Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The Wake

Just when the last fiber of his being vanished in a moment of unbearable pain, just when he'd given himself up for dead, all he'd done in life to force his dreams into being fell away. A shaman of some sort, with a headdress made of golden branches, his lower body a black serpent, spread his arms. The shaman's arms became the wings of an eagle. The dead man's senses, overcome with golden light, became indistinguishable from the shaman, indistinguishable from each particular crystal that glowed dimly from the shadows, indivisible from the formal energy falling out of and rising into being, without beginning or end.

All his friends circling, dancing and laughing, around a body festooned and mounded with pale roses. In spite of mistaking dreams for reality, in spite of holding on to belief as if it were the very earth on which he stood, he loses himself in love and finds that his perceptions had never been ends in themselves, but means to an endlessly expanding end. He could finally witness them for what they were: nothing more nor less than an array of tiny stars created for feeling, and growing to love, the dark.

No comments: