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.

579. Shooting Starish

In the fall, a flash, shooting starish, a blur, bright, in the dark of retinas burned, among the din of ears ringing after toll. Quick, she was. Unexpected too. Preternatural. What moved of limb or heart or spirit or something else was as the ice to the water to the steam and where the mind was illuminated and where it was dark, shifted, and landscape known not, was seen, known in a place hovelled of hope and sheltered from flesh and earth and flesh upon earth.

In her small hands she held the one of sea, her diminutive fingers aglow, casting shadows as witness. Em opened her eyes and upon those eyes was a light, an angel, of earth or heaven she could not say. Until. Until the spell, by word, broke. "Did you think I wouldn't catch you?" said Ariel.

578. The Falling of a Leaf

As a leaf, paper thin, weightlessly quiet, flits on the gentle resistance of air's invisible carpet, a last conscious effort, a dance before mother, and father, childlike in escape, inevitable as falling rain, Em fell. Her gown flashed in the ruby explosion, snapshot captured like a ghost in lightning, a parachute of transparent cloth, living it seemed, to protect the one within from the descent of knee buckled, of blood rushed, eye a flutter, ear echoing, hair static rising. Her fingers crawled upward, a reaching for, toward, ever upward and not down, not to break the fall, but upward, following the eye, reaching, seeing what could not be seen, touching what could not be touched, an invisible union not of flesh or mind; and so upward they rose, a salutation of surrender, a kiss under the skin of lip, a hug of hearts, from two to one, as ice to water returned.

577. Pistic

The door opened. A nurse bookended by two armed guards, the light between the night, filled the frame. Em stood before the window, in gown like ghost, watching the girls and their dogs. The nurse took a step. Without turning, Em raised her hand. The nurse stopped. The guards, faceless behind darkened visors, powered their weapons--click, hum. Em turned into the vibration. Weapons leveled. She raised the other hand and looked to the heavens.

"Father."

The room filled with ruby light, and what was, was no more.

576. Fading

They entered the chapel, just the two of them. The nave was as dark as the courtyard without and through the windows stained with hero and saint, the stone floor appeared in faded hues of heaven's light. She was not as heavy as he thought she ought to be, not the weight of one whole or with child.

He smelled wood, endless rows of dark pews and to mind came the whip. She felt like a grounded balloon without the strength to rise, her party over, her arms and legs withered strings. Before them both, the fount, sparkles of light, gold and purple, a universe alive, a light unto the darkness, warmth into the cold, freshness into dank. They looked, together, the kind of looking that held the present at bay and thought at gate. From the ceiling, a shaft of light, angled from the right, reached to the fount as the fount reached upward.

"Von?"

"Yes dear?"

"I loved your son."

"I know."

"And he loved me."

"I have no doubt."

"It was the kind of love that needed nothing."

Von held her hand, rubbing his thumb over her palm.

"He never asked. Nor did I. I don't think either of us felt the need to add to what was already perfect. Besides, on Hyneria and even more so on Silus, it seemed an unnecessary luxury, an adding to rather than an essential part. There were more important things to do. That was your son, always seeing, always clear about what was important. In the midst of chaos he had the rare ability to stand above it, to remain calm, levelheaded, as if he knew something the rest of us didn't. And when I became pregnant, it wasn't I that glowed, it was him. And I began to understand." Her thought interrupted with a cough, derailed into memory, eyes distant.

"What? What did you begin to understand?"

Zoe sighed, rolling her eyes up to Von as if to move her head was too much effort. "I'm not sure why I didn't see it sooner. Then again, perhaps I did. Perhaps that first day, with the old one, I did." Again Zoe drifted into memory.

"Please continue."

"He should be the one here. Not me." She broke eye contact with Von and looked toward the fount. "You see, I don't have what he had. And this child, he will need his father, he will need what I don't have, what I can't give." Zoe smiled.

"Tell me."

"Your son knew life, connected with life, in a way the rest of us don't understand and I had the feeling he had been to the other side and had been sent back to lead us, teach us, to show, by example, how to live, to give, to be something bigger, better, greater than just ourselves. He didn't live life. You see, he was life. He didn't have to say it. You could see it in everything he was, everything he did. Blessed. Touched. Gifted. Those were the words others used to try to explain."

The chapel was cold. Von took his cloak off and wrapped it around Zoe. "If what you say is true, then he must have seen something very special, in you." Von paused as he tucked the cloak, her wan face looking all the more pale, almost sacred, in the blackness of his cloth. "He choose you to share life, to create life. In union . . ."

"That is what I need."

"What?"

"We never had the time. But here, in this place. I am reminded."

"I don't understand," said Von, holding her clothed head in his large hands. Her neck muscles relaxed and the thought occurred that maybe they would never strain again. She began to speak, her voice growing softer, in harmony with her limpid eyes, her face appearing more childlike by the moment.

"I want the blessing of union. Can we do that, here? Now?"

"Now?" Before Zoe could respond, Von caught himself. "Of course now. Yes. Yes, I believe we can."

"Von?"

"Yes?"

"I'm fading."

"No, you're not fading. You're not."

"What do you want me to say?"

"I want you to hang on. I will find help. You must believe me."

Zoe smiled. "I meant, what do you want me to say to Ceru. When I see him."

__________

Standing before the fount, Von held Zoe in his arms, her eyes opened as a child before the fire, her lips trembling, dry, cracked, slightly parted. Light, nova bright, bubbled up with the words of the chaplain, then a flash, blinding. He closed his book, looked at Von, standing, arms outstretched, empty.

575. Quotes: 4

Kyra trying to explain her meeting with The Hood:

I stared into his eyes as likewise his eyes stared back into mine and it was not as one looking at another, of two sets of hands pressed against the glass, but, rather, the looking was as to a mirror, a liquid mirror, deep as the heart could bear, as one might imagine looking into the infinite, into the divine, into oneself. Naked was the sense. Naked as one might feel upon seeing oneself naked for the first time. Imagine that. All your life, all you have ever seen is yourself in clothes and, now, in this instant, you see a set of eyes that forever change the way you see and you breathe, not the air you breathed before, but you breathe an air so clean and so pure it cannot be described, nor, least I say, understood, for the feeling is a dropping, a dropping away of everything no longer needed, a freeing, a de-drossing, the spirit releasing, and below, your skin and bones, falling away. That is the look. See. That is what happened in that one moment, that one look.

574. Lotic/Lentic

Life is water

fluid

moving

Lotic

sometimes

Lentic

but forever in water

of water

within the sac

 we are born

more fish

 than fowl

thrown

 into the light

we slowly dry out

over a lifetime

and to dirt

 and dust

 we become

dry

waterless

_____

tears

life escaping

(notes found in one of Em's journals)