The Wilderness
November 2019
We’re learning emotional survival skills here,
out in the wilderness.
Your best behavior is useless now.
Your goody-two-shoes,
I got this, stiff upper lip, staunch Democrat or Republican,
nighty-night, Oh, I’m fine,
best behavior bullshit doesn’t fly here.
Incandescent like that flame you’ve been holding,
keeping from going out,
tending the fire,
burning the midnight oil
and so tired.
Now, it’s out.
But, don’t cry.
Because you, you’re on.
Here in the wilderness we speak trees.
We build bonfires out of that flame.
We teleport from one state to the next without protection,
without the safety devices in place.
Here, we let it all hang out.
We eat it raw with the juice dripping,
thighs already greasy.
It’s too late for napkins.
Here, we’re way out beyond the perimeter.
Way, way out.
The air is rarified like deep space, like pure oxygen.
Nothing stains us.
There’s no stopping us now.
The center cannot hold,
the old ways do not apply.
No controlling the volume on the dial.
No putting a cap on it.
Here, we consider the turbulence fun.
Here, we smoke cigarettes when we pray.
And laughter…is straight up currency.
At the edge of the world,
we climb the mountain.
It gets harder the higher we go
but the views are better.
No lingering, flag-planting,
or back slapping at the top,
only the descent...
There are valleys yet to explore,
limestone caves, too.
Oceans await
our amphibious wisdom.
In the deep waters we swim,
wrapped in seaweed,
nothing to get stuck on.
Here in the dark,
we touch the depths and the mud sucks…
Everything sucks,
but we are long past resisting that discomfort.
We breathe in the cosmic kiss,
and eat pain for breakfast
full tongue, full throat,
gullet and stomach, intestines on through.
Digested. Digest it.
Until there is only sensation left.
Without meaning, without stories —
supplies of energy moving through the pieces
of what we once considered a self.
Knitting a new network of synapses
as something comes to life,
The Resurrection is sweet.
Yes, we are wracked.
We are had.
We are chewed up and spit out
over and over again here.
But, there is something like dancing in the writhing.
And there is something like ecstasy in the agony.
There is something like clarity here
where there was once confusion.
And though it may hurt, it’s worth it.
There is no other way.
This training is not for everyone.
You enlisted long ago before there was such a thing as time.
Be glad. Rejoice!
If you ever wanted out,
this is the key, the map, and the journey home.
Who else will walk it for you?
Now, that laughter isn’t mine.
And those tears, they could fill a river. Might as well…
What a curiosity! The heaving is the same in either case.
The source, no longer relevant.
Your pain is not so precious as you think.
Make an offering of it.
We accept that as currency, too.
Now the emotions are really more like the weather,
And we are no longer touching the mountain top
because we are the mountain.
And the water.
Now, we are the sensation of wetness
even as we are beyond it.
That non dual, non dual…beyond it.
Spiral staircase. Mind free.
Navigating like a pro now.
Without a care in the world.
Look, Ma, no hands!
I mean actually no hands.
No face. No nose. No body.
No…Me.
This is the meeting we’ve been waiting for.
This is the meeting of bliss and emptiness.
The reunion of what will be with what always was.
Right now ... and now ... and now ...
Undulating, tumbling.
We are not afraid of the dark here.
When the lights go out, we have other ways of seeing.
It’s not for nothing you took the leap.
You will find that practice pays
and your knife skills are now quite good.
Nothing tethers.
And nothing severs
this connection we have to the essence of experience,
sucking the marrow of the old, old bones.
And now — as it turns out — we can teach.
At the base of an old oak tree we set up shop.
At the edge of the wilderness
we intercept the intrepid.
An apothecary for the wayward.
An altar, an offering.
We sweep the place clean.
And the students,
they arrive before we’ve even hung up our shingle.
They come before the grand opening,
before the bells are rung.
Turns out they’ve been waiting all this time.
Waiting for us to show up.
And you shake your head because…
Well, because it’s been a Silk Road kind of adventure for you…
a falling off the flat earth,
walking unarmed into hostile territory,
back from the dead,
one giant step for mankind, kind of journey.
Something beyond words and eternally worthwhile.
Oh, yes.
When the students are gone
and the work is done, we fly.
Feel that lift off?
Feel those feet way off the ground?
Horizontal already.
A new kind of wilderness
not of this earth.
A glow like antigravity around the periphery.
All of it no longer matter, but light.
And the sounds, sounds that constellate things.
Rich and fertile sounds.
The Word.
Here there is only heartbeat and breath.
Bass and treble.
The sound of eyes opening and the dark receding.
A whisper comes from your lips, but they don’t move.
A note comes from your eyes as they glimmer.
Watching me. Mine watching you.
The seer and the seen…our gaze…
steady as we go.
