580. Corn and Cello

"I once worked on a farm. One day, during the harvest, we had corn. Fresh corn. I had had corn all my life, from a can. From the first taste, I knew, I knew I had never had corn, as corn was meant to be had. A year or so later, at university, I attended a cello performance. Very small venue. I was on the front row, probably not more than ten feet or so from the performer. There was no orchestra, just one musician and one cello and nothing else between the bow and string and my ear. Like the corn, I had listened to many recorded performances of solo cello. From the first pull of bow, I knew, like the corn, that I had never heard the cello before. So, in answer to your question this is what I say, Love, with a capital L, is like the corn or the cello. When you have experienced Love directly, purely, your eyes are opened to a light and your heart is drawn to a force, well, how can I say it, you see a reality and in that reality, of what is is, is a joy, a joy so concentrated, so absolute, well, you know there is no going back. So that is why I give. I'm no saint. But once you are touched by the light, the question to do otherwise fades like the night before the dawn and what you do, what you become is not a doing or a choice nor can it be labeled or classified, it is, for lack of a better way to say it, a being, a return, a dropping of all the falseness we accumulate over time."

Zoe sat as one slapped sat, one slapped unexpectedly and thankfully, for the slapping. She thought she had fallen for him, for Ceru, but in the fall of this moment, she knew the corn and she knew the cello and she knew the fall before was not the fall now.