Awakenings

We can see so much more with closed eyes, as if in closing them we are truly opening them. We see our story, the story of ourselves, our human-animal birth, all the way through to the opposite gate. It’s not in color or black-and-white, but some strangely familiar quality of light, striking chords and nerves, born of the memory of music.

This life, this breath, will be leaving this body in a final sighing exhalation. It’s all we know, all we can count on. Into a place transcendent of this conscious realm, we step, fall, go, return, are given, taken. And afterward, maybe this, maybe that, maybe no this or that. Maybe we’ll find something and hold it and let it go, or maybe no holding, no letting go, no finding. Rain is vivid, bright, sunshine can be heard falling on the roof. The sound of lightning catches our eye, heard with something other than ears; tasted, but not with the tongue.

The narrow creases of our eyes become the hollow shell of a crab we once picked up and inspected. We stop trying to make sense of things, stop asking so many questions. All the stones hanging around our necks just fall away. The narrow path widens, broadens, and we can’t help but wonder if the earth might call us back like a mother standing in a doorway, waving to her children with green-tendriled hands, a voice like soil and stone, hair of water and wood, calling us in from the dimension of mortal life.

And – our attention called away from this life – we stand and walk toward her.