Pathways

I have thought of strange things lately. How the Holy Men of Sengal seek out their ecstacy in complete silence, that in Indonesia you can talk to the dead if you speak backwards. There is an African Asante myth of how their tribe pleaded with God to stop death. This wish was granted for three years. In exchange, there would no longer be births. The people finally begged God to bring them darkness again because the absence of new life was too great of a price to pay.

There are primordial legends everywhere that strike at the heart of taboo's or moral messages that punishes our failures as human beings with magic, misfortune or some act that is attributed to evil spirits.

Life, and its decided opposite, Death, touches upon all the paradoxical elements of our existence in our Earthy Manifestations. In fantasy and its hard truths, the reality of our journey rests upon the wonderment of our humanity, its fragility and strength.

Nothing is as simple as lifting a flower to your face, taking in its fragrance, and touching its stem to understand where it all begins and ends.

Even springtime has its kinks.

We only pretend to live out in the open. Everyone has something to hide. How many times have you been stripped down to your bones? Head, hands, arms, foot, heart? Death is still there, drifting, shivering, a wind so strong that it can pull up your skirt.

There are precarious destinies, the gaps between the sheltered abyss and its imaginary bridge.

All these artifices are structurally unsound and emotionally impossible to predict or invent. Evens words like these just fill their holes.

Australian anthropologists tell another ancient story. Two men, Moon and Djarbo, traveled many miles together and eventually fall mortally ill. Moon wished to revive them but Djarbo believed it was trickery and rejected his friend's attempts. They both perished but Moon managed to bring himself into a new body every month, triumphing over Death. The tribe chose to follow Djarbo's example. The legend claims this is why humans continued to die while the moon still shines brightly.

The beauty of life is lush with forgetfulness. We do not have to recollect, move within a named reality or dance beside the eternal. We can simply sleep within sleep, put our shoes on one by one, and point our heart's compass in any direction. All those ghosts in the machinery, when we divide ourselves into a body, spirit or soul, are assumptions that can be argued either irrationally or scientifically.

I chose instead to let my memories glide. I have no patience for anything that is not my own Truth. I wish to wrap myself into a skin that is cut from both the darkness and the light. It is much like being a thief who cannot decide what to steal. Destiny seems to be emptiness and abundance all in the same breath. No one can walk all over my Heaven.