“… but I do begin my sentences mid-thought…” she thought; and thinking about thought was to look in a mirror that reflected another mirror. She was a tunnel of faces that began at her glance, peered around the corner of the glass at another, inner face, and after that a smaller other, and another and other and other. She raised an eyebrow and a million eyebrows rose: “… that might be a tunnel into my soul – but shouldn’t I see a light at the end…”
Her thoughts were mirrors flickering light into one another. Her mind was a crystal spinning in the sun, casting rainbows. She caught at rainbows (before they flitted away across the room), and for an instant she changed color. If every thought was a color, maybe her soul was white? If she followed one color after another, along that trail that went in and in, maybe the source was beautifully blinding? Maybe a thought that sounded once so definite, was simply an answer to a previous thought, that wasn’t quite as certain?
“… or does thought-light travel not so far, or so fast it makes me dizzy just catching the tail of one, much less throwing my arms ’round a body of them, to pull them to my chest…” Anyway, how could one thought be discreet, when as a whole they seemed (quite the opposite) to stumble one into the next, as party conversations jostle one another with incongruous intent, each winning a moment’s spotlight, competing currents in the river that from a distance sparkle together into a vertical shaft of light, only to leave their shapes as rippling voices where they climb over the stones, or stones that by the watercourse are juggled seaward one stumble at a time, sometimes two, ocean-bound but sometimes come to rest in a child’s hand, who by accident of being was meant to be standing right there right then in the pebble’s line of passage, feel more than hear that “click” against her toes, lift the round smooth white into her line of sight, notice its beauty (before discarding it), one-glance-photograph of its curves and lines, lines that, scratched by history and rubbed out by time, were written with the slowly-delible pen of pressure and heat, the same that warms her back when she leans against the bricks, there where her head discreetly relaxes back, where the sun throws its arms around, leans in against her chest, wraps its long tail around her feet, and sweeps her thinking, afoul with thoughts, clean in a moment by leisure’s wand and the kiss of what seems infinite…
“… one thought pours into the next, is part of the next; I think I am a parade, I am…” More like one single thought that began at her first “Hm” to end with her last “Aha”, while everything between MM and AH is a river at play and she the river’s bed: you catch at water but in your hand the river’s dead: at least river no longer. Take a picture of the water, and what you’ve taken is fantasy, while the water that has gone along downstream is what is real, washed by time, just as you remember it.
“… lost I am found I am lost I am found …”
The moon used the oak tree’s topmost leaves to hoist itself higher into the night; she turned from western stars to eastern sights; she found the circle waiting there for her; she opened her eyes, wise, and felt herself fill with white, white light.
“… I am.”
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