad fortune to meet me. I did it because of this ‘gift’, this ‘thing’ that uses me as its brush, its mallet. That is why I cannot stay.
He came and found me, after only a few days, nearly 30 miles away. I thought that he was going to kill me and I hardly felt anything about it. It would mean I could finally quit and find my own peace. He thanked me! He told me that he had never been happier, now that they would be together always. I felt like throwing up, but I took his hand and wished him well.
That is why I will be homeless until I die. I can’t make this my home, or you my lover. No. But I agree, if you come with me, the way you sing, the way you play that lute, the way you kiss, we might have half a chance.
What you See is What you Get
On any given day I may narrow my perceptions or slide right past the horizon. Today began with a floating island, and will end with a fire mountain. I am ready. Feel free to join me.
Experiences arrive and pass away. My senses detect them and my mind defines them. Nothing is concrete: without the senses, would anything have happened? I can not know.
What I allow opens the possibility. Why be narrow? Take a chance and float.
Untended Gardens
Asking myself for the source of inspiration, I rattle and spin. There is a stillness that sheds ideas. I put out a hand and play in it’s shadow.
Be still, be still.
Stone Harvest
The Myth of Trees 