the surface of the lake is solid
The illusion of independence begins with the snip of the umbilical, is furthered with a slap, is fulfilled as we are weaned, walk, and then withdraw to our own beds; we lean into our own efforts, rise to our own challenges, inflate with what we perceive to be our personal successes, deflate before our personal defeats. We desire a fruit, find it, and bring it to these lips: so the feeling of hunger passes. We choose a destination, a mountain peak, and climb with these limbs, fuel this body, attain the summit. This body tires, we lay it down, and it finds rest and soon recovers. We reach and do not touch, and our heart sighs. We touch and the one we touch departs, our heart cries.
Breath as though a breath will always be. Steps as though the steps will never end. Work as though our toil invites eternity. Try as though each success were an end. Rejoice and rage as though the purse we filled and emptied was of life instead of lead. Eat as though our food were birthright instead of gift. Climb as though the summit were the sky. Sleep as though tomorrow always arrived. Reach as though we somehow are alone; cry as though departure proved we never had been one.
Appearances arrive early; and since those appearances offer the impression of being somehow incomplete, since the young body teaches the young mind, and the young body feels wants and desires so strongly, this seeming inadequacy is supported by those whose perception of isolation is greatest. When one feels very isolated, when one feels there can never be enough, the only course of action is to grasp after whatever is within reach. Sometimes the anguish is so great, the grasp relies on an incompleteness, consciously or unconsciously cultivated by a culture whose basis is never enough. The surface of things – the surface of our wants and losses, of our hungers and satisfactions – are children’s drawings of the real world. They are the body without its marvelous organs, its miracle of being; they are stick-figure fathers and stick-figure mothers, beautifully and innocently drawn, and sticks of boys and girls, whose touch is a pencil-line, and whose connection is one-dimensional. Innocence is fine, and sweet, and deserves its place. It is in that innocence that those who have lived their childhood, to become mothers and fathers of their own, find and offer the food to fill the belly, and find and offer the toys and tools for that young body to grow and that young mind to develop.
Yet there is a place where greater learning occurs. A parent who knows enough will teach a child about having enough. Your stomach has had its fill – look how little is needed! There are dimensions beyond the singularity of the Self. What begins as simple self-indulgence becomes gentle self-awareness, then in two dimensions the picture of another, and in three dimensions a body that moves and dances and involves your own. Beautiful, warming third dimension. And then there is time. Where the one I met and loved today is the one whose angst and struggles make them intangible tomorrow. Where the one I met and loved and lost finds support in our connection, and returns seeking me. Where the one I met and loved and learned how to be with over time – maybe marrying? maybe giving birth to new lives? – watches as her body ages, and tries to puzzle out what it all means.
Ah! And then beyond the river of time we swim in (and often against!)… well, it is a river. A river has banks, does it not? And a bed, with clear sky above it and outside of it, and a sun that warms its gravity-bound descent? I don’t know what is beyond what I am able to perceive, but I do know that my perception is limited. What I love about limits is that, by their very nature, they guarantee a Something on the other side. So when I get tired, when the heart and the mind become weary with the passage of this river, and the splashing about that I and my good companions do in its currents, so often bumping up against one another and against those rocks, creating minor, unintended bruises… when I get tired I lie on my back and contemplate what I cannot see. But know is there.
I do wish, for example, that certain physical pains were not present in the waters tonight. Ah, stone in the river. I would prefer, as another example, that certain accompanying psychic pains were slower to reach out, that the fears which embrace us in these waters were less chill. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Sometimes, when we reach up our hand, or reach out, there is this presence beyond us that, with the greatest Grace one can imagine, reaches back.
I know there is a way to walk on water. Someone has already done it. It’s just on the other side of this common understanding, on the other side of what I decided that I know.