Sitting by Lake Mystic
Prose on Presence
It’s not hot today, but it’s not cold. The air has a slight feel to it, as it passes through the few hairs on my head. The sun is bright, but tempered by passing wisps of white. The animals quack, squawk, flipper, and flap. It’s a nice day, the kind that can leave an after image for years to come. A plane flies overhead. The neighbors bicker. The background is set.
I sit here, listening to it all, squinting against the mostly shielded glare of the sun, and I think of myself, and my life, and wonder.
But I have not much to wonder at. My path is set, and unfolding before me. I am receiving, against my worse judgement, many blessings, and am practicing letting them into my heart, and holding them with gratitude. Perhaps there could be improvements, but hitherto, I would not know them if I stared them in the face, for I am content now, and can see truly what could bless me further, and what would be a travail into mere fantasy.
And a gift that is, to feel so blessed that there could not be a fake who turns up on my doorstep to sell me my life, for I am already the owner. To feel entirely shielded from the slippery slide into recalcitrance and reluctance I have so frigidly disavowed from myself. I am here. Author, and reader the same. My life, my own, and no longer clung to with such terrified ferocity. Lightly gripping the reins, with a firm self-assuredness.
And are there losses? Yes.
For certain. To start, I feel a loss of this misguided notion that I do not belong. And nay, afore you would affront my claim, I plead you open yourself to where there could be wisdom, for it is a loss. Were, if I to belong, I would suddenly lack this pressurized expulsion which has kept me with such fervor and obstinance, clinging to the untruth of my own lacking. And in the absence of this, I, in a way, no longer have access to the motivation which has steered me thus. And, in some way, I am no longer who I was. A loss.
To continue, there will be a loss of maybes, which in due course have filled my life to brim and bursting, and which must, like chaff from wheat now be culled into the wind, which takes it. And thus, the fullness of life becomes empty, open, and gaping. A hole, an absence, a vacuum. A loss.
And, to be sure there could be more, unseen and unknown.
The point to draw being that even in the acquisition of a once chimeric aspiration, which even when drawn beside the flights of Angels and draught of Ambrosia, a man could desire in his heart most of all, there will be crumblings of reality, of self, and of truth, which may and do reshape into brighter and more brilliant exposition, thus; that life is bountiful in each tenderly passing phrase, which is spoken toward our hearts from the mouth of God, and into which the care and pleasure of a million wonders is delivered; and even there, with all that treasure, there is a shattering of worlds, and a breaking of self. There, is the cost.
Wishing for the cost to err, is to keep the treasure in the hold of a ship in harbor, never reaching the terra firma of the soul. And there, surely is the truer loss. And so, without ado, beckon her home, and welcome this vessel into the shores of your greatest wishes, feeling her slip between the cradling wake of you, and into your very essence, like the fragrant scent of melancholy jasmine growing along ancient shore. And fear not for where she shall go, or howsoever you shall grow, for there is already a landing.
And within all of this, there is a choice you must make, and not only affirm but adhere to, a wish of your soul which is a promise to yourself; stray not from this wretched truth, or all is lost into the tumultuous seas of unabating desire; clear yourself of nefarious wounds and untruths so that you may finally see that there is only the opportunity to behold the unfolding reality as it is, here and without ultimate comprehension; there is no ringing of the bell to signal delightful homecoming, none more than the enrichment of your own soul into a relishing of final and truthful obsolescence, each moment dead upon its arrival; tranquil grief spreading its beloving talons through the heart to stimulate sterilizing and cleansing remorse; for how could there have been any other possibility than thus? To clearly see; to arrive in blessed clarity to the foundational staggerment; beholding her before you, thus. Claim her, and be yourself claimed. This is life unfolding.
The tide breaks. The breath refills. The sky clears. The wind blows. The moon beckons her slumber, and the rock upon which is home, continues her galactic course through the histories of time immemorial.
Tremulous is the fair grasp on truth.
Do not shy, or she shall slip once more into the eddies of herself, and there shall be again this muddied unclarity.
Transparent is her suit, and her wholeness exposing, yet blinded shall thee be, if daring, glance at her full on.
So, try only for the slightest hints of noticing, where her soul could be yours, and her wholeness could bless your mortal body with a moment of effusion; craft yourself in her image, and she shall meet you thence.
A traveling scholar alights on a path of surrender.
And all is quiet in the silence of the path.
PS. It’s been a while since I’ve published. Know that I think often of this medium and of you who may be wondering where I have gone. Suffice to say, my words today can speak for me, and beyond, I wish to send more to you than I do. Perhaps I will.
Closing
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Beautifully written. The part about losing the "maybes" filling life to brim and bursting really captures something essential about how commitment or arrival creates space by culling possibility. I've experienced that vaccum you describe and its unsettling precisely because we're so conditioned to equate fullness with options rather than depth. The line about welcoming the vessel into shore while accepting the shattering that comes with it feels like the core insight here, that receiving what we've longed for still requires a kind of letting go that most people dont anticipate.