We begin

as solids

sure forms of resilient clay

Knowing only what our material knows

Being only as material is

We are certain

We grow

We reach out

We wrap ourselves around

We fold ourselves into

Encircled

And permeated

Greater, we become

less whole

We become

ephemeral as webs

The fabric of our being eaten away

By loss

By grief

By doubt

By fear

By trial

By acceptance

By love

We find our limit

even as we are yet

solid enough

supple enough

We sense in our own material

that our material cannot hold

We end

unmoored,

we are blown away,

tattered

we calcify

and shatter

we become a hole in

another's web

I keep seeing her face

The way she looked at me

Her eyes

Empty

The void

Gravid

I keep seeing her face

Her eyes open

They don't see me

Like glass

Empty

Pregnant

Nothing

I keep seeing her face

There is a room behind her

Full of...

She stands in the door

Does she keep them in

Does she keep me out

Does she

Keep

Us

Apart

I keep seeing her face

It follows me

She follows me

Reflections

Everywhere

.

You know

that time

I fell?

It was

because

I jumped

Three ducks are crashing around violently on the water. Two males, lunging repeatedly at one female, lunging away. Their conversation goes like this:

Her: LEAVE ME ALONE

Them: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

Her: LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE

Them: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

Her: DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT

She launches herself into the air and flies off. After a brief squabble, the males take off after her, all three screaming at each other. Moments later all three come crashing down again, not far from where they took off. Their conversation resumes. Then she gets away, for a little while. Confused, the males turn on each other. Their conversation goes like this:

Him: YOU SUCK

Him2: YOU SUCK

Him: YOU SUCK

Him2: YOU SUCK SUCK SUCK

Him: FUCK YOU

Him2: FUCK YOU I’M GONNA FUCK YOU UP

They catch sight of her again. Still fighting, they whack, stomp, and peck each other, screaming, in their rush to descend upon her again. Their conversation resumes:

Her: GUYS SERIOUSLY

Them: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

Her: I’M FUCKING STARVING HERE

Them: NOT RELEVANT

Her: SHIT FUCK FUCKITY LEAVE ME THE FUCKING FUCK ALONE YOU FUCKS

Them: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

And I think:

Everything is like this.

I sung you once, I sung you twice, I'll sing you three times more.

Oh, my dearest, honest breath, can you not leave that alone?

I don't know what you hope to find there, what you couldn't find before.

Oh, my heart, my starveling brain, be quiet. Be still. Come home.

What does it matter, truly, if the sparrows find you gone,

If your shadow never falls there, if the seasons have moved on,

If you came here for a reason but the reason's been withdrawn,

Oh, my little, ugly faith, my cold and lonely bone.

The sun won't fall. The rain won't shine. The dust won't grind to stone.

We do it the same way now as we did in my grandmother's day, and in the days before that when her grandmother was a little girl. There are fewer of us now, and fewer still who remember or who heard the stories from anyone who did; remembering is so important, but we only have what we have so we make do. It's harder, but we can make it work the old way. If we work hard at it. If we're careful. If we can silence our deep selves for long enough. That's what is hardest these days. Now, at this time, when so much is focused on the individual, and on the most transient aspects of individuality, most people don't know how to find the deep self. Most people don't even know it exists, much less how to find it. How to hold it, how to keep it still, how to force it to listen, is a skill that doesn't come easy even for us who have grown up with the knowledge of it, for whom it was never a mystery. For most, how a person can hold in awareness awareness itself-- well, it doesn't work, does it? The observer can't step outside themselves and become the observed, not without becoming another observer. Put that way, I can see it-- it does seem mysterious. Mystical even. But for us, we've always known that we are already outside ourselves. This individuality, this centre for transient aspects, that this could count as a personhood... well, for us, that is a mystery.

We do it now in the old way. It is not the only way, it is just the one most familiar to us, to those of us who remember the most. Probably, hopefully, those who come after me will have different ways, better suited to their situations. It doesn't do to ritualise these things. History is littered with the artefacts of forgetting those whom ritual serves, of people into servants of ritual. We don't make that mistake. Or at least, we try not to. But what we need to do, to keep it alive, requires community, and we're short enough on numbers that it's a stretch to call us a community. We're practically down to a clique. But we have what we have. We are what we are. We do as well as we can. And if we must serve the old way, at least we know that it is our choice, and we know why we choose to.

We begin with the song, as always. When the song is ready we listen. We make what we hear into words. We commit the words to paper, to fix them, and we render the paper to scraps, to unburden them. Then we cast them to the wind, or to whatever we can use to perform the function of a wind. When all that is done, we call the words back. Held still, darkened, the deep self cannot interfere. When we are done, we have the message. Then it's up to us to do with it what we can.

Most would probably call this divination. They are wrong. Divination is random. Divination looks for commands in things that have no mind to command. Divination asks for answers out of nowhere. Divination is irrational. This isn't divination. And we don't look for orders or answers. Our effort, our focus, is on finding something within the rational that is already present, already in mind, but not present to mind. We look for that and turn it into a message that we can then use as a further focus. It's not an exact science, and it would not be true to say that we never turn up nonsense, or something entirely useless. Or worse, harmful. But we're not diviners. We don't go into this blindly. We know exactly where the message comes from, and we know we're incomplete, fallible. Limited. We try to know our limits. We work hard on that. So we know to temper our responses. Such a small thing. But so much benefit derives from a little sensible restraint. The opposite... well. It doesn't bear thinking about, but it doesn't need thinking about. Look around you.

But even in awareness of our limitedness, sometimes we get something that surprises us, but that can't be ignored. Something we know makes sense, but we don't know how to wrap ourselves around the sense of it. That is what happens now, when we do it the same way it as we did in my grandmother's day, and in the days before that when her grandmother was a little girl. The message we get is clear enough. But how, and to what, we apply it, not at all.

It could bring us all down.

It could bring you all down.

It could be the only way anyone survives.

The message is this:

Stop.