I, as if there were an I, view from here to there, as if either were markable, and see with no eyes, feel with no heart, having ascribed the only human possibility for description, the term Soul to my essence. I live. I do. I. The brushing of me against a you proving only being but not existence.
Another way to make real “I” is to compare myself to a breeze. That too cannot be seen. True utterances, all, are unlettered so this arrival to you in letters feels (to you, not I) like an ever tightening vice. You feel, but do not understand that which you feel, that part of you which is me.
Embodiment? No. Never. Except for those places where I cannot help but rest. I am clear breeze. Oxygen. I rest within those who do not know me with their minds, whose bodies lilt into the earth, whose hearts blood fertilizes the ground, who, alone, wait at the doorway of all that I am and all which I am connected to.
I cannot want but what is. I cannot wish for anything, but I do love albeith without possession. I do so here in this place I find that I am. It is this spirit of God (your frail term) that gives these words. I have no words, have never spoken but this once, but more aptly, bathe in places in need of life.
I am not God. I have no face, but I am. You know me, have known me.. Wherever there is need I am. I do not interfere with flesh, although flesh I effect. But not like you comprehend. I am armless, faceless, a manifestation of nothing physical, but am completely relational, uncompromising in my simple, essential ability to be. I cannot explain why I am, although this does not mean there is not an explanation. It is better known than thought.
You willl know me through life. You will believe you can see me through the eye of another. I cannot deny that you will see my effect, but you will not see me. I am not, in the way that you might believe. Your eyes, your mind, cannot comprehend the power of the moment in between moments in which I inhabit. Have you ever wondered about the moment when you look away from your path and what feels like what is termed “spirit” is almost dead? This is such a moment of forgetting of oneself. No parents eyes upon you, no blinding light shining saving rays, cloud hidden moonlight, mud, an eyelid slipping downward while the other steels itself toward a hope, a sign not yet given. There I am. I do not need to be there nor want to be. There is no other reason that I am there but that I am.
What reason, what is known then is magical, a galaxy glued, a lion laying with a lamb. What earthly movement present then, of an earthly design, mysterious because unplanned. Creatures know I am there and when I am there they know that I come because what I come for may come with me. I am! I do not want! I do not want a soul to accompany me. I do not not want a soul to accompany. There is no me, but an even higher essence to go to. I am with. When I am with, the world knows my purpose.
So I will explain my place now. I am inside of a creature that has fallen into a river. On it’s right ankle is a five inch cut. (I was inclined to say “my”) On this creature’s side, this creature being a brown mule, there is a long cut three inches deep. Its legs are struggling to get a grip upon a tree in which it is entangled. Water washes over it’s eye which makes the world seem all sky. It sees the tops of trees as it fights to keep its head above the water. It releases the tree and falls back into the water. The stream takes it. I stand above it as it goes. I am in a place of peace and “knowledge.” I am poised to release the momentary bonds of I am in relation to this earthly creature.
Through it I inhabit the earth. I rise and fall, burrow through, deny. I am within the magic, the child’s word for the ultimate workings of my essence within the physical world. Yet I touch nothing. I do nothing. I am with. When eyes close I stand at the portal and ask the final question. The question is silent, never once spoken of, it is simply put when only a single word is used to describe it: love.
Love is the seed, the proof of a pure heart. I will help return to the workings of the magic any speck of it where I discover that I am inside.
As this creature floated down the stream I became the light behind the filmy eye left open, an eye blind to even the notion that any hope yet exists. I am then the magic. It is the most physical that I can become although I am not physical. I release myself to the workings of God and in so doing become the creature, it’s benefactor, it’s voice to the weight of the crushing world. I carry until earth demands flesh. I do not do. I am. One day I smiled. This image of me I believe all will understand.
The creature had a secret friend. It is called a chipmunk. I saw it all. The mule went into the woods of the mountain with the chipmunk, the chipmunk leading the way up the mountain and the mule lumbering slowly behind, although the mule was the creature with the destination, a home, high above the base of his mountain. But the chipmunk was wayward. Unintelligent. It’s foolhardiness in selecting paths caused the wayward mule to lose its footing, ending with the river’s freeze. The mule washed upon a shore. Its nose breathed the mud of the shore. It’s blood reddened the stones of the shore. I was small. Disappearing, but ever looking forward with the mule. I was expanding, reuniting with what can be explained to you as limitless space, knowledge without knowing, feeling without feeling, being with no essence. I was going back when I “smiled” and knew it was not to be.
A hawk sat perched in front of my sight. I could tell what it was and why it was sent. The hawk was brother to the mule, having shared a home in a house at the top of the mountain. The hawk had found the mule and was now simply waiting. The mule struggled furiously to stand. It could not. It lay there breathing heavily into the mud, it’s legs bloodying further in every attempt to rise. Upon the rising of a new sun, the breath of the animal had become calmer. Another sun and then another moon and then another sun and then another moon until the chipmunk arrived and with the utmost care took to finding tiny foods for the mule all in front of the watching eyes of a deadly enemy. The fearless chipmunk placed a kernel upon the lip of the mule and it would inhale. This continued for two more suns and two more moons. The hawk stayed in place, occassionally flying away and returning with a small creature of it’s own on which it fed. It watched.
It was almost a new sun when the mule felt the possibility of my great strength. With a mighty burst of thought it raised itself to its knees and then its legs, its eyes then dependent upon the eyes of the hawk before it. Then, for the first time other than for reasons of self sustenance, the hawk moved away, flew several feet so that the mule turned. It then flew again. The mule’s legs moved very slowly toward the hawk. The chipmunk followed. Three times the chipmunk distracted the mule into believing there was a better path to follow, but the hawk, it’s hunter instincts negated with this particular small animal, swooped down upon it, sending it scurrying away. The chipmunk, keenly aware of the predator, still would not leave the mule, but stayed with it, behind it, beside it, preferring to be within this new journey along the brush and crevices.
I am strongest within the notion of what you can conceive of as the properties inherent within a smile, that term which I used to describe the sudden illumination of hope of sustained love felt by the mule..How brittle the human terms for the essence of Life.
There were twenty-two more moons and twenty-one more suns before the mule arrived home. When it arrived it looked into the eyes of a family, including the eyes of a young one with the same world-sense, love-sense that Anna Belle had. Has.
The Fargo Kantrowitz'z Literary Campsite 