Welcome Home

I remember stepping into the river. The day was calm and fair and the air was still, yet as I stood there I was filled with a tremendous sense of terror . All was still, save the river which endlessly never stopped moving. It rushed passed my knees and I gleaned into its ever-changing current; bubbles rising and popping, shards of light cast into the ether only fall back toward inner depths. I felt sick here, a recognition of something and the indecipherable mummers of that which never exists for long enough to seemingly complete itself.

I stood there a long time, imagining my lover’s face as a piece of driftwood being carved by the waters of eternity. Frightfully serene on the edge of nowhere, an echoing meditation taking place within.
There was nothing to hold on to. Though I was aware that this was beautiful and natural, my mind boggled. I wanted the river to stop becuase I could not concieve of its movement. It didn't let me look at it, understand it.

My friend walked out toward me with a camera. She took a few pictures of it, freezing cross-sections of flow in digital stills.

The pictures my friend took were extraordinary. Each one was as its own universe of form and feeling equipped with epic story lines and pantheons of gods and goddesses. In each snap shot were dozens of faces and crowds of bodies reaching in all directions, petro-glyphs and fires, mountains and pastures. All the images were hauntingly realistic, as if they were glossy windows through which we could watch the happenings of far away places. Every split second revealed a world of beings to be buried in the next. Story upon story built, yet barely real at all, only glints of light cast into the ether. They easily disappear.
I ask myself:
“Will I come to terms with the river?”

Sometimes when I let go of the images I can feel the rush down the rocks as I race toward union with the ocean.
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It's beginning to feel okay.

Recently as a traveler my experience has been that of witnessing countless houses, the rooms rearranging themselves from various templates. Here a bed and there a community kitchen. The landscape seems to ungulate through my memory as do the faces. Every month a new best friend, no matter of time involved, immediate, and continuous. Sometimes in a certain state of meditation I can watch the places and faces morph. I find myself sitting in a room that is everywhere I had ever been.

It’s an uncanny experience to feel both nowhere and everywhere. Nowhere, now here as Ram Das liked to put it. Its uncanny because it is so familiar, ultimately close to home. It seems that everywhere I go now somebody says “welcome home.” It is touching really. As soon as I leave my home, there I am again! I find myself never without it nor without the presence of my companions who change shape and color and gender but are always by my side. Dear ones, sacred spaces, dwelling places, this is everywhere.

Myself too, has never been the same for very long. It is bizarre to even believe I have been seeing through the same eyes for many years, to believe in my own story. All these old mes have fallen, all ideas about who I was and possible identities. I am beginning to have fun with it: “look now I’m this thing!” I know it does not last. And yet I find myself constantly turning the compost of old “mes” on the ground of memory. Mixing the experience with imagination. Here planting seeds of poems that bloom, each one in its own special time.

Today I’m finding joy in breathing with the groundless, and the spirit of the river enjoys every twist, every cascade. Each movement, every epic love story is desire to meet the ocean. The countless forms there only to elude to the formless, that no form is great enough a vessel to hold the joy of the universe. It bubbles over, it destroys itself and pulls back toward inward depths! Happy not to be containable, overjoyed in the freedom of not having to be anything for to long.