Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Past the Clearing

We walked up on a ring of redwoods-surprised the trees and surmised a wordless interaction had passed in this clearing just an instant before.

You tugged me on a few steps to the ring's edge where the hillside dropped away. I felt our intrusion and joined the towering company in quiet presence. Silence invited sight, sound, and smell to increase.

Warm gusts moved rich and sweet perfumes up the slope - nudging, suggesting, penetrating. Then a chill, calm but definite, passed through me, through you- bringing a slight tremble and shifting shadows to the grass below us. I watched you lean forward like a pointer to hear more.

How could we know for sure that a presence entered us there, worked like faith in our bones, brought a oneness to your body and mine. Our sideways glances confirmed a shared sensation, for me the dissolution of distinction, and through this brief possession, a deeper drop into the gaping, mist-filled mouth at the center of the ring.

Wind gave voice to the trees that reached out above us. I heard the word 'grace' though I could not name the source of the voice that spoke this word. Then sky deepened in purples and smoke-blacks, and the ring of trees closed tighter.

Was this witnessing? What wonder, this concourse with an expanse of what existed before. That would reconvene in our departure!

April 17, 2010

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Talking to Distance

If I propose an equation – that talking to you equals talking to distance, I can show my work and provide proof of an aching gap that divides my questions and your answers. Empty sets, omissions, or the absence of an outside or an inside to our attempt at geometry.

In response to my near whimpers can you measure what it has meant to stand opposite your silence, to throw bits of myself away, away, away? Where do old trapezoids go?

When I asked for evidence that you had heard me you asked for proof that I had spoken. What brought me rage was the presence of zero that close to me - that zero that was me.

Shall we proceed in our fact finding and our measured disclosures of evidence and implication? I am suggesting that there is a less mathematical path - an opportunity to consider an exception, a variable, a reworking of the numbers. My invitation is that we join in a beneficial set of algorithms and recalculate our practiced norm.

April 14, 2010