Below the Steps

 

With only a small, key-chain light, we slowly proceeded down the twisting stone stairs. The thought of snakes crossed our minds, but we were overly curious and felt safe. We made it to the bottom and there was a level stone area with a small site for offerings, with an ornamental umbrella and statues barely detectible.  Automatically, we sat on some boulders next to the moving water.  The sound of the stream merged with the other noises, ebbing and flowing rhythmically.  We quietly sat for a span in the mystique, blending into the darkness and felt the fullness of the place, neither of us speaking.  I didn't have any thoughts.  Eventually, our eyes became accustomed to the indirect light, with the fog rising in layers from the black water, contrasted with the dark silhouettes of the tall, twisted trees and vines suspended above, against the softly-glowing night sky.  This moonlit breathe looked like thick, white smoke ascending, and the black masses of tentacle branches with hanging vines appeared to slither, alive and aware.

They reached up from the earth’s dark depths, seemingly extending this nothingness in all directions, like roots feeding on the stars and fog.  I felt I had no reference point and was observing everything, including myself, without a fixed location, as if I had become the environment entirely, simply a floating, misty feeling.  Cryptically interlocking me with the scene before us as I knew this was a perceptual opening I had trained to reach on this journey, applying unerring effort beyond insurmountable odds without coveting results.  My recent view of the world collided in a resplendent train wreck, stretching into what felt like multiple lifetimes.  The fog moved high above, becoming low clouds drifting through the magical forest.  I felt my awareness descend gently back into my body where we sat on the boulders together.

We agreed that the small river was like our paths which had flowed through time and brought us there back together again, feeling deposited into this heart of experience, this current of eternity which we were caught in.  Then we discussed how everything had led up to sitting there in the darkness, under those trees, and that cycling current, returning to the source which we never truly departed from, flowing like water.  With the feeling of arriving somewhere which was final, yet fleeting and being constantly rediscovered in this dichotomy of perennially—renewing expiration.

Listening to the narrow river without seeing it gave us the sensation of traveling without movement.  We sat absorbing it all for another long block of stillness.  We were there for over an hour.  Then I was alerted; I got the sudden urge to leave as I felt there was something there in the dark, watching us or in the vicinity, aware of our presence as well.  Looking around, we didn't see anything, just faint white lines around the water, rippling, shimmering from other wet surfaces that reflected the moonlight.  We felt it best to return to the hotel as we didn't want to surprise anyone who would be coming down to seek privacy.

The Drop

 

  

Leaving for my home around sunset, I had the feeling I was headed for something ominous.  Having had a sense of approaching what I was not prepared for, yet despite the hazardous mood, I sensed an arrival was imminent and needed.  I was feeling porous and delicate in the dusk shade, as the waning sun seemed to cast a strange desperation on everything during this time of day.  I was overcome by this dark light that felt like it was siphoning me from behind the mountains with dim, stretching clouds.  My eyes felt feeble and glazed over from that light.  Something shifted deep within and I felt a pressure signaling in the distance.  I walked up the metal staircase and reached my apartment.  Everything seemed darker still, and I went in to sit down after feeling so overwhelmed.

 

I had returned from driving a friend to an errand and felt a tugging sensation since leaving her house.  The setting sun kept feeling like it was pulling me along with it, reeling my solidity away.  Now that it was nearly night, this enchanting riptide felt like it was activated and gaining extreme momentum.  After sitting for a while and absorbing the darkness, I started experiencing surges through my body, starting low and rising into my head.  This felt like long hair growing out and flowing as my eyes were full and heavy.  I became concerned with them and went to the bathroom to look into the mirror to examine myself.  My reflection was startling; my eyes were very shiny and black, seeping and leaking this darkness that was somehow stretching through me.  I had the profound feeling I should not watch myself for I appeared as a stranger.  Looking closer at my broken oily eyes, I detected that there was no color; they had fully dilated and would not contract.  I felt something build again and the pressure of it was paramount, pushing me from all sides, closing in as I struggled to breathe.  Uncertain, I considered calling for help, but didn't want to be assumed crazy or drugged.  The sensation was terrifying, as if something secret and profoundly powerful was being revealed, which was required but threatened my preservation.

 

I went to lay on my couch, my internal hold began to vanish and I became immobile but tearing through my thoughts with great speed and clarity.  Feeling pulled out of myself in streams and turning to my side, there was a tall, overgrown garden in my living room.  The mounds of interlaced, tall grasses looked like shiny metallic hair in the dim light, gaining dimension and paralleling my doubt, I thought strangely.  There were masses of other foliage that had a dark, soft density like a thick forest that led into the distance, yet appeared manicured and formally arranged.  My apprehension grew and I was gradually certain of my destabilization.  Nothing was comforting.  I felt feeble and lost being there.  It was silent and I felt alone, but also as if I were being watched by someone in the shadows.  The light had a distinct, iridescent quality that seemed to enhance the forms.  They had the appearance of being painted, except for the shining, thread-like blades of grass that now reflected various subtle pastel hues.  Yet they seemed to glow independently, emitting unique spectrums assigned to each species into that uncomfortable dark light.

 

I suffered the undeniable sensation that I was leaning over the edge of a chasm, as if I were about to fall like I sometimes experienced in dreams.  The feeling built again of something pressing, and my breathing again became difficult as my heart accelerated.  I had the sensation of falling, but had to correct my association as it felt more like being drawn by something magnetic or blown by a wind, but there was the sense of my location being altered in movement as if plunging or being in a moving vehicle.

 

Then abruptly pulled at an alarming speed to another place, my surroundings seemed to collapse inwardly and dissipate, crashing into a fluidic emptiness.  I was suspended and there was an illuminated spherical area as my view.  Recalling everything leading up to the event, I couldn't sense my body as I panicked to return, sensing I was on the verge of annihilation.  Falling inward, my physical form seemed to have disappeared with my previous surroundings.  Floating in this curious expanse which felt like it had substance, I could only wait observantly.  I felt the alignment of something powerful in the vicinity and witnessed the warmth of a golden-glowing orb situated in front of me.  It looked translucent, like amber, but had a shine, like golden light unique to it alone.  The sphere of gold had what appeared to be writing etched in it.  My view was immobilized.  I wasn’t familiar with the inscribed language, but it appeared to be indicating something profound and seemed to be ancient.  I was paralyzed by the feeling I received, as if perceiving beyond my capacity and then lost to myself, as my sense of entirety severed.

The Passage

 

 

 

I decided to camp with two friends high in the mountains near the Continental Divide.  We got together late that night because we had had difficulty meeting earlier.  They arrived at my home and were still eager to start out.  We reached the mountain around eleven and began hiking.  One friend, Tom, had brought an array of items for camping, as if he were packing for a long vacation.  He had even included firewood, despite the fact that we were surrounded by it.  After about a mile, Tom began loudly complaining into the dark wilderness about how he could not keep walking burdened by so many belongings.  He was already exhausted from the hike.  Our mutual friend Jason and I began laughing at him and offered to carry more of his things.  We stopped to regroup for a while and distribute his materials.

 

 

It was surreal up on the mountain, with the moon lighting the evergreen foliage that surrounded us, evoking a feeling of permanence and comfort.  We hiked for a while longer and set up our tents by a small stream which could be heard trickling in the silent woods when we sat motionless.  We started a fire and I began feeling strange.  Something in me was drifting off somehow and seemed to merge with my surroundings, like a dream taking over.  I watched in awe a large pine tree illuminated by the campfire light in front of me.  It had thick, old, rust-colored bark that formed strange, mysterious-looking, twisted shapes.  Then one of the large pieces vibrated.  It visually moved quickly and I felt a burst centered in my brow which twitched along with the bark’s wiggling motion.

 

I sat back and looked around. The campfire was dug into the earth like a crater and had been casting shadows around the tree which affected my vision, making me see things, I thought initially.  Then I felt watched and vulnerable, so I sat quietly while the unusual feeling returned and developed.  I was lying back against the mountain and watching the fire from another small, crater-like depression.  Jason broke the stillness, saying that we should go have a smoke after setting up the tent, so we decided to accompany him.  When we got in there, we sat back and watched the smoke rise to the top of our small, fabric cave.  I reclined, feeling overtaken; something was approaching that was imminent and terrifying, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.  I actually heard something of monumental proportion crashing through the woods at an epic speed.

I was huddled against a corner.  Jason inquired if I was okay.  I asked if he had heard that noise.  He said he did hear something and then it seemed to overtake me again.  There was a massive, destructive machine tearing down the mountain.  I curled up, ready to be torn apart.  It sounded as if it had leveled all of the trees and had a million wheels, making it tank-like, or perhaps some legendary tornado sweeping through.  I sat up and looked at Jason and Tom.  They had been doing something similar.  They rose, exclaiming that they felt very strange now, as well.  We all resided there completely still for almost an hour, which seemed to stretch endlessly.

 

 

I felt suspended in watery space and everything became dark.  There was nothing, and yet I was there, watching silently, without my body, floating.  I was thinking without words, purged by silence, and watching as the darkness moved within itself like waves, and something shifted in the blackness.  A mass of some kind was moving before me.  It was a giant, dark sphere, floating from my left side and drifting over into a large, white ring, slowly summoning the appearance of a solar eclipse with encompassing corona.  The ring appeared to be composed of white flowery structures that resembled water lilies.  They seemed to be made of some strange mineral deposit, I noticed, and the black sphere floated through them, absorbed back into the ambient darkness.

 

 

Within this, something storm-like emerged and I saw a person standing on the mountain, holding an item in their hands like some kind of offering, reminiscent of a Mayan priest atop a pyramid.  There was a strange, purple light exuding from the clouds and then, on the mountain, I saw a standing dragon-like beast.  It reminded me of the large, stone lion or Foo dog statues from China.  It sat watching me under the viscous, violet sky.  I passed by it and witnessed an array of breathtaking artistic images and sculpted models -- which seemed to express the place and simultaneously the state I was in -- spewing from some enigmatic source before me in the darkness as I watched, captivated.  They seemed to be inspired by every culture.  Some became unfathomable and alien-looking as the sequences progressed.  I felt I had seen the underlying intentions, the abstract visions of artists throughout eons and beyond, symbolic expressions from all corners of existence pertaining to sentient beings.

 

My energy coagulated inside a dim dome structure which was occupied by a ghostly gathering of luminous people whom I realized were indescribable members of my fate.  They were somehow predecessors to this path, possessing a wisdom I would eventually amalgamate.  Yet this also felt as if we had already died.  They silently propelled me to continue as they softly observed me hovering above them.  Although it was not yet my time, there was a definite calling there.  I began to see something perfect and complete in that darkness.  Feeling I was merging with it entirely.

 

 I then descended back into my anchoring body when one of my friends spoke again.  We all looked at each other and I fell back into my vision.  Soon, I was terribly hot and had to exit the tent.  I felt like I was burning up and began sweating profusely

 

Crawling over the ground, feeling how cool it was, somewhere in a parallel scene, someone was calling.  I saw them there before me; the setting appeared as a front yard of an unfamiliar home.  It was dark, as well, and they could see me seeing them through the overlapping woods.  They yelled my name and waved, attempting to solidify my attention.  I turned, hearing it being called from behind me as well, and saw Jason looking out of the tent.  He came out and asked me if I was feeling all right.  Drenched in perspiration and unable to discern what was real from who had been calling me and from what location, I crept over the cool earth, asking for assistance from it.  It seemed to understand, for I realized our planet was truly our maternal source of physical existence, conscious of our awareness, somehow leading me to a purifying spot away from camp, where I rested.

 

 

After losing the parallel world I was crossing into, I went back into the tent shortly after feeling nourished by the earth.  I stretched and drank some water, which calmed my nerves and cleansed my erratic sight.  We all sat in silence for another hour.  I didn't remember falling asleep, but felt I had been laying there motionless for an entire lifetime, in a trance soothed by darkness, without any reference or limits.  Suddenly, we were illuminated by a most peculiar event.  It was first teal, then blue, creating a radiance which commanded our attention into the immediacy of the elusive moment at hand.  It was as if some mythical creature had flown into the tent and spread through our bodies, filling us with some revitalizing elixir, leaving us spellbound.

 

Then the blue waves seemed to wrap around everything, coating us with some strange, powerfully bright-glowing gel.  It appeared that the vision had continued yet the night had ended, and I was more enhanced than ever before in my life.  I felt something mysterious and powerful surge through me, sending me into a war-like state, yet feeling complete and calm, oozing this power, as if I had been reborn into a boundless organism.  It was the temporary window of enthralling twilight preceding the morning sun.

 
 

I had forgotten my familiar mind, becoming only a viewing sensation.  I was materializing from an observant feeling back into a physical vehicle, but retaining the sense of being firstly that fluid illumination which occupies the bodily vessel.  With this emptiness as my primary vantage, the physically challenging became effortless.  I sat up and had only a mild sense of having done so.  It was as if I had levitated.  I bounced out of the tent with ease, as if I was still dreaming.  Tom followed and stared at me strangely, asking to see my tattoos, which appeared to glow suspended with a strange, inner luminescence of their own in conjunction with the stunning blue light.  I found the state to be comfortably beyond my ability to accurately describe.

 

 

After noticing the quality he had indicated, I bounced around the woods a little bit and ran up the side of a tree a couple of times to a height of six or eight feet to verify that I was able to continue vertically.  I came down after I reached the first branch but didn't fall.  Actually sticking to the tree somehow, my feet felt like they dug into everything like mud, gaining extra resistance with some sort of energetic-projecting barb near my heel and calf muscle.  But they were lighter and I felt weightless.  I ran around for a little while, testing this out, and felt like I was dreaming in an old martial arts movie, running up and off the trees, momentarily stalling time and gravity.  I had the fleeting sensation that I was sweeping energy off the earth’s surface and using it as a covering, which allowed me to merge with the tree, with this skimmed energy as a transitional, puncturing cleat of sorts, displacing the surface energy to traverse upon as an adhesive element.

 

 

Tom watched and stared dumbfounded and then became sick to his stomach.  "Look!" I said as I leapt through the woods, bounding as if I had on spring-shoes.  I ran around a bit more and decided to leave, to errantly tread deep into what was calling me from that mysterious forest, waiting out there, seeing this all as a prelude to something limitless.  Jason abruptly stopped me as Tom retired, making me promise I would return.  I hesitated and knew I wanted to leave everything behind, never coming back, returning to the mystery I had experienced which was now pounding in my heart, to be forever on my way away from everything known.  Assuring him I would return for them later in the morning, I headed off, swallowed by life, jumping over various logs, through the trees, until I found an enormous, old pine about a mile away.

 

 

The mountain forest was prehistoric and the twilight hung in it with a glowing mist which I found exuberating to breathe.  Everything had a sheen and pulse, united but independent.  I effortlessly climbed high into the tree, hung my pack on a broken branch, and looked over the surrounding woods.  It was about fourty feet up to where I was sitting, but I could see the entire surrounding mountain range.  The trees seemed to emerge from the darkness as the dawning light embraced them, like dark tides washing away from an alien shore which they were unveiling.

 

 

Smoking my pipe high in the treetop, I was surrounded by blackness again, bodiless.  Next I saw myself pinpointed across a vast expanse, closer, until I could identify my exact location drawn upon in both directions by my shared perspectives.  The nothingness became outer space, and I observed from a point which seemed to be around the moon.  There was the earth before me, then, with forceful waves, the atmosphere and the panoramic mountain range and the particular tree I was in.  Having traveled somewhere beyond this world, I drank some water from my pack and felt that pursuing and reflecting that unedefineable beauty was what it meant to be a warrior.  Yet this traversing was our intrinsic nature, as the, earth, while unexplored in that light and anything but mundane, was merely a transitional station, I was inspired by the realiztion that there was so much more here and beyond. 

 
 

I had the undeniable sense of discovery of an elusive path I sought in the depth of this venture.  This path became myself merged with my environment, delivered in departure.  It seemed years had transpired, all condensed within that voyage that consisted of a mere several hours.  Everything that occurred which I witnessed had a unique, inclusive totality which felt like multiple, linked lives.  The world before me was so mysterious and magical-looking.  I felt I was lost on some unknown planet.  All of the trees seemed aware.  I felt them buzzing as if they were emitting harmonious waves of energy, enduringly alive.  I sat there for a while, watching the thick, high altitude clouds fly through the cerulean sky, and then climbed down and walked back to the camp, marveled by the miraculous power of life.

 

 

It felt strange to be encased in a body.  I realized that the giant machine noise was generated by the stream beside us.  The translated sound of it had somehow created that horrible crashing which had catapulted me into that visionary episode.  I sat outside the tent until Jason came out.  I waited on a large, fallen tree branch.  He said that Tom still felt sick and had fallen asleep.  He was hungry and asked me to take him to town.  The walk back was long.  Every stone embedded in the soil revealed an ancient story of historic formation and emergence from deep within the earth.  They all glimmered like massive jewels, seemingly abundant with esoteric tales.  We reached the car and traveled to the nearby town to eat.  After a short time, I said we had to return to extract Tom who was likely still sleeping.  Jason agreed, and when we reached the parking lot of the mountain, he said he was too exhausted to return.  He gave me a gift to express his appreciation that I would assume responsibility and seek Tom alone.

 

 

I thanked him, enjoying the prolonged experience, absorbed in silently observing the unfamiliar beings before me.  Those trees still seemed aware of my presence.  The rocks and clouds all had the same underlying force acting through them, joining us, this link of spirit, operating to illustrate that elusive quality I had actively sought, compounding into my view so that I may never forget the truths revealed to me there, presented by such unknown beauty.  I felt light on the interior, like a child playing, yet heavy and massive, now physically moving swiftly over the winding, wooded path, through the shaded forest, rejuvenated as my bid for this passage had been accepted.  Some hikers passed by and appeared to fear the state I found myself in, yet were also attracted to it, and returned my greeting in a guarded manner.

 

 

Soon, I was crossing the small stream and I spotted the small, red tent sitting peacefully nearby in a patch of hot sun.  I unzipped it and found Thomas sleeping deeply, like a baby, and had to laugh as he was unknown to being there alone.  Shaking him gently, he woke and exited the tent seeking the waning morning.  I took the tent down and again carried his possessions down the trail as he realized he had lost so much time.  He could not drive down the mountain, so I did for him, back to my apartment a couple of hours away.  He felt better by then and left.  I entered my dwelling joyfully, feeling an uplifting empty abundance as my view of the world had indeed changed, inaugurating a new era, alive and eager to know what awaited me until that day when we actually enter the forest and never return. 

The Flood

 

 

It was always in the summer time, when I found myself in some strange but familiar place and state of being. I remember seeing complete darkness and feeling it as myself erased. There was the effect that I was floating in space forever in an instant without a body and then I was there again watched by the familiar omnipotent presence. It was dim, but I detected something. The violet light seemed to escape from some other room. My surroundings were reflective reminding me of polished metal, or coated in fluid like I had seen when viewing the lizards. This overlapped everything making it feel like the same event fragmented through my life, now continuing seamlessly.

 

I could feel somebody studying me and they were akin to my awareness on an unspoken level. Thoughts and feelings were like words spoken. They knew exceedingly what was known to me. In some manner I understood exactly what they were doing and had been aware of it entirely before it had occurred. They had a test for me. It was some circumstance completely befitting which I comprehended without knowing, this inherent candidacy. The trial was to reveal something, to formulate a precise response while undergoing what I can only describe as an internalized, critical evaluation prevailing some perennial enigmatic inauguration.

 
 

There was some mistake, some detour to escape, as everything began to crash around me, lost in a flattening maze, being driven as an extension of this force. There was no way out of the labyrinth I was in and there was no chance through or back. I felt extremely apprehensive and undone. Facing this inevitability felt like it pressed and split me into infinite divisions. Filling me with anxiety, filtering and imprisoning assuring that time had indeed run out. The inexpressible pressure applied and released itself as I surrendered and my subdivided components all joined, becoming aware of their unity. I wondered what I had been doing roaming this setting so far away and realized it was an internal place that I had been taken to, and I fell into a grasp of something immense which had plucked me like some plant, in a vast field being harvested my memory still rooted. There was a sense of a missing reference where my familiar view had dwelt with what had been before a sense of a beginning and an end. Now it seemed I was so far away yet so close to myself.

 
 

Then I realized time had not ceased and was no longer applicable. I lost myself again to the eroding process of contact with this experience and whatever was directing it until I was merely another facet of this nothingness and then, I was somehow completely liberated, forgotten to myself entirely. I knew without a doubt that I had seen beyond the limitations of my being, somehow traversing beyond my capacity, I detected that this removed facet was the objective of the examination. Returning to my conventional state and assimilating this knowing through recall, I sensed my entirety in this exalted quarantine and realized that delivering this message back was of the utmost importance.

 

I felt completely transcendent and aware of identifying with the underlying link in relation to those observing as simply composing one essence occupying all forms . We were limitless and undefined, saturated with an emptiness and abundant unknowable mysterious beauty deserving of our allegiance. The overwhelming feeling of being complete and at home overtook me. I saw some outlines of silver and purple shapes in my mind, but could not translate the impressions I had into coherent imagery. They remained distorted silhouettes, powerfully lit and merely strange reflective impressions expelling the cold darkness beckoning me further. Then suddenly the observers seemed stunned and I was fully present in that place of knowing with them, fully lucid, indistinguishable from everything else, as they were. Everything was over I was remembering myself as an empty impression, like these tantalizing navigators of time and space surrounding me from both past and future positions. I remembered I was a child sleeping in my house in the woods in bed, knowing if I could remember this with my sleeping body, then I could bring everything there to return. Watching as this nothingness for myself to awaken to - what I had been and suddenly, the place from which I viewed coincided with my sleeping body. My awareness infiltrated from the position of observer to observed, as I panicked from a primal level, uncertain as to the accuracy of my individual existence, the certainty of the solid world and self I assumed to know.

 
 

∞∞∞∞∞∞

 
 

I felt I was the transition between the two states I had been divided between and yet was existing in those states as well. The witnesses had subjected me to these modes of being I was experiencing, as I was seeing myself still being watched by them through the layers. I opened my eyes pretending to be asleep, yet was still watching myself as if observing in a dream. Terrified, I stealthily poised my body to spring forward to run, sending an unforeseen element into the mix I found myself immersed in. My body fled as fast as it could like a fugitive, feeling trespassed upon, subjected to this process and it was dark again. I awoke outside in the front yard and could see if anything was coming, no angles or corners to watch and repeating “ they’re aliens”, when I realized it was our house and property. There was no barrier between realms it was a dream awakened, beyond comprehension and yet experienced. The masked being behind the mannequin world stared through the night. I felt its eyes as my own and sensed it beneath the guise of the familiar place I had once known. Nothing was familiar. The other side was right there before us, within, and I felt like a door left open which I pined to shut or step through permanently so as to secure my sense of what was real - permanently establishing a view of comfort and finality with a comprehensible boundary, yet I was physically knowing the futility of this insistence.

 
 

This didn’t change anything really. My heart was beating fast and powerfully, drumming in sync with the earth, conjured into cosmic percussion. As I was gasping for air, looking around, the night breathed with me and I felt illuminated by the immeasurable darkness, like it was mirroring me under a spotlight. The black sky felt like a massive pupil observing from infinite stations. I still felt skeptical that I wasn’t dreaming. As easily as I had arrived here, I knew I could vanish or be summoned. Some part of me was solely concerned with evading the totality I had glimpsed and the beings responsible for soliciting that accrued position while another side of me had found its calling. I sensed their advantage was in acting beyond this physical side and hoped with all my might that I was anchored here safe and unavailable. Yet I still felt them watching through what we shared.

Two Lizards

 

 

 

I recall being awakened in the evening by my mother.  I sensed that she was very excited by something and I felt deeply attentive.  The permeating light around us had a soft, distant atmospheric quality, casting an indirect intensity, which enveloped everything like some strange lenses had been unknowingly placed over my eyes.  This quality felt natural and more familiar than my usual view and this mildly frightened me.  Our surroundings became shiny as if it had just rained.  The viscous shadows held a particular mystery and within them seemed to be portals to unknown worlds waiting and watching, all unique, connected and expanding beyond visibility.  She grasped my small hand and said she had something to show me.  We walked together, down into the darkness between our tall hedges in front of a short cinder block wall.  Everything exuded a violet hue.

 

 

She made sure she had my attention and then indicated with her finger to carefully direct my eyes to the top of the block wall adjacent.  Focusing, I was lured by the sight of two lizards engaged in violent combat.  One had succumbed to the other and was in the last throws of life, facing an apparently inevitable end.  The prevailing lizard had it pinned down with his jaws closed tightly around the neck and head.  There was an impersonal air of ruthless necessity in the eyes of them both.  The same look of detached endurance and surrender shared, despite the differences in their positions of victor and victim, neither abandoned themselves as they stared relentlessly into the world before them.

 

 

This cold look shocked and jolted me as my body trembled, experiencing a rippling sensation from their gaze into and back from my own.  The battle continued for some time as we observed silently.  I found myself alternating between the pair, experiencing the conflicting roles, which merged in this epic struggle of predator and prey.  Then after sometime, the slightly smaller lizard could fight no longer and was overcome entirely, suffocating as his throat was clutched mercilessly, the fittest prevailed. 

 

 

The shadows and configurations of the branches in the surrounding hedges composed random organic shapes, expanding into greater depths, soliciting the effect of staring down endless corridors. The more I looked at them, the darker everything became. 

 

 

Then my attention was returned to the animals.  The living one looked like he was kissing the expired rival.  He had his mouth placed right near the dead lizard’s mouth and he sat there motionless for a short while, in a restful meditation.  I waited and watched unable to break away.  The scales along the lizards’ bodies each held smaller scenes of their own as well, all within the different parts, subsequently dissecting further inwardly becoming worlds of their own sort.

 

 

They were long drably colored lizards, shaped like snakes, with small limbs and smooth shiny skin.  Their bodies had dark bands, light bellies and strange small black and white patches that looked like paint brush strokes against their gray bodies.  The shine on the scales of the living lizard were like his eyes, they emitted a glow.  The deceased lizard’s scales and eyes were dull.  The corpse slumped, merging more with the darkness than the other, now becoming difficult to discern.  He blended slowly into the background depths, reduced until he was just another shadow.  The living lizard changed his calm praying position as he opened his mouth, paused and to my amazement began to swallow the head of the dead reptile.

 

 

Again I felt something within me move and continued watching.  The head was swallowed and the shoulders were next.  They took a while because of the arms protruding and so again there was a pause after another timeless span.  I remained shocked and removed.  Both observing and feeling observed.

 

 

The cannibal lizard swallowed in phases, moving laterally to encompass the corpse with greater ease.  The legs were reached and it continued until there was only the tail left.  It made strange subtle movements as it finished eating the dark mass.  The tail looked like a long tongue sticking out of the devouring lizard’s mouth.  The lizard had been consumed and then the shiny glow and violet light dissipated as the gray mist turned everything dark again.

 

 

The next I remember it was sunny and warm.  I was out front in the afternoon light.  The lizard I held said something to me.  At first he was startled, then he felt vulnerable being held and became calm and connected, soothed by my grasp.  My focus was arrested as I felt a longing to move to another side beyond an expanse knowing that the lizard was conveying to me that it wanted to be across the yard.  I set him on the sun heated stone wall and walked off into the bright busy world.

Purity

 

A. 1979 - 2012


     A person once close to me recently died, someone which encouraged me to share.  I remember her still intending to heal despite her wounds and always reviving the pursuit of love and light. 


I was young, just starting to drive a car when she phoned me, something ominous instantly shifted broadcasted through her environment.  Over the phone, I could hear someone yelling at her while she cried to me about his aggressive behavior.  The man picked up the line and a vile surge traveled upon his words, which terrified her and put me on edge.  He said many vulgar things intending to subdue her.  I could see he was morbidly imbalanced and had a twisted need to harm.  This relationship stemmed from her childhood in which he had been extremely abusive.  She had confided this to me years before.  After the attack ceased my friend asked me to come get her, which I did as soon as possible.  I thought I was going to have to physically protect her; the man had been so threatening when we spoke and had such a profoundly violent history.

 

     The abuse was never resolved and he always held himself over her with this terrifying command to comply.  As the memory was tilled, she felt ugly and horrible all over again, and I saw that this wound, despite the years which had passed, was still menacing and maddening to her.  She suddenly said she wanted to go see her grandfather’s grave, which sounded irrational to me.  However, I sincerely wanted to help her feel better, so I agreed and drove her to the adjacent city some distance away, to an enormous cemetery along the highway, which I had never even noticed because it was predominantly blocked by mature trees and had no vertical headstones.  When we entered the grounds, I stopped the car and noticed then that there were no upright markers.  She was still crying hysterically.  I remained detached but shared her pain, I hoped she would feel supported or eased by a sense of being understood at least.   I exited the vehicle and waited outside for her.

  

After a few minutes, she had collected herself enough to talk and joined me outside.  "Where is he buried?" I asked, hoping to help her look.  "I don't know," she replied through thick tears.  "Well, you must remember the general area.  We stopped here; is this the region?" I asked hopefully.  "I don't remember.  I was still a child when he died," she sadly replied.  "He could be anywhere. But he loved me and saw me differently.  I can feel him watching," she said.  "Well, we should just start looking," I suggested, and scanned around the vast grounds.

The grass had been mowed all summer and was unfortunately covering all of the stones as the clippings left had mounded over them all.  I would have thought it to be an empty field had she not told me of the markers set flush against the earth.  Something strong replaced the sense of impotency I felt, overtaking me through my vantage point and I momentarily saw outside myself from another’s perspective, viewing my body.  There was a darkness around myself and a push, which I took in retrospect as an external influence altering an internal reciever.  Viewing this instance was like the experience looped through time for me.  I saw myself looking through that day and remembered stopping in the field as I received that pressure, wondering what was observing.

 

While she waited, I stepped in a strange manner onto the grass next to the car, I walked in an unusual arc, and stopped randomly in the field.  Almost independent of my own will, my foot kicked and a chunk of sod flew.  I thought I would start there and hopefully find a stone to reference.  I realized it was, indeed, a marker, which seemed like a great beginning.  I calculated that I would begin searching left to right alphabetically parallel to this headstone until we reached their family name.  I removed the grass from the smooth stone and fell back with a rush in my solar plexus.  It was her last name. Then a sudden chill moved through my entire body, despite the intensely hot and arid summer air.

 

     Rising suddenly, I asked her his first name.  It matched the marker.  Not knowing which area of the cemetery and even where any stone was located, we drove right to the spot.  In an entire, uniform empty field of grass, the one area I kicked was his grave.  We couldn't even fathom the situation, the impossible odds.  Skeptical of ghosts or spirits, I looked at her, somehow knowing something had certainly directed me, aware that an unseen force I could not comprehend was right before us.  She looked shaded, although she was in the sun, and said she needed to be alone with him.  We spent the rest of the day talking in a secluded garden.

 

Looking back, I realize that she was aware of his presence, and spoke directly to his spirit.  He revealed to us both through his response to her, that, despite the emotions and effects which arise, we are pure and our essence is untainted by the world which appears to distort and harm us. This part of our beings understood.