 
Paddling Out The Stars

by

Gregory

Copyright 2018 by:

Gregory

Published by

Muse & Man Press

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Cover and publisher logo designed by

Geoff Morton

www.geoffmorton.ca
Table Of Contents

Prologue

First Leg

Second Leg

Third Leg

Fourth Leg

Fifth Leg

Sixth Leg

Seventh Leg

Epilogue

About the Author

Other titles by Gregory
Prologue

There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he looked upon, that object he became,

And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part

of the day,

Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

—Walt Whitman

Yet there is a way in which physical and mental events merge and influence each other. A change of world view can change the world viewed.

—Joseph Chilton Pierce

How do you know but every bird

That wings the airy way

Is an immense world of delight,

Closed to your senses five?

—William Blake

A human being is part of the whole, called by us the "Universe," a

part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his

thoughts, and feelings as something separated from the rest—a

kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a

kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and

affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free

ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion

to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its

beauty.

—Albert Einstein

Connecting means paying attention to what is going on around

you and not screening everything out to such a degree that you

miss the magic.

—José Stevens

Holy: venerated as, or as if, sacred. From Middle English, from

Old English _hālig_ ; akin to Old English _hāl –_ whole.

—Merriam-Webster Dictionary

First Leg

It is late in the afternoon

of a

hot, blue-sky, Sol-blazing summer day,

and as I am finishing up my day's work on a long poem

I have been working on for months,

and I can feel,

rising

from deep, deep within

the glowing depths of my

True Self, my Spirit,

a pressing need to go for a kayak-cruise

on the nearby semi-wilderness lake,

and though the relentless heat of the day has

enervated these old bones and their weary flesh,

and I do not feel like braving the relentless attacks

of Sol's phalanxes of hot, blazing beams, my

True Self, my Spirit,

persists in Its demands,

and ever-wanting to stay on the good side of my

True Self, my Spirit,

I decide to comply,

and after making a thermos of tea, some

sandwiches, filling a half dozen bottles with water,

I load my kayak onto my car and drive

to the launch point on the western edge of

the small beach on the southern shore

of this vibrant, clear-watered,

northern wilderness lake,

and after unloading my kayak and dragging it

across a swath of grass to the shore,

I stop beside it and gaze out over the lake's

delightful, sparkling, soft-wind-rippled expanse of

brilliant, dark-blue beauty.

And as is my custom,

I conscientiously and intently take in

the bright, broad, beautiful blue expanse of this

Living Lake,

while first saying hello to It as I give It a

a subtle bow and a subtler,

hands-clasped-at-heart Namaste,

—since I am not living in India, where such a

gesture would hardly be noticed, I make it subtle

enough so as not to attract any undue attention

from the crowd of bathers to my right—

then asking its permission for my taking a cruise on

its living waters, a query that I immediately

sense is answered with the immediate,

"Of course—it's been a while! . . .

Where have you been?"

For if there is one thing I know with certainty,

all bodies of water are living, supremely

Conscious Beings,

and nothing guarantees a good paddle

in Their

Living Beingness,

like extending to them their due respect

by first saying hello,

then asking their permission to enter their Being,

and after those necessary rituals are over,

I gaze up in equal reverence at the vast dome of the

pristine blue sky overhead, forcing myself

to circle full-round in the cool, wet sand

so I can take in,

and be keenly aware of,

its over-arching beauty and vastness,

thinking, as I inevitably do,

after performing this so essential ritual,

about all the money and labor and resources

expended by those institutional religions

who have constructed enormous stone structures

with massive domes designed to create

vast and impressive spaces intended to fill

the spirits and imaginations of their faithful

with the requisite awe and wonder

over the limitless glory and vast majesty

of their Supreme Deity,

all possible,

because these somnambulant people have lost the

natural, essentially-human ability

to step outside

at least once each day, look up,

circle around, and

gaze in conscientious, jaw-gaping wonder

at the vast and awe-some dome of the sky overhead,

—especially if they live on the prairies, as I once did,

where it is easier to ignore a nail in your shoe than

that vast, horizon-circling sky—

which even on a heavy-clouded day,

makes the largest, most-impressive,

most-expensive, human-built

cathedral-topping dome,

look like the inside of a thimble,

while the act of gazing up

at the vast-beyond-fathoming dome

of a clear, star-sparkling,

night sky,

especially when the

Milky Way

arcs gloriously and awe-somely across it,

is to reduce even the most impressively massive of

human-built domes, to something smaller and

even less impressive than the husk

of a millet seed.

And though there are those who would

counter with comments about

the unparalleled mastery, complexity and beauty

of the artwork on the inside surfaces of those

questionably magnificent and sacred cathedral-domes,

all I can say is that a habit of conscientious

sky-gazing will yield panoramas of

complexity and living beauty,

that are not only dynamic, but

often beyond breathtaking and awe-some,

whether it be—

the vast, high-drifting feathers of ice crystals

constantly being shaped

and re-shaped by stratospheric winds,

officially named

cirrus clouds,

but called by many by their more poetic name of

"mares' tails;"

or—

a bright, warm, sunny summer-afternoon sky

full of those slow-drifting, constantly-changing,

fluffy white cotton balls of

cumulus clouds,

sporting the quaint, Latin name of

Cumulus humilis;

or—

one of those clear, sparkling, high-pressure days

of any season when the air is dry and not

a blemish mars the depthless blue

of a sky that looks like some gargantuan chef,

after washing his favorite,

bright blue salad bowl,

has placed it upside down over the world

for it to dry, though sometimes,

as an afternoon wanes and Sol's wearying

stallions are legging it to their western horizon stable,

the ghost-pale gibbous Luna can be seen,

haunting the eastern reaches of that

otherwise flawless expanse of

the living blue Akasha;

or—

the massive, towering phalanxes

of cumulonimbus clouds that often fill the sky on

hot, muggy summer afternoons, and either blitz across

it in a wild fury while flashing

great arcs of lightning and booming out

deafening blasts of thunder,

or taking ponderous, day-long strolls, such that

when tired Sol slow-slumps to his north-reaching,

summer-horizon bed,

he paints them in gaudy and glorious shades

of gold and red and bright purple, or soft hues

of rose and amethyst and indigo;

or—

on clear nights, the vast star-scape of the night sky

being slowly and regally traversed by

the full and bright-beaming

Goddess Luna;

or—

on clear, gelid winter nights, sky panoramas gloriously alive

with the multi-hued maidens of

Aurora Borealis,

dancing and cavorting in their filmy, iridescent,

green and blue and sometimes red, costumes;

or—

a languid and lingering summer's eve, when

Sol dips into his paint box and splashes,

first, a splendid and varied array of bright

reds and oranges across a vast and spreading array

of altocumulus clouds lingering in the

northwestern sky, then

when He tires of those gaudy hues,

he slowly repaints that vast, dynamic canvas with

muted, swift-changing pastel shades of

rose, amethyst, and indigo.

And on thinking about the many, varied, stupendous,

natural, and

free-for-the-looking-right-out-your-door

sky-scapes,

the thought comes to me

that aeons after—

humankind has ingloriously exited from

the stage of this planet, from this

Living Goddess Gaia;

that aeons after all its mighty,

power-and-wealth-obsessed, religious institutions

have long faded from cosmic memory,

and all their mighty domes have collapsed

back to the earth out of which they arose,

relentless Time reducing them to naught

but dirt-covered ruins overgrown with

the eternally reincarnating grasses,

wildflowers, shrubs, bushes, and trees,

those glorious sky-panoramas and cloudscapes

will continue to manifest in all

their living, conscious splendor,

not one bit perturbed or disappointed

that not even a single pair of

human eyes

any longer exists to gaze at them in

all their magnificence and glory . . .

But enough of all this drear philosophizing!

And with my "hellos" having been said

to the

Living Lake,

and to the no less alive

Sky,

—I love that Sanskrit word for it: Akasha—

it is time for me to comply with my

True Self's, my Spirit's

desire to more intimately commune with that

Living Lake

by getting on with my kayak-cruise,

however hot the day might yet be, and however

weary my aging, writing-weary flesh

might feel,

so I push my kayak part-way into the water,

climb aboard,

and as always, as I push off from the beach and

my kayak is finally afloat, I feel the

never-diminishing elation that I always feel

during the first minutes of shedding the

heavy clumsiness of being a

"lumbering landling,"

and suddenly becoming an

almost-weightless, smooth-gliding

water sprite,

for I have discovered nothing else that can

so simply and easily give such a sense

of free and effortless flight

like that of being in a kayak and smooth-gliding over

still, clear waters, the sand and rocks beneath it

clearly visible as they drift astern,

though just as enthralling as that,

and perhaps even more important is the

subtle but very real sense

I get of my

aura,

my living, biological and spiritual

field,

entering and melding with the

aura,

the extensive, living and dynamic

elemental field

of that

Living Lake,

and much as what makes all human companionship

desirable, delightful, and necessary is the

warm and satisfying

combining and interweaving of our auras,

of our spiritual and biological fields,

so no less is it quite possible that the powerful

attraction felt by most human beings for bodies of water

is based on the feeling of peace and well-being

created when our

human aura,

our living, spiritual and biological field,

melds and communes with the living, conscious,

elemental field

of any body of water, the obviously

non-scientific "proof" of this assertion

—since I am writing this in the right-brained paradigm

of poetry, it is thus outside the left-brained, scientific

paradigm where every proposition must make "rational"

sense and be empirically "proven" to academic standards—

most easily found in the almost-always

attractive and salubrious effects of a

"day on the water,"

or a

"day at the beach,"

or the owning of extraordinarily expensive

"beachfront property,

or even a property with but a glimpse-view

of some distant, blue-brilliant water,

and though a day boating on lake, or sun-baking

on a lake-beach, can be a powerful, healing,

and whole-some experience,

especially on a larger lake,

a day spent boating on an ocean, or sun-worshipping

at an ocean beach,

as everyone who has been blessed with the joy of

such an experience knows,

is considerably more powerful and enthralling,

while a day spent paddling a kayak on any ocean,

when one allows their

True Self, their Spirit,

to be open and porous to it,

can be an experience of a mystical intensity and

blissful wholeness

that any lake-paddler can but dream about if they

have not experienced it, and yearn for,

if they have—but I refuse

to let my memories of just such a

memorable mystical experience ruin or degrade in

any way this late-afternoon paddle on this delightful,

Living Lake,

so I heft my paddle and

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

I leave the beach and the noisy,

sun-and-water-enjoying bathers behind and

set off on my journey along the shore

of the forest-covered headland jutting a kilometer

directly north into the expanse of sparkling blue

water in front of me, while

West-sauntering Sol

is slowly making his way towards the towering

pines, spruces, maples, oaks, hemlocks, aspens and birches

rising up from its unimaginably ancient,

Precambrian base,

and soon I am gliding past an outcropping of those

four-billion-year-old rocks and waving my paddle at

two little girls with long black hair

in matching pink bathing suits,

who have stopped their "labors" of "helping" their young,

straw-hatted mother pick blueberries into a

fluorescent-red beach bucket, in order

to point at me while jumping up and down,

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

and after about five minutes of easy, muscle-warming

paddling that quickly makes me uncomfortably and

sweat-pouring hot under the baking onslaught of

High-summer Sol

as he sky-strolls towards his northwestern bed

for his short, mid-summer slumbers,

the breezes wafting down off the forested headland

to my left not offering much in the way

of a cooling effect,

when suddenly my attention is drawn to my right

by a loud flapping sound, and a

corner-of-the-eye-attracting activity

that when I quickly look at it, turns out to be a

loon,

rising up out of the water, flapping its wings and

exposing its bright white breast to me.

And no strangers to my kayak-cruises on that

Living Lake,

are those exquisite and so alive and intelligent creatures,

for often it is they follow along beside me on my

silent, gliding journeys, often quite

closely, though this is the closest I have seen one,

and curse myself I do that though I have brought my

camera along with me,

I'd left it in my deck-pack,

and by the time I tussle it out and make it ready

to capture a close shot of that magnificent bird,

I disappointedly discover that it has dived out of sight,

but even as I sit there,

patiently waiting for it to surface at some

unpredictable place from its dive,

I hear a strange and unexpected splashing

very close to the right stern of my kayak,

and when I startled turn to look—

there is that loon!

Though as fast as I make eye-contact with it,

it dives out of sight, and though for five minutes

I rest my paddle and camera-ready wait for it

to resurface somewhere nearby, it does not,

and when I finally stow my camera,

pick up my paddle, and

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

get moving again, I am beset with the clear, intuitive

sense that it had done what it did,

not out of camera-shyness, but out of a keen

and intelligent sense of play.

—if you think birds aren't intelligent enough to play,

disabuse yourself of that notion, for one day, while

visiting an autumn-deserted beach, I spent an

incredulous half-hour watching a gull fly about over

that beach, dropping a stone from a height, then diving

down to catch it before it hit the water. Seven times out

of ten, it caught it! I could not help but think about

Richard Bach's famous book, Jonathon Livingston

Seagull, which of course, is about a seagull obsessed

with flying—

Finally accepting I am not going to again see that

playful loon,

I resume my paddling,

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

and as I near the point of the headland, I see that

the waters of the open lake beyond are wind-riled

enough to create the occasional white-cap,

though while looking across that

windy expanse of roiled blue water

at the northern shore, I spot a

broad-winged bird soaring out of sight

behind the sheer, dark, rugged cliff occupying

the top third of the highest rocky hill on this

Living Lake,

and though I know it could be an ubiquitous

Turkey Vulture,

my intuition tells me it is not,

so I back-paddle vigorously,

stop my kayak,

retrieve my binoculars from my deck-pack,

and aim them at the expanse of sky above that cliff,

which is such a delightfully pristine blue that,

as usual, when it looks like that,

I want to pour it in a cup and drink it!

And after staring for a handful of seconds

through those binoculars at the circle of blue

above that now eerily close and rugged cliff face

out of which myriads of plants

and small trees and bushes of varying shades

of green are growing,

that great bird slow-soars out from behind it,

and most easily can I see that it is

definitely not a vulture,

but the

Red-tailed hawk,

that I have often seen soaring high over the

thick, summer-lush forest below it,

and as I most entranced gaze at that magnificent,

white-breasted, broad-winged,

easy-soaring raptor,

I can sense a geyser of joy and satisfaction

shooting up from my

True Self, my Spirit,

and most potently and positively I get from It

the intuitive sense that It considers

that lovely, free-soaring bird,

to be its close kin, daylong doing

what it dreams of doing.

But while I am thus rapturously gazing

at that magnificent bird,

my kayak is being breeze-blown east and I have to rest

the binoculars on their strap around my neck

in order to grab my paddle and make sculling motions

with it to keep from drifting too far east,

and I am just about to raise them back to my eyes

for a longer look at that lovely bird,

when a fellow kayaker

rounds the point of the headland,

and as she glides past me,

she smiles a tooth-flashing smile,

waves and shouts,

"TAKE CARE—IT'S PRETTY ROUGH OUT THERE!"

this distraction allowing to rise from deep within me,

the distinct urge to paddle on,

and as I am in the process of doing so,

I hear one of my favorite birds, a

White-throated Sparrow,

serenading the forested shore on my left with his

always delightful and cheering whistle-song

that the ornithologist Kenn Kaufman

translates from Sparrowsong into English as

Oh, sweet, kimberly-kimberly-kimberly . . .

Oh, sweet, kimberly-kimberly-kimberly . . .

and though I again rest my paddle and spend

a few minutes focusing my binoculars

on the thick stand of

White Spruce,

whence that song is so brightly erupting,

I know my chances of spying him are next to zero,

given, not only his diminutive size and

excellent camouflage,

and the thickness of those spruce boughs,

but the fact he never stays long on any one of them,

and though, as expected,

I don't see "feather-or-crown" of him,

I get all the pleasure I could ever want

from his bright, cheering song,

and longer yet I could have stayed there,

listening . . .

listening . . .

listening . . .

but I can most distinctly sense my

True Self, my Spirit,

urging me to get on with my kayak-cruise,

though before I comply with Its wishes,

I again glance across the lake and up at the

high-soaring shape of that

magnificent hawk,

which barely do I focus my naked eyes on it,

than it circle-soars out of sight behind that cliff,

and after saying a regretful "goodbye" to it,

I stow my binoculars in my deck-pack,

and get underway.

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

And not many strokes does it take to send my

smooth-gliding craft into its left turn around the

rock-littered point of that headland

over which a

Turkey Vulture

is low-hovering, the wind gusts causing

it to rock back and forth on its huge,

dihedral wings as it sniffs those gusts for

succulent scents of dead and decaying dinner,

and onto

the westward leg of my paddle-cruise.

Second Leg

Though the moment

I am out of the protective lee of that rocky headland,

I am engulfed in the full force of the blasting

West Wind,

instantly enjoying both the cooling effect of it and

the challenge of strong-paddling into it

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

stroke . . .

while bouncing around on the waves and getting

further cooled by the occasional, much-welcomed

bursts of spray that fly across the coaming.

For about twenty minutes I strong-paddle

into that blasting West Wind

and those bow-riding waves while squinting

into lowering Sol's hot, bright beams

and their bright reflections off the roiled water

as I make a long, diagonal crossing

of the main body of that

Living Lake,

arriving, as I'd intended,

at a small, rocky headland jutting southward from

that tree-hugging northern shore, where

I make a sharp right turn into the cove

created by that headland,

and delighted I am to find deserted,

the small beach

on the eastern shore of that cove, which I often

stop at on my kayak-cruises,

and quickly I turn towards it and roughly beach

my kayak, hard-driven as it is onto its rough,

rock-strewn sand by the foot-plus waves

being created by that strong-gusting

West Wind,

though before I get out of it, I bow in Namaste

and say hello to that

small beach

—as I always do—

then looking up into the dense forest of

aspens, birches, jack pines and pin cherries

behind it,

I bow in Namaste and say hello

—as I always do—

first, to those trees,

then to the Nature Spirits that know make their

summer home there,

—There are many kayakers who take a "been-there/

done-that" attitude to lakes and routes they have

paddled, always wanting new and fresh venues to

"conquer" and "notch" their paddles with, but I long

ago discovered that it requires many paddles on any

Living Lake to truly get to know It, to make friends

with It, to become familiar with Its bays, inlets, coves,

beaches, and moods, and discover and make friends

with the best spots to stop and the Nature Spirits that

make those spots their home.

All of which immeasurably deepens and enriches

the experience of the kayak-cruise, no less than is the

company of a spouse of twenty five years an infinitely

more richer and rewarding experience than any

exciting, ego-gratifying first date . . .or the experience

of listening for the fiftieth time to Beethoven's Ninth

Symphony, or to his Late Quartets, something that far

surpasses in depth, understanding, enjoyment, and

intimacy, whatever was experienced with the first.—

then I "inhale" one of my litre-sized bottles

of water before I get out, stretch

my legs and my back,

grab my deck-pack, and after retrieving several

weathered boards that I'd hidden behind a rock,

I prop them against a long, thick, bark-bare

driftwood log that runs half the length of the beach,

sit down in the sand, and leaning against those boards,

retrieve the thermos of tea and a book

from that deck-pack,

—a most delightfully intelligent, imaginative, mystical,

and apropos book with the comet-tail title,

Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Into The

Dreaming of Earth, written by the very sensitive,

intelligent, imaginative and well-educated "Earth Poet

and Bardic Naturalist," as his biography describes him,

Stephen Harrod Buhner—

and spend a relaxing and delightful half-hour drinking

my tea and getting "high" on Buhner's imaginative,

mystical, and Earth-sensitive ideas,

while listening to the always delightful and

soothing sound of the waves bashing the beach

less than a foot from my feet,

and to the occasional, loud and manic

machine-gun bursts of

chat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat . . .

chat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat . . .

coming from high up over my left shoulder,

they being aimed my way by a

Red Squirrel

who is one twentieth the size of his voice and

General Patton-bent on informing me,

that—

chat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat . . .

(I am an intruder in his precious territory!)

that—

chat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat . . .

(He is most displeased with my intrusion!)

and that—

I should

CHAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT . . .

(FORTHWITH DEPART!)

And interesting though that book of Buhner's is,

I am having a hard time keeping my

usually good reading-focus on it,

for there is just so much interesting and

distracting stuff going on around me

on that beach,

the obviously and most distracting being the

rhythmic crashings of those wind-riled waves,

—most interesting it is that we seldom stop to think

about that fact that any body of water, whether river,

lake, or ocean, by its nature, is inert, is quiescent, and

all its surface waves, currents and flows are the result

of exterior forces, like wind, gravity, heat transfer, or

earthquakes, making it a perfect metaphor for the realm

of Spirit, which by its Nature, is inert, is quiescent, until

acted up upon by a wide variety of conscious and

intentional agencies of a variety of natures—

but that delightful distraction suddenly takes

second-fiddle to a startling roar that

manifests right in my face, when a male

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

zips down from over my right shoulder

and pokes his long, nectar-sipping proboscis

into the bright red portion of the logo

on the golf shirt I am wearing,

before zipping along the beach to my left

to check and see if a scruffy clump of wind-whipped

Purple Loosestrife

growing in the small marshy area there

has something more "nectarish' to offer,

chasing off,

as it does so, the

Monarch Butterfly

—or is it the Monarch look-alike, Viceroy?—

that was clinging to it, which makes a

wind-whipped flutter-line

to a wind-whipped clump of

White Asters,

to which it wing-rippling clings,

and a good few minutes it takes

for my heart-rate and adrenalin level to

return to normal after that

hummingbird-break

from my Buhner-reading,

not that that marshy area doesn't offer

other entrancing distractions in the form

of the giant dragonflies

and tiny damselflies swooping and

diving amongst the reeds and horsetails

growing in it,

with those bright blue damselflies being

the most distracting because they keep landing

and resting either on my arms or legs, which

isn't a problem because they don't bite,

but what is really distracting

is when they land on the pages of my book

and I forced to then spend my time

either reading around them and their long

shadows, or more distracting yet,

spending my time close-examining

the size of their eyes,

or the striking iridescent colors of their bodies,

but most entrancing of all is their

incredible wings,

which are not only intricately patterned,

but so thin and diaphanous they look

like they should collapse before even their

first use, but which are tough enough to allow

those lovely creatures to zip and hover

in their insect-hunting ventures like

mini helicopters.

Though even as I am examining a

bright blue damselfly

that has landed on my Buhner-book,

a startlingly huge, multi-hued

dragonfly,

lands on my leg carrying a green-eyed deer fly

—Yahoo! I hate those nasty, sharp-biting little vampires!—

and holding it in its forelegs,

proceeds to rotate and chew away at it like

it is a corn-on-the-cob,

and when there is nothing left of that nasty

little blood-sucker but its two small, translucent wings,

it drops them onto my leg

and zips off to catch another snack,

and most thrilled I am to witness this

entrancing event for two reasons:

one,

that I get to watch one of those amazing

and beneficial insects feed on a

nasty-biting deerfly,

—since they eat a lot of mosquitoes and black flies,

as well as deerflies, I am an ardent dragonfly fan!—

and two,

that I am not living three hundred million years ago

when the dragonflies back then had

thirty-inch wingspans,

for if such a creature existed today,

I most certainly doubt I'd be a big fan of them,

for that may well have been a bird or a squirrel

—or some other outrageously big insect!—

that it had caught and landed on my leg

to devour, after which it would likely begin

to devour my leg!

And if all of that insect-activity isn't

entertainingly distracting enough, I hear, off

to my right, a loud

PLOP!

that I assume to be a jumping fish, but when

I glance in the direction of the sound,

I am blessed to see a plucky, cocky-crested

Kingfisher,

emerging from the briefly expanding, splash-circle

in the surging waves, carrying in his big, pointed beak

a fish almost half his size, which

he carries up to the dead, overhanging branch of

a leaning pine snag that is being prevented

from falling into the water

by a large boulder,

but he must have sensed me gazing at him,

for he quickly flies across the cove and disappears

into the forest to privately dine on his squirming repast

of very fresh, unseasoned sushi.

And when I get too hot, sitting there in

lowering Sol's

slanting, but still blistering hot beams,

I stand up and face that hot, gusting wind, and

after changing into my swimming trunks, wade into

the surging waves while staring intently

at my feet so I can thread my way through the

jagged rocks littering the rough sand,

until the water deepens enough

for me to take a delightful, cooling plunge,

after which I enjoy a fifteen-minute swim that

cools me enough to again sit in Sol's

blasting beams and

comfortably read my Buhner-book . . .

t o o . . . . .

c o m f o r t a b l y . . . . .

I . . . . .

g u e s s . . . . .

b e c a u s e . . . . .

suddenly the blasting roar of a float plane

on what seems like an endless take-off run,

wakes me from a deep doze that I have no sense

of having fallen into,

and long enough that snooze had been that

Sol,

in his slow, oblique-angled, mid-summer descent,

is now not too far distant from the pine-jagged,

northwest-shore hills that the roaring float plane

is rapidly soaring over,

and I am feeling chilly enough to need to put on

my track jacket, though as I am doing so,

I sense there is something different about that

slow-waning day, which in my doze-addled state I

can't put a finger on . . . . . until I realize

that the wind has died to but a water-rippling whisper,

—hence the long take-off run for that plane—

and glad I am that I took the time to make those

sandwiches, for I am suddenly famished,

and after breaking off part of one

that I place on the sand beside me as a

thank-you-for-your-companionship

gift for the

Nature Spirits,

whose warm companionship I've

been subtly sensing during my visit,

—if I was an Aboriginal living the traditional ways, I'd

always bring some tobacco with me for that purpose—

while eating them to the raucous cries of the

instantly-appearing flock of beggar-gulls

that shows up so each member can

noisily and aggressively

demand its due share of my simple dinner,

I watch that now-bloated, pleasantly-warm Sol

slowly but inexorably drift ever closer and closer

to those dark, forested, northwestern hills,

most delightfully noticing that

the new crescent Luna is following him to his

western bed.

My sandwiches and all but one

those beggar-gulls gone, I pour myself

a cup of tea from my thermos,

and after splashing a bit on the sand

as a non-alcoholic libation to those

Nature Spirits,

I mindfully sip my tea as I watch

fat and bloated Sol

slow-slide into his northwestern bed,

seemingly being chased there by the hauntingly

pale and evanescent,

Crescent Luna,

and I take a half-dozen pictures of the two of them

together, then a half-dozen more of

Sleepy Sol,

as his last, languid rays brighten the now

almost-still and glassy waters of that

Living Lake

while he slow-slips under the covers of those

distant, jagged hills.

And when he is gone, that clear, cloudless

sky has provided no decent canvas for him

to paint a sunset on,

but it has dimmed enough to allow

Young Maid Luna

to solidify and brighten, and as I

gaze at her, I notice that she is slowly

displaying that lovely and magical image

created when her usually invisible totality is faintly

illuminated by Earthshine,

an ever-entrancing image that was word-captured so

poetically-perfect by

Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

with his famous lines,

Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,

With the old Moon in her arms.

And even as I am gazing intently and wondrously at

Young Maid Luna

and taking a series of pictures of her

carrying the ever-more-visible burden of her

Old Crone-self,

down into Sol's bed,

to my delight and surprise,

now that my eyes are no longer half-blinded by

Sol's bright rays,

I catch a glimpse of the faint-shining

Evenstar,

of lovely

Goddess Venus,

who is rapidly brightening in the deepening blue

of the Sol-abandoned sky as she chases

Young Maid Luna

down to that horizon-bed that

Weary Sol

has already claimed as His own.

And though my intention is to sit there, in that

still, silent, and enchanted gloaming and

photo-capture the enthralling sight of

those two lovely goddesses

racing each other into Sol's bed, perhaps

hoping for a night of celestial frolics that I am sure

he is too weary for,

—but who knows!—

I sense my

True Self, my Spirit,

telling me that it is time to get back afloat,

so after hiding my handy backboards behind the rock,

I first say goodbye and bow in Namaste to that magical

Little Beach,

then say goodbye and bow again in Namaste to the

Nature Spirits,

remembering to warn them to disengage from the

bright aura emanating from my

True Self, my Spirit,

which I know they love to cling to,

and not to hitch a ride on it when I depart,

or they'd end up regretting it later, as no less

would I for not reminding them.

—Years ago, before I understood the true power and

luminosity of my True Self, my Spirit, and what exactly

was happening when I entered areas of pristine

wilderness and set my ego aside enough for my True Self,

my Spirit, to enter into a deep state of communion with

that pristine wilderness, those Nature Spirits, as is their

spiritual nature, would be attracted to, cluster around,

and cling to the bright glow that I now know they could

easily see emanating from my True Self, my Spirit.

And though their attachment to this glow, Its aura, was

always subtle and never noticeably draining of my energy

when I was visiting with them in their home, occasionally,

on my leaving, one or two, like moths around a porch light

on a summer eve, would be unwilling to abandon the light

and would accompany me home.

I wouldn't notice their clinging presence until I was

abed and asleep, at which time I would be beset with

extraordinarily strange dreams that bordered on

becoming nightmares. Fortunately, an enlightening

intuition sent by my True Self, my Spirit, informed me

that this was the result of those Nature Spirits having

hitched a ride on Its aura when I departed their home,

but who were now feeling fearful, homesick and lonely

for their companions, and were communicating their

fear, loneliness and their frantic need to return home

through those disturbing dreams.

And though usually they would vanish on their own

after that first night, one time those disturbing dreams

persisted for three nights, getting more insistent and

nightmarish with each successive night, until my

True Self, my Spirit, intuitively informed me those

spirits were so frightened and discombobulated that

they were unable to let go of the light of Its aura,

and that I had to go back to the spot where I had been

when they attached themselves, and encourage them

to disengage and rejoin their community.

I suspected their home to be an isolated, marshy

area that I had been able to unexpectedly explore

because the water was heavy-rains high, so I went back

there, did a meditation, and told them to disengage and

return to their friends. I immediately sensed a profuse

chorus of telepathic "Thank- you's!" coming from all

around me, and with that effort, those disturbing

dreams ceased.

That incident taught me an important lesson about

the world of Nature, about Nature Spirits, about the

power of my True Self, my Spirit, all of which also gave

me a deeper insight into the Nature-and-Spirit sensitive

reality the North American Aboriginal peoples must

have been living in before the White Christian Hordes

arrived with their bibles, crosses, swords, muskets,

judgements, and sins to denounce those Nature Spirits

as demons and those naturally holy peoples as heathens

for their essential and magical communion with them—

and with the very alive, Mother Goddess Gaia!

And when that important ritual

is completed,

I re-launch my kayak, do my meditative flight-glide

away from that little, rock-strewn beach, which,

when the water is thusly glass-pane smooth and clear,

truly does allow me to feel

like I am flying,

and though my immediate intention is to head southwest

in a long diagonal crossing of the pristine mirror of

that twilight-reflecting lake in order to

arrive at a sandspit at the western headland of a broad,

sweeping bay,

—if it has an official name, I don't know it, but I have

dubbed it Bear Point, because on one of my previous

paddle-cruises, while setting up my camera on a tripod

to catch the rising of Full Luna, movement to my right

caught my attention, and looking over, I saw a big black

bear standing not twenty yards down the beach, staring

intently at me and sniffing about; fortunately, and as I

expected, it was a wild enough bear that when I clapped

my hands several times, it turned and shot off into the

thick, darkening forest whence it had emerged. Needless

to say, while I was taking my shots of glorious rising

Luna, I cast as many looks down that beach as at her

but that inquisitive bruin never returned—

from which I intended to turn east and close-hug

the southern shore of that long bay as I slow-paddled

back to my starting-point beach,

but there up-welled from deep within my

True Self, my Spirit,

the potent artesian spring of a desire to take

a longer paddle back so It could take advantage

of the long-lingering, high-summer twilight and enjoy

more time out on that quiet, wind-still lake,

and giving into to that desire,

I first take a slow, soft-gliding paddle around the cove

that I have just spent several hours reading,

swimming, and snoozing in

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

half of which skirts a marsh thick with high stands of

reeds and bulrushes

which hide a huge, ancient, moss-and-lichen covered

beaver dam more than four feet high,

which creates behind it another marsh

—beavers often build massive dams that create amazingly

big marshes, and every couple of years or so, after extra-

heavy rains, one of them will rupture and the freed waters

will wash away sections of major highways—

that fills the space between two rocky, forested hills

and into which feeds a small stream, for I can

faintly hear the soft burble-babble of water

cascading the lower areas of the dam's mossy edge,

—in the spring, and after heavy rains, it is a riotous

waterfall that is a delight to stop, watch, and listen to—

a sound I love so much I cease paddling and

slowly glide past it,

listening . . .

listening . . .

listening . . .

as I watch a Luftwaffe-swarm of dragonflies swoop

and dive through an easily visible swarm of

midges cavorting over a broad patch of

reeds and horsetails,

and almost immediately one of those multi-winged,

fighter-dragons

lands on my right-hand paddle blade,

either to swallow its mouthful of captured midges

or just to rest and recharge its energies,

and after drift-gliding past that entrancing spot,

I give my paddle a soft bump to set that

re-fueling Messerschmitt back aflight,

and at the exact instant that I dip my paddle blade

back into the water to resume paddling, a

woodpecker,

shatters that silence

thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka

thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka

to wood chips when it

begins pounding on a hollow snag

somewhere in that marsh,

and as its jack-hammering efforts

thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka

thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka

deafeningly fill that little cove,

I can but wonder if it is one of those huge,

Pileated Woodpeckers,

—that red-capped, crow-sized tree-wrecker that surely

must have inspired Walter Lantz in his creation of the

iconic and indomitable Woody Woodpecker—

as I resume my paddling,

and as I glide along the length of that cove,

I take in deep breaths of the rapidly cooling air that

are filling up with the rich, fecund scents of

wet earth and rank decay emanating from the

deep mud of that marsh,

while enjoying the deep and delicious

silence created by the unexpected absence of wind and

the strange, delightful absence of motorboats,

a sweet and

H O L Y S I L E N C E

broken only by the burble-babbling of those marsh waters

cascading over the beaver dam,

the intermittent bouts of

thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka

thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka-thocka

created by that woodpecker, and the occasional

loud and unmistakable

bzee-BURBLE-aawwnkk-brrraawwnngk!

bzee-BURBLE-aawwnkk-brrraawwnngk!

calls of

Red-winged Blackbirds

those ubiquitous avian denizens of all marshes,

though near its western edge, I spy a

Great Blue Heron

standing in the reeds, staring intently into

the water at its feet,

the sight of it inducing me to rest my paddle, take out

my camera, and try to drift as close to it as I silently can

and get a shot before it notices me,

but before I can get as close to it as I need to in order

to get a decent picture in that dim light,

it either keen-eyed spots me, or keen-eared hears

the soft hiss of my kayak over that still, darkening water,

and letting out a loud, harsh, and startling

Squaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwkkkkkkkkkkk!

that seems, quite literally, to rend in two that

sweet and

H O L Y S I L E N C E

it furiously flaps

its great broad wings, noisily launches itself out of

those reeds, and flies low over the bay, allowing me

to take several blurred and worthless shots

of it in its glorious, big-wings-stiff-flapping flight.

And once I am past that marsh, the rest of my

slow-paddle

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

around that cove is uneventful, save for when I am

nearing its northwestern end when I startle a pair of

mallards

feeding at the entrance to a shallow inlet,

and after the easily visible, green-headed,

white-and-brown-backed dandy,

Mr. Mallard,

has made a necessary,

whangggnnnk-whangggnnnk!

whangggnnnk-whangggnnnk!

whangggnnnk-whangggnnnk!

show of annoyance with my intrusion

into his domain,

he ushers the drab, barely visible, brown-and-tan,

Mrs. Mallard,

into a thick stand of tall, bristling,

dark-green horsetails,

which instantly swallows them into its deep,

safe gloom,

and too-timelessly quick I paddle around the

rocky, hemlock-sprouting point of that cove

and enter a large, sweeping bay,

instantly startling to flight another large,

huge-winged bird,

this one having been feeding on something lying on a

shoreline strip of sand too narrow to call a beach,

and though at first

I briefly think that I've set that same heron aflight,

as that giant-winged bird franticly flaps

across the bay, the long tips of its huge wings almost

touching the water before it gains enough height

to soar into the stand of pine trees growing

at the base of the rugged, darkening cliff

that forms the top half of the hill

looming over the north shore of the bay,

but those wings are longer, and

flapping differently than the heron's,

and when I clearly see that it has a bright white head,

my heart leaps with amazement and delight

for I realize that I've just been privileged to see, for the

first time in all my many kayak-cruises on that

Living Lake,

a

Bald Eagle,

and most curious I am to discover what it had

been feeding on, and on my gliding close enough to

that slim "beach" to find out,

surprised I am to see

—and way too easily smell!—

that it is a thick-bodied fish about

three feet long that looks a lot like a

Coho salmon,

which means it hasn't come from this small

Living Lake,

but from the Great Lake twenty miles to the south,

and I can but scratch my head in wonder as to how

it got there, surmising that perhaps that

mighty, avian predator had talon-grabbed it out

of that huge, deep-watered

Living Lake

and hauled it north on his broad and powerful wings,

—each of which is over three feet long!—

and though I am not a hundred percent sure

such a feat is possible, especially over that long

a distance, I can lay no claim to being an

expert on such matters.

And as I resume my paddling,

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

I keep my eyes riveted to the spot where that mighty

bird vanished into that thick stand of pine trees,

hoping to catch sight of it again—

but no such luck,

so I am content with gliding along the steep,

rocky shore of that huge bay,

close-crowded as it is with a swath

of towering larch trees,

—I know they are larches because I have a vivid

memory of them turning a brilliant gold last fall—

that seem to loom all the taller in the gathering darkness

of the rapidly cooling gloaming,

and as my gentle paddle strokes cause my

smooth-gliding craft to gobble up the yards of that

rocky, thick-forested shoreline,

I hear the familiar, harsh, mechanical-sounding,

rattle-call,

thhit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit......

thhit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tit......

of that Kingfisher,

who is letting me know, in no uncertain

thit-tit-tits!

just how irritated he is with me for invading his

hunting grounds and ruining his efforts

at catching some more fresh sushi,

as he launches himself out of a

long, bare bough overhanging the water and

flies along the shore for fifty yards or so.

And look back several times I do,

as I soft-slow-paddle

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

the curving, darkening, thick-forested shoreline

but yards away from the boulders littering

its shadowed shallows,

hoping for one more sighting of that magnificent,

rare-to-that-lake

eagle,

but it has no interest in accommodating my

obsessive interest in seeing it again,

—I've often pondered the irony of that fact that we

human beings can be so keenly, often egotistically

interested, (think of birders with their obsessive

lists!) in seeing the denizens of wilderness areas,

while those denizens are just as keenly interested

in not being seen by us. And certain, I absolutely am,

that the last thing any of them excitedly discuss, or

brag about, when meeting up, or congregating, is

the fact that they have been blessed to have seen a

human being!—

though I do spot a

beaver,

with the a long, leafy aspen-branch in its mouth,

strong-swimming towards its huge, mud-stick lodge

that is half hidden in the deepening gloom

of a thick stand of

white-trunks-glowing-in-the-gloaming

birches

growing on the western shore of that bay.

But almost as good as sighting that eagle, and that

ever-busy beaver,

is the sudden eruption of the

delightful, tinkling-glass sound of a

Hermit Thrush,

reclusively hiding somewhere in those shoreline trees,

—only by their song shall you know those shy birds!—

and piping out his magical, pitch-varied and

territorial tune that starts out with a

a short, flute-sweet note followed

by a rapid, rich, tinkling-glass warbling,

—I can remember being instantly delighted and enthralled

the first time I heard the song of a Hermit Thrush after

moving from my prairie home to the boreal forest, and

I have discovered I am hardly alone in my instant love

of it, for, as Donald Kroodsma writes in The Backyard

Birdsong Book: Widely held as the most gifted songster

in all of North America, the Hermit Thrush is the inspiration

of countless poets—and words like serene and ethereal

only begin to convey the magic of his song. He begins

with the purest of tones lasting only a third of a second to

finish his masterpiece: Oooooooooooh, holy, holy, ah,

purity, purity, eeh, sweetly sweetly.

that ever has the power to elate and enthrall my

True Self, my Spirit,

and much as my intention is to paddle

the curving shore of that bay then cross the

Living Lake

on a southeastern diagonal that will take me to

Bear Point,

so I can then paddle east while glide-hugging

the rapidly darkening

southern shore,

quite confident that with the long twilight

that will soft-linger over that midsummer-embraced

Living Lake,

I will arrive back at my starting-point beach

before total darkness sets in.

But it is such a lovely, high-summer gloaming,

and with that Hermit Thrush continuing to fill my

keen-listening ears with his rich and magical,

flute-and-tinkling-glass,

Oooooooooooh, holy, holy, ah, purity, purity, eeh, sweetly sweetly.

arias,

I can most definitely feel my

True Self, my Spirit,

urging me to prolong and lengthen my paddle-cruise,

a notion that my ever-practical reason

disagrees with, but since I long ago learned,

in the slow, reluctant, intricate and socially isolating

process of becoming a

mystic and a poet,

that when I get a strong request from my

True Self, my Spirit,

to do something that is important, perhaps

even essential to It,

it is totally unreasonable to pay too much attention

to my reason,

and as I slow-glide along the shallow,

rock-strewn point of that bay

that takes me out of the deepening gloom

of that tall, rocky, pine-looming hill in whose

shadow I have been paddling,

I am suddenly bathed in the amazingly brighter

gloaming light streaming across that

Living Lake

from Sol's northwestern setting point,

so instead of quick-stroking to Bear Point

on that southeastern diagonal across the

Living Lake,

I give in to my

True Self's, my Spirit's

deepmost desire to prolong this kayak-cruise,

and steer my craft in a gentle curve

around that rocky point,

now intent on paddling the kilometer

across the north-sweeping bay to a long beach

on its western shore, where I

plan to take a short rest, stretch my aging,

circulation-challenged legs, drink the rest of

my thermos of tea,

then head back

in that bright, lingering gloaming.

Third Leg

But as fast as I round that point and am

heading west towards that beach,

I most delightfully spy, straight ahead of me,

in the bright, clear gloaming-glow clinging to the

pine-jagged, northwestern hills, the

Crescent Goddess Luna,

looking startling huge and ominous with her

"Old Self" grasped so lovingly in her

"New Self's" arms,

—a perfect metaphor, it would seems, for our ego's

job of "carrying" our but-barely-visible-to-us, True

Self, our Spirit, across the sky of our human life—

palely reflecting off the darkening, mirror-expanse

of water stretching before me as she keeps

her distance from the chasing, and now

scintillatingly bright

Goddess Venus,

as both slow-slide through that gloaming-glow

towards the deep-shadowed, tree-jagged hill

behind which

Weary Sol,

after his long, mid-summer trek across His beloved

Akasha,

is now indulging in his short, much-needed slumber,

and I cannot but heart-warmingly feel

the exquisite joy my

True Self, my Spirit,

feels as It witnesses that beautiful and entrancing

sight of the bright-shining

Goddess Venus

so vainly trying to catch up with

the lovely,

Crescent Goddess Luna,

as, weary as she surely must be of carrying

the burden of her "Old Self"

for the last hour of her invisible-to-our-eyes

trek across Akasha,

she keeps her distance from her sister goddess

as she sashays, either to some anticipated

frolics with hot-blooded Sol,

whom she hopes is not

too tired for a bit of bedtime play,

or just to her own, much longer night of dearly-needed

slumbers beneath the covers of that dark, tree-jagged

western hill,

and it is in that warm bliss of heart-joy flooding

my psyche, sent by my ecstatic,

True Self, my Spirit,

that I slow and gentle paddle

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

towards those two,

Glorious Goddesses,

eventually giving in to the subtle wish of my

True Self, my Spirit,

that I cease paddling and just watch them,

which is what I do, allowing my kayak's momentum

to glide-drift me northwest into

that slow-dimming gloaming light,

w a t c h i n g t h e m . . . . .

w a t c h i n g t h e m . . . . .

w a t c h i n g t h e m . . . . .

finally bowing in Namaste and saying

a soft, out-loud

"Goodbye, Beautiful Goddess!"

to

Goddess Luna,

as She slow-settles into Her waiting,

tree-jagged bed,

the slim and brilliant crescent of Her

"New Self,"

vanishing first, followed by her

dim, bloated, and ominous,

"Old Self,"

and an intense and caustic feeling of loneliness

erupts from my

True Self, my Spirit,

and floods my psyche as I gaze into the

the now stark and empty space where she'd

so charismatically been,

for however scintillatingly bright that

Goddess Venus is,

she does not even come close to

presenting the sense of presence that

Goddess Luna

had done in that gloaming-bright sky,

though that loneliness is short lived,

for as I am now gazing at

Goddess Venus,

a pair of

Canada Geese,

noisily take flight from that

western-shore beach

I am intending to paddle to,

honking loudly and a bit out of synch,

as they side-by-side

fly directly towards me,

WHONNGK WHONNGK

WHONNGK WHONNGK

WHONNGK WHONNGK

WHONNGK WHONNGK

WHONNGK WHONNGK

WHONNGK WHONNGK

though when they have covered about half the distance

from that beach to my kayak,

they suddenly veer sharply to their right

and head directly south and into the channel

that leads to the dam at the end of the lake,

never ceasing their furious honking,

WHONNGK WHONNGK

WHONNGK WHONNGK

WHONNGK WHONNGK

WHONNGK WHONNGK

WHONNGK WHONNGK

WHONNK WHONNK

WHONNK WHONNK

WHONNK WHONNK

and while I am listening to their loud,

silence-shattering honking while

gazing at

Goddess Venus

and the gloaming-bright sky through which

she is so slowly sliding to her

horizon bed,

I notice a swift-moving

cat's paw

rippling the mirrored surface of that

Living Lake,

coming directly at me from the north,

and when that very alive

zephyr,

seemingly intentionally strikes the starboard

bow of my kayak

and swings it to the south

and I find my gaze and my attention

being grabbed by a

Good Friend,

that I have made on my many kayak-cruises

on this

Living Lake,

Ancient Cliff,

that sheer, massive, red-tinged and

high-looming block of

Precambrian granite

that towers over a secluded bay on the western side

of the channel those two geese had

honked their way along like a couple of

New York taxis in an evening race down Broadway,

and though usually, during a

high-summer gloaming such as this,

that cliff-guarded bay has two or three

motorboats of various sizes

parked in it,

their owners fishing, or allowing their kids

to swim and frolic in the clear, cool waters,

but in the

hallowed enchantment

of this special eve,

there most strangely

—and blessedly!—

are none, and from deep within my

True Self, my Spirit,

rises an over-powering urge to visit with that

Old Friend,

which even on my first visit to it, I sensed it

to be overpoweringly alive, and

very conscious of my presence in its bay,

though this sighting of it brings to mind the

mystical lines from the

Tao Te Ching

that I'd most serendipitously read

but hours before in that book by Buhner,

Who will prefer the jingle of jade pendants

if he once has heard stone growing in a cliff?

and no choice have I, if I want to remain

at peace with my

True Self, my Spirit,

who I have always sensed to have

a keen affinity, even affection, for that

Ancient Cliff,

—and that Ancient Cliff to It!—

but to visit it,

so though it is getting late,

and the bright gloaming is slowly but relentlessly

losing its lustre,

I begin to strong paddle

my cat's paw-turned kayak towards that

Ancient Cliff,

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!.

in my efforts to, as quickly as I can, traverse

the kilometer or so of gloaming-reflecting water

separating me from that

peaceful but darkening bay, feeling

a potent sense of peace and joy engulfing me

that I know is coming from my

True Self, my Spirit,

along with the powerful intimation that

no motorboats will disturb that

H O L Y E N C H A N T M E N T

with their

LOUD CRUDE MECHANICAL NOISES,

and rile those glassy waters with their

VIOLENT, CHURNING WAKES!

And as I am hard-paddling and gazing

at that towering,

Ancient Cliff,

a large, high-hovering, wing-flapping bird

catches my eye, and even as I am trying

to figure out what it is,

it makes a steep, plunging dive into the

still waters of the bay, snatches a large fish

out of the water, and even as the circular ripples

from that disturbed spot slowly roll across the

mirror-still waters towards me,

that huge bird easily outstrips them,

as to my great delight,

it flies directly towards me,

and though I at first think it must be that

Bald Eagle,

I quickly see that it is not only not as big as an eagle,

but that it has narrower, bent-at-the-wrist wings,

and a white, glowing-in-the-gloaming breast,

and instantly I realize that it is an

Osprey,

and truly blessed I know I am, not just to see one

of those "fish-hawks" which are so rare

on these inland lakes,

but to be Nature-blessed to witness

one catching a fish,

and then more blessed yet, do I feel, when it

flies low over my head, allowing me to see

that it is tight-gripping its dinner-prize

in its sharp talons in such a fashion that

that ill-fated fish not only hangs longitudinally

and close-below its slim, white breast,

but with its streamlined head pointing forward,

thus creating minimal wind resistance to that bird's flight

to wherever it is going,

—perhaps to its massive, stick-pile of a nest to

feed its young, which by now must be fledging—

and I could but marvel at the intelligence inherent in it to

allow it to figure out that most efficient of methods

for carrying fish over long distances.

—From what I have seen, an eagle will carry its caught fish

dangling horizontally below its body, but then it is a much

bigger bird than an osprey, each of its broad wings being

up to three and a half feet long.—

So enthralling is the sight of that sharp-beaked hunter

flying so low over my head with its catch, that I

turn my kayak so I can watch it fly across the

Living Lake

to the north, its long, powerful, and slightly

bent wings flapping strongly and steadily, until it

disappears between two forested hills on

the northern shore,

at which point I turn my kayak back to the

southwest and determinedly paddle,

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

towards that

Ancient Cliff,

wanting to get to It before the

thin and anemic gloaming light loses

its unequal match with the sumo wrestler

of the deepening darkness,

though as I near It, I have an urge to glance back

and to my right,

at the bright area of the distant, northwestern hill

where weary,

Blazing Sol and

Crescent Goddess Luna,

have slipped down to their slumbers,

—or their frolics, if Sol is up for them!—

and thrilled I am to see that

Brilliant Goddess Venus

has not yet followed them into their bed,

though in but minutes she will,

and using my paddle to steering my

swift-gliding kayak in a large, half-circle,

I watch as she slow-slides temporarily out of sight

behind the black form of a towering pine,

scintillatingly reappearing several minute later between

two of its black branches, disappearing again for

several more minutes, then brightly reappearing for

her short, diagonal descent into the horizon bed

of the dark, ragged and

Living Forest

covering that tall, and very alive-feeling,

Rocky Hill,

—I don't think Sol is going to get much rest on this

short, solstice-close night, for though he will surely

be able to ignore any advances made by the young,

Crescent Luna, he will be powerless to resist the

lusty charms of Venus, the Goddess of Love—

but she does not leave Akasha in a state of lonely

emptiness, for as she was slipping into her forested,

Sol-and-Luna slumbering boudoir,

Akasha's powder-blue, gloaming-glowing canvas

was being painted with the five white streaks

of jet contrails that are fanning out from

the forest-jagged horizon-hills,

with the two longest contrails already widening

and softly dispersing,

while the shortest, which manifests

but seconds after

Goddess Venus'

bright-beaming bedtime departure,

is in the process of being created by a

high-flying jetliner that is glinting gold

in vanished-Sol's slumber-light.

And all around me is a rare, delightful,

and enthralling

S I L E N C E

that is broken, but barely, by the hiss of my hull

through the water, the

soft-as-I-could-make-them

plashes of my paddles as I turn my kayak

the other half-circle that again

points it towards that

Ancient Cliff,

and by soft, intermittent, and wholly appropriate to the

holy, gloaming mood on this enchanted and

Living Lake,

Ooooooooooh, holy, holy, ah, purity, purity, eeh, sweetly, sweetly . . .

Ooooooooooh, holy, holy, ah, purity, purity, eeh, sweetly, sweetly . . .

flute-and-tinkling-glass song-bursts from a

Hermit Thrush

that is hermit-hiding somewhere on that gloomy,

southern shore and cheerily serenading the

trees of its forest home and all

of its many and varied inhabitants,

one of which,

residing farther along that shore,

is another

Hermit Thrush,

because it suddenly pipes up with its own,

Ooooooooooh, holy, holy, ah, purity, purity, eeh, sweetly, sweetly . . .

and back and forth they magically sing

to each other,

and to any and all with the enthralled ears capable

of hearing their angelic duet,

and with my enthralled ears now in charge,

I can but listen closely to those two tiny

"Avian Angels"

singing their hearts out,

very quickly seeming to slip into a momentary state of

extra-heightened awareness that allows me

to most wondrously hear that each one's successive

song burst is a tiny bit varied from the one before it,

and as my

True Self, my Spirit,

manifests into my heart a geyser of pure joy on hearing

this gloaming-boreal duet,

I get the sense from It that it represents

a monstrosity of spiritual wealth

that beggars to a handful of tarnished copper coins

all the gold in Fort Knox,

and though I am loath to break that magical

and very alive

E N C H A N T M E N T

created by the

S I L E N C E

of that deepening gloaming that is not being

shattered by those

Avian Angels,

but being decorated and enhanced,

I again swift-paddle and smooth "soar"

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

through the deepening gloaming to the northern end

of a long, jumbled phalanx of huge,

lichen-splotched boulders

stretching to the right of that

Ancient Cliff,

out of which, about half-way along,

a gnarled-limbed oak most incongruously grows

at a forty-five degree angle over the water,

its thick, ancient roots branching and twining amongst

the smaller boulders at the shore,

and to which, at its overhanging end,

some boaters have tied a long thick rope

with a big knot at its end,

and more than once, on my previous kayak-cruises

to that

Ancient Cliff,

I have watched their children

screaming, whooping, and hollering as they

swing on that rope

—sometimes several at once—

and drop into the water from it,

and as is my custom when passing that ancient and

Venerable Oak,

I rest my paddle and bowing in Namaste to it,

say a soft,

"Good Evening, Old Gaffer,"

then grabbing my paddle, I raise it high

and try to give that knot a soft swat

with its blade,

a silly little ritual that I get a charge out of,

especially on the three out of ten times

that I hit it,

—it's not as easy as it sounds because reaching

out past dead-center with an up-raised paddle can

easily tip the kayak, and since I am usually there

late in the evening, I am never in the mood for

paddling the miles back while soaked and chilled—

and then it is on to the gloomy shadows

of that massive, towering, and very alive,

Ancient Cliff,

and most willingly do I slip ever deeper and deeper

into that delightful

E N T H R A L L M E N T

that ever has the power to free my timeless,

True Self, my Spirit,

from my ego's petty and demanding

obsession with allowing

the Waffen-SS of Hitler Time,

to conscript it into its army of relentlessly

M-A-R-C-H-I-N-G M-I-N-U-T-E-S,

and from its

equally petty and demanding

compulsion to assiduously follow the

bellowing orders of its ubiquitous,

Sergeant Major Clocks

that are ever-intent on double-and-triple-timing me

through my daily,

world-of-The-World life

at a relentless, goose-stepping pace

guaranteed to keep me in a state of permanent

exhaustion and utter mindlessness

as they intentionally and maliciously

shriek to shreds all

incipient enthrallments,

which of course, is the main reason my

time-loathing, enthrallment-loving

True Self, my Spirit,

in needing a recharging of its spiritual "batteries,"

has urged me out onto this ever-magical,

Living Lake,

and into this

T I M E L E S S E N T H R A L L M E N T,

for there is nothing It loves

—and needs!—

more than to occasionally feel the

choking neck-shackle of

Hitler Time's

oppressive and controlling despotism loosen

and fall free of its

Timeless Being,

such that each normally stomping and distinct,

G - O - O - S - E — S - T - E - P - P - I - N - G

second

becomes . . . . .

b a l l e t d a n c e r - l i g h t . . . . .

becomes . . . . .

g e n t l e . . . . .

e l a s t i c . . . . .

p o r o u s . . . . .

enough to be easily capable of

m e l d i n g

with the ones before and after it on the stage

of my living hours,

and in so doing, then be easily able to

commune with the

T I M E L E S S S P I R I T

of this

Living Lake;

with the

T I M E L E S S S P I R I T

of this

Living Planet;

with the

T I M E L E S S S P I R I T

of this

Living Universe;

so though the eastern sky slowly darkens

as the monstrous

B L A C K H O U N D

of the

Solar Terminator

is sniffing its way northwest across Akasha's

broad, deepening-to-indigo expanse

in its desperate search for its lost master,

Sleeping Sol,

I have no sense of concern about it,

knowing only too well, that

blue-diamond eves

like this one are too rare

and too precious to pass over

during a too-short northern summer, with

most of those scarce,

blue-diamond eves,

so often being

S I L E N C E-SMASHED!

by roaring, wave-stoking motorboats,

so no qualms do I have concerning

my late visit to that living,

Ancient Cliff,

and as I slow-glide

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

into the rapidly deepening gloom

of that secluded bay while keeping my gaze

attentively welded to that dark,

looming, and very alive

Ancient Cliff,

I rest my paddle on the coaming and pressing my

palms together at my heart, give it

slow and reverent Namaste,

and then another to the

Quiet Bay

at Its base, mentally asking both of them permission

to enter their domains,

and most quick do I sense a reply from each

filling me with the heart-warming sense

that my visits are always a

welcome delight,

though barely have I picked up my paddle

and resumed my slow, gentle paddling

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

than a flash of white to my left attracts my attention

and glancing over, I am elated to see

that my friend, the

loon,

is now silently accompanying me on my magical journey,

and resting my paddle,

I press my palms together at my heart,

bow to it in Namaste, softly saying

"Hello, Good Friend,"

as I intently focus my gaze, my attention, and my

True Self's, my Spirit's

heartlight

on it for a handful of seconds,

after which I turn my gaze back to that

looming and ever-so-alive,

Ancient Cliff,

which my kayak has been slowly and silently

gliding towards,

and once again resume paddling, now even

slower and more gently

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

as I close-glide along the shadow-gloomy base

of that ever-so-alive,

Ancient Cliff,

several times holding my paddle aside in my left hand

so I can reach out with my right that I might

gently caress the

ever-so-alive-and-ancient

rock at Its base,

feeling,

the instant I do,

a subtle surge of benevolent energy

enter my hand and warmly and delightfully

course through my body and into

my heart,

though when I get about half way along its

massive, looming breadth,

I gently back-paddle hard enough to slow my kayak

to a barely discernible drift that enables me to

lean back and allow my gaze to slow-climb up

the sheer, towering, shadowed, slightly over-hanging

and majestic face of It,

—no different than do trees loom taller, appear more

massive, and feel more alive in any deepening twilight,

so too does this living, Ancient Cliff always appear

twice as high, three times as massive, and feel four

times more alive in the dimming, gloaming light—

and ponder again this visit, as I have

with others,

the violence of the ancient cataclysm

that had rent in half the massive, rocky hill

from which this living,

Ancient Cliff,

had been formed,

and too, as I do with most visits,

I stop my up-gliding gaze at Its sharp,

towering, overhanging top-edge from which a

fearless pine

grows at a sharp angle out of that living rock,

oblivious to the hundred-and-fifty foot drop

to the waters below,

and after meditating for timeless minutes on the

wondrous sight of that rugged, intrepid pine

growing out of a cleft in that dark, living

Ancient Cliff,

while being sharply outlined against Akasha's

deepening indigo hue,

I have no trouble feeling the intense and palpable

Is-ness,

the unignorable

Such-ness,

the essential

Livingness,

the unmistakable

Consciousness

of it,

a feeling that instantly brings to mind

another poem in Buhner's mystical book,

written by the 17th century Japanese mystical poet,

Matsuo Basho,

Go to the pine

if you want to learn about the pine,

or to the bamboo

if you want to learn about the bamboo.

And in doing so,

you must leave

your subjective preoccupation with yourself.

Otherwise you impose yourself on the object

and do not learn.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . .

so much wisdom in that simple poem, my

True Self, my Spirit,

intuitively presses home to me, especially in those

last four lines,

you must leave

your subjective preoccupation with yourself.

Otherwise you impose yourself on the object

and do not learn.

in which he is telling us that most fundamental

truth of human life:

if we do not get out of our head and into the whole,

vast world, the oubliette of our tiny and confining

head becomes our whole world

which instantly reminds me of an aphorism my

True Self, my Spirit,

had inspired me to write many years ago,

The world of art is for those who have lost

their child-bright ability to see the world.

and its corollary,

The job of any artist is to re-ignite their

child-bright ability to see the world, and with

that essential seeing, create the art that

shows the world anew to those adults who

have outgrown their natural ability to see it.

And with that I most intentionally

force myself out of my head and away from

those thoughts

so I can gaze up at the intrepid and so-alive

pine,

and as I do, I sense my

True Self, my Spirit,

softly telling me to add to the beginning of that poem

of the wise Basho, the lines,

Go to the cliff

if you want to learn about the cliff,

and from it

you will acquire wisdom infinitely more

ancient than Humankind, and equally

infinitely more profound than any

human mind can

rationally comprehend.

and to its end, a reiteration of that aphorism,

Nor do you truly ever see, and thus end up

blindly and mindlessly living the whole

of your tiny, ego-tyrannized existence in the

dark and confining oubliette of your head

while shackled to the damp stone wall of

your fears, prejudices and preconceptions.

And with those

philosophical and poetic diversions over,

I think about taking a picture of it, but know that

the light is so weak that I would need a tripod and

a stable platform to effect the long exposure

needed for a decent shot,

a reality that fills me, as it often has before,

with the wish that I was an accomplished painter

capable of capturing such a magical scene on a canvas,

—but, as a modification of the old saying goes: if

wishes were horses . . .we'd all be up to our eyeballs

in manure; and since no such talent do I possess,

these ineffectual words will have to suffice—

though while I have been intently "rubbernecking"

at that precipice-leaning pine,

my kayak has been drifting away from that living,

Ancient Cliff,

which allows my gaze to take in

more and more of its massive totality,

and as I do,

I am overwhelmed with the deep and powerful

knowing

that this living,

Ancient Cliff,

truly is infinitely more

alive and conscious and knowledgeable

than any human being I have ever met, and that

It most definitely is manifesting the potent

and primordial desire

to absorb the

Essential Me,

my

True Self, my Spirit,

into its ancient and somber Precambrian massiveness,

into a deep, magical, and total communion

with it,

and for a few mad, fleeting and enchanted seconds,

I am overwhelmed with the absurd desire

to back my kayak a few more yards

into the darkening shadows

of the deepening gloaming so softly

embracing this bay,

so I can then hard-paddle

smack-dab into that living,

Ancient Cliff,

and become an integral part of It

for the remaining eons that It is fated to massively

and granitically loom over the waters of this

Living Lake.

And perhaps

I would have attempted to do

something as mystically insane as that,

and perhaps

that massive and so potently-alive

Ancient Cliff

would have possessed the power to alter

the very plastic laws

of this very mysterious physical universe that we

arrogantly, ignorantly and erroneously believe to be

hard, fast, frozen and immutable,

—carved in stone, as it were—

thus allowing me to both physically and spiritually

become part of It,

and perhaps

I might have given into that

strange, mad and mystical urge

to paddle straight and deep into the awesome,

looming and frighteningly

conscious magnificence

of that

Ancient Cliff,

had there not suddenly come,

from far across the channel separating this magical bay

from the rocky, thick-forested hills opposite it, the

two loud and haunting, wolf-like howls

WHOOOOOOaaaaaaaaaaHOOOOOOO!

WHOOOOOOaaaaaaaaaaHOOOOOOO!

of a loon,

the sound of which snaps me out of my

Ancient Cliff-induced enthrallment,

even as it provokes me to glance to my

left, where I can easily see that

the loon that has been playing "wingman"

on my dusk-deepening kayak-cruise,

is still there,

and I can but suspect that that eerie call,

which had been so plaintively

—and timely!—

cast across the still and darkening waters,

had come from its

lonely mate,

wondering where he or she was,

so with that timely, trance-shattering sound,

instead of attempting to hard-paddle my kayak

deep into the awesome and primeval depths

of that massive, looming and

so-damned-alive,

Ancient Cliff,

I settle for gently sculling close enough to

its base so I am once again directly

under its sheer, dark, looming and overhanging face,

which allows me to gaze in wonder at

—as I always do!—

the dark shapes of all the

small trees, bushes, ferns, wildflowers and clumps

of grasses growing out of the plethora of cracks and

fissures in its rugged surface,

the sight of them filling me

—as they always do!—

with admiration and awe

at the incredible and persistent power of

L I F E,

to so inexorably, assiduously, and irrepressibly

manifest Itself

in so many ways and under such diverse,

and often harsh and precarious

conditions,

and utterly beyond the powers of my feeble,

human imagination

it is for me to fathom its ability to induce

wind-blown seeds,

first,

to germinate,

then continue, in their limited ways,

to live and grow

in whatever tiny amounts of soil and moisture

are present in those rocky cracks and fissures, which

surely must quickly dry out in

hot, rainless weather and test their

fortitude and endurance to heroic limits.

But time and evenglow wait for no kayaker!

and as the twilight wanes, I know

I cannot linger in the comforting and extraordinarily

conscious company of that magnificent,

Ancient Cliff

for as long as I sense that my

True Self, my Spirit,

would like to,

—how about, forever!—

and as I again set my paddle to work

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

and slow-glide along Its dark and looming length,

too-soon coming, even at that slowest of speeds,

to its end, where after reaching out

and giving its warm, ancient-beyond-ancient,

Living Rock,

one last, loving caress,

I guide my kayak sharply to the right and enter

a small, bright-lit cove,

—bright compared to the bay, deep as it was in the

shadow-gloom of that looming, Ancient Cliff—

littered with long-fallen, bark-bereft, and

spine-jagged pine and spruce trees, drift-logs,

and the many sharp, massive, jagged boulders created

over the eons as myriads of frosts and

long, gelid, snow-burdened winters

—not to fail to mention, of course, the several

million years it spent in a lightless, meditative

state while being crushed under a mile-thick

slab of ice during the last ice age—

have cracked and shattered the hard,

rugged rock of that living,

Ancient Cliff,

thus allowing gravity to have its way

and violently drag them down into a massive,

jumbled heap on its western side,

though not two strokes

do I take along that chaotic heap

before I get the sense of being watched,

and without conscious volition on my part,

my head turns to the right and I find myself

looking directly at a

racoon,

that is but barely visible in a huge,

shadowed crevice in the dark jumble of those

massive, jagged boulders from which it

is intently staring at me,

and even as I am thinking about how often,

through no conscious thought or intention,

my head has turned, and my gaze

been drawn to some half-hidden animal

that is staring intently at me,

always making me marvel at the

telepathic powers of animals,

though of course,

anyone who has even been owned by

a dog, a cat, a horse

—a gerbil, a hamster, a canary even!—

knows all about the telepathic powers

of animals and birds,

and even as I am staring back at that shy,

bright-eyed, Lone Ranger-masked creature,

there is a sudden splashing ruckus in the reeds

at the end of the cove,

and another heron takes off in slow, laboured,

big-wings-flapping-furiously flight

out of the cove towards the open water of the channel,

and most thrilled am I to be able to watch those

big, stiff wings so powerfully carry it

low over those still, "wine-dark" waters,

until it swerves sharply to the right and lands on

a low, rocky point at the eastern end of that cove,

where it stands in meditative repose,

its slim, silhouetted neck forming

a graceful "S"

in the dimming, gloaming light.

And in a similar, meditative stillness,

I sit for many timeless minutes on

the zafu

of my kayak in the center of

the zabuton

of that cove, my

True Self, my Spirit,

d e l i c i o u s l y . . .

d i f f u s i n g . . .

m e l d i n g . . .

w i t h . . .

the

D I V I N E S I L E N C E

while my ego wonders where all the

mosquitoes are

that should have been dive-bombing me for the

last half hour for their sanguinary suppers,

and getting the potent intimation

from my

True Self, my Spirit,

that they are being kept at bay by that

W O N D R O U S E N C H A N T M E N T,

and think too, my ego does,

that I should not be lingering there at all because

I am feeling my age and its attendant fatigue and

that it soon will be pitch-black night, and with

that big, beautiful night-light,

Goddess Luna,

already snugly asleep in her horizon-bed,

—or frolicking with Sol and Goddess Venus in it!—

it would be a lengthy, even dangerous

paddle back in that darkness,

though most quickly do I get the potent,

and mollifying intimation from my

True Self, my Spirit,

that I should keep my paddle at rest

a while longer

and not concern myself about

getting back—

s o . . . . .

t h a t . . . . .

i s . . . . .

w h a t . . . . . .

I . . . . .

d o . . . . .

as . . . . .

I . . . . .

j u s t . . . . .

c o n t i n u e . . . . .

s i t t i n g . . . . .

t h e r e . . . . .

b r e a t h i n g . . . . .

d e e p l y . . . .

a n d . . . . .

s l o w l y . . . . .

w h i l e . . . . .

p e a c e f u l l y . . . . .

p r a c t i c i n g . . . . .

a . . . . .

b l i s s f u l . . . . .

m e d i t a t i o n . . . . . .

that I rarely do because it renders me far too

open and vulnerable to all the loud noise and

psychic-telepathic garbage endemic

to our modern

world-of-The-World,

this meditation involving:

first,

inducing my eyes to go into a state of

soft focus,

whereby I see everything in my visual field

without focusing on any specific thing;

then

allowing my consciousness to expand so it can

Ouroboros-loop around and become

conscious that it is conscious;

then,

forcing that expanded, looped-around consciousness

to become conscious of the scalp-to-toe totality

of my body;

then,

expand that consciousness outward even more

so it envelops the kayak . . . .

then,

envelops these living, conscious waters

on which it and I float . . . . .

then,

envelopes the totality of the

Living Lake

and its soothing field of consciousness . . . . .

all the while attempting to keep my attention,

and thus my consciousness,

focused on as many of the

sights, sounds, scents, and sensations

coming from the world around me,

but doing this,

not as an

objective observer

of the world I am being conscious of,

but as an active and conscious

participant

in it,

but as an

integral and inseparable part

of it,

as no less is every water molecule comprising this

Living Lake

on which I am floating and meditating,

an integral and essential part of it,

such that soon there is no

me-in-the-kayak-observing-the-world-around-me,

but just the single, integrated, and highly

C O N S C I O U S U N I T Y,

the

consciousnessmekayaklakemeconsciousness,

m e d i t a t i n g

s t i l l i n g m y c h a t t t t t t t e r i n g m i n d

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . d e e pl y . . . s l o w l y . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .m i n d f u l l y . . . . . . . . . . . . .

e x p a n d i n g

m e l d i n g

m e d i t a t i n g

s t i l l i n g m y c h a t t t t t t t e r i n g m i n d

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . d e e pl y . . . s l o w l y . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .m i n d f u l l y . . . . . . . . . . . . .

e x p a n d i n g

m e l d i n g

m e d i t a t i n g

s t i l l i n g m y c h a t t t t t t t e r i n g m i n d

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . d e e pl y . . . s l o w l y . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .m i n d f u l l y . . . . . . . . . . . . .

e x p a n d i n g

m e l d i n g

m e d i t a t i n g

on the everything around me,

especially the

D I V I N E S I L E N C E,

m e d i t a t i n g

on the

d e e p e n i n g d a r k n e s s,

m e d i t a t i n g

on the

comforting sight of the white, dim-glowing breast

of my ever-dependable "wingman,"

silently keeping station not many yards off to my left,

m e d i t a t i n g

s t i l l i n g m y c h a t t t t t t t e r i n g m i n d

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . d e e pl y . . . s l o w l y . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .m i n d f u l l y . . . . . . . . . . . . .

e x p a n d i n g

m e l d i n g

m e d i t a t i n g

on the delicious and magical

D I V I N E S I L E N C E

that enwraps me in its enchanted cocoon

and so soothes and heals my

True Self, my Spirit,

though abruptly,

that delicious and magical

D I V I N E S I L E N C E

is surprisingly, and most pleasingly,

riven when a

Hermit Thrush

lets loose several soft and sleepy,

flute-and-tinkling-glass

Oooooooooooh, holy, holy, ah, purity, purity, eeh, sweetly sweetly.

Oooooooooooh, holy, holy, ah, purity, purity, eeh, sweetly sweetly.

"goodnights" to its forest friends . . .

m e d i t a t i n g

s t i l l i n g m y c h a t t t t t t t e r i n g m i n d

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . d e e pl y . . . s l o w l y . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .m i n d f u l l y . . . . . . . . . . . . .

e x p a n d i n g

m e l d i n g

m e d i t a t i n g

s t i l l i n g m y c h a t t t t t t t e r i n g m i n d

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . d e e pl y . . . s l o w l y . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .m i n d f u l l y . . . . . . . . . . . . .

e x p a n d i n g

m e l d i n g

m e d i t a t i n g

s t i l l i n g m y c h a t t t t t t t e r i n g m i n d

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . d e e pl y . . . s l o w l y . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .m i n d f u l l y . . . . . . . . . . . . .

e x p a n d i n g

m e l d i n g

m e d i t a t i n g

again on that renewed

D I V I N E S I L E N C E

as I soft-focused gaze out at the "wine-dark,"

pool of mercury that is now the water of this cove

as just barely it soft-reflects the rapidly-fading

gloaming light . . .

m e d i t a t i n g

s t i l l i n g m y c h a t t t t t t t e r i n g m i n d

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . d e e pl y . . . s l o w l y . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .m i n d f u l l y . . . . . . . . . . . . .

e x p a n d i n g

m e l d i n g

m e d i t a t i n g

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . e v e r . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . m o r e . . . . . .

d e e p l y

m e d i t a t i n g

s t i l l i n g m y c h a t t t t t t t e r i n g m i n d

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . d e e pl y . . . s l o w l y . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .m i n d f u l l y . . . . . . . . . . . . .

e x p a n d i n g

m e l d i n g

m e d i t a t i n g

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . e v e r . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . m o r e . . . . . .

s l o w l y

while incrementally, inexorably feeling my

True Self, my Spirit,

first

e x p a n d i n g

then

m e l d i n g

with the totality of everything

I can perceive with my "senses five,"

then as my

subtler sense,

the mind of my

True Self, my Spirit,

opens up,

my consciousness is overwhelmed with

the undeniable sense of

the ineluctable

power,

the brilliant

consciousness

of that

D I V I N E S I L E N C E,

of the

Living Waters

of the

Living Lake,

and most keenly of all,

that living,

Ancient Cliff,

and feeling the urge to gaze up at its looming

P R E S E N C E

in that ever-so-enchanting

D I V I N E S I L E N C E,

to gaze up at the dark silhouettes of that

daredevil of an out-leaning pine,

and other trees standing night-guard

along its high ridge,

though even as I am again thinking about

that fearless pine while . . .

m e d i t a t i n g

s t i l l i n g m y c h a t t t t t t t e r i n g m i n d

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . d e e pl y . . . s l o w l y . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .m i n d f u l l y . . . . . . . . . . . . .

e x p a n d i n g

m e l d i n g

m e d i t a t i n g

s t i l l i n g m y c h a t t t t t t t t e r i n g m i n d

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . e v e r . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . m o r e . . . . . .

d e e p l y

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . e v e r . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . m o r e . . . . . .

s l o w l y

the rapidly cooling air around me is suddenly

filled with the faint, sweet, resinous scent of

pine,

that could only have come from a thick and looming

stand of them growing along the rocky,

southern shore of that small cove to my right,

and as I

. . . . . . . . b r e a t h e . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . i n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . d e e p l y . . . . . . . . .

that magical scent,

I get the distinct and undeniable sense that

that grove of trees is a living, conscious, and

intimately connected and always communicating

family,

and that it is intentionally and powerfully

sending out its sweet, resinous scent

as a loud and undeniable

"Hello!"

to my

True Self, my Spirit,

and as that realization invades my head and

floods over my

True Self, my Spirit,

the spirit of Basho manifest his presence and

fills my head with the new and

unexpected poem,

If you can't go to the pine, sometimes

the pine will come to you,

most times whispering, oft times

murmuring, and even once in awhile

shouting—depending

on how awake you are so you

can "hear" the resin.

but even as I am communing with that

close-connected family of pines on the

magical cell-call of their sweet, resinous scent,

that

D I V I N E S I L E N C E

is instantly shrunken to a mere

S I L E N C E

when near the eastern end of that living,

Ancient Cliff,

a small runnel of tiny rocks

soft-clatters down its dark and looming face

and gently splashes into the waters at its base,

—being in the supremely open and sensitive state

that I am in, it sounds like a roaring avalanche—

and even as I most entranced watch the expanding

ripple-circles swim towards me

through the "wine-dark" mirror separating

me from that living,

Ancient Cliff,

my intuition tells me that this is that

Ancient Cliff's

way of telling me that it is not only pines

that can talk,

though as those ripples envelop my floating

zafu of a kayak,

I catch sight of a soft, moving glow

out of the corner of my right eye,

though when I swing my head to look,

there is nothing there,

and as soon as I look straight ahead,

I catch sight of a similar soft, moving glow

out of the corner of my left eye,

though this time I don't bother looking

because it is a familiar phenomenon telling me that

Nature Spirits

are trying to catch my attention,

and as I turn my attention to them,

I can most easily and delightedly sense

a varied, invisible host of them around me,

—sense them more clearly than at that small beach—

not only because of their traditional,

manifest-momentarily-in-the- corner-of-the-eye trick

deigned to catch my attention,

but also by telepathically shouting at me,

"HEY!—WE'RE HERE TOO!"

while more subtly informing me that they

are entranced by the

extra-bright glow of my supremely content

True Self, my Spirit,

blissfully ensconced as It has been in that

D I V I N E S I L E N C E,

and that they want to commune with It

as they cavort, fly, and swim around me,

many of them soft-clinging, like a host of

varied and ethereal butterflies,

to the bright glowing blossom of my

True Self's, my Spirit's

expanded and luminous aura, and though I have always

sensed a few of them

around me whenever I entered the rock-littered,

sedge-and-horsetail-thick coves and

narrow inlets of this

Living Lake

that are too shallow to be invaded and sullied

by fishermen

and their motorboats, beer cans, loud talk,

blasting radios and cigarette butts,

but never before have I sensed

so many of them so clearly,

and humbled I feel that all these so-alive,

Elemental Beings,

who are so essential to the intricate interactions,

survival strategies and evolutionary potentials

of all the complex life-forms

on this

Living Planet,

on our

ever-nurturing but demonstrably frail

Space Capsule Earth,

on our

hurtling-through-the-vast-distances-of-galactic-space,

"Pale Blue Dot,"

who is

our very living;

who is

our very conscious;

who is

our very caring;

who is

our very nurturing;

who is

our very patient;

who is

our very loving;

who is

our very long-suffering

Mother Goddess Gaia,

are being drawn to the

invisible-to-my-physical-eyes

light of my

True Self, my Spirit,

which in Its deep-drinking of

the "holy water" of the so-rare

D I V I N E S I L E N C E,

the exquisite

E N C H A N T M E N T

of this special, high-summer gloaming on this

Living Lake;

and the vibrant, living energy and the

ponderous consciousness

of that living,

Ancient Cliff;

and the vibrant, living energy and the

fluid consciousness

of those

Living Waters

of that bay and cove;

and the vibrant, living energy and the

collective consciousness

of that family of pines;

and the vibrant, living energies and the

mosaic of consciousnesses

of all the many varieties of

trees, bushes, flowers, ferns and fungi

of the gloaming-embracing, and

oh-so-alive

Wilderness Forest;

and all the vibrant, living energies and the

tapestry of consciousnesses

of all the varieties of

animals, birds and insects that

make that oh-so-alive

Wilderness Forest,

their home,

is manifesting Itself

at a level of dazzling and glowing

power and presence

that those Nature Spirits are easily able

to see and feel,

and to which they are ineluctably,

moth-to-porch light drawn,

in order to

swim, bask, float, absorb and drink

Its enchanted energy,

Its powerful and enthralling

consciousness,

and I can but rejoice in the joy I sense that

they so delightfully feel

in the soothing, loving, ever-dazzling

and extremely conscious presence of my

time-and-matter unshackled,

True Self, my Spirit . . .

—Though as I so enchantedly sit on the floating zafu

of my kayak resting on the "wine-dark" zabuton of

this mirror of a bay, meditatively basking in the

feeling of intense bliss and joy that my True Self,

my Spirit, floods my psyche with, I also clearly sense

that that feeling of bliss is accompanied by the

intentionally transmitted knowing, that this is what

being Home feels like to It, and that with the swift

passing of Its too-many years in the "mode of being"

of my matter-burdened and Necessity-harried body

and Fate-controlled ego, It is growing depleted and

weary and is yearning to slip free and soar back

to that beloved and ever-blissful Home for some

much-earned "R&R."

And since I too, as the swift-passing years, like

flung away cards in a too-long game of Crazy Eights,

so rapidly accumulate, and this time-ravaged body

ever-more-and-more rapidly tires, and ever-more-

and-more rapidly deteriorates, and ever-more-

and-more-often breaks down, like some very ancient,

high-mileage car, forcing me to grow ever-more-

and-more weary of this process of living that I am

getting ever-more-and-more unwilling to call "a life,"

I mentally ask my True Self, my Spirit, why It does

not forthwith! . . . right now! . . . immediately! . . .,

without delay! . . . sans hesitation! . . . slip free of

the shackles of this worn-out body and the gulag of Its

existence in this "life" and soar back to its glorious

Home, thus freeing both It and my weary and worn-

thin psyche from what neither any longer values.

Alas, not long does It take the knowing to fill my

meditatively open mind that the only thing yet keeping

It in the prison cell of my aging, worn, and weary body,

in the gulag of my "life," and under the guardianship

of my weary ego, is the fact that every human life, as

the Ancient Greeks metaphorically understood it, is a

thread of existence under the control of some very

powerful forces, which they mythologized as the

Moirai, the Three Fates.

According to this myth, each human life is a thread

that has been spun by Clotho, the length of that thread

being lot-determined by Lachesis, who passes it on to

Atropos, whose job it is to snip it with her shears of

death at that lot-determined length.

And though my True Self, my Spirit, would dearly

love to "paddle free" of the pond of my body and my

ego-life, and its crushing, controlling Fate, would

be more than content to "shuffle off this mortal coil,"

and fly back Home, Its companion-guides in that

enchanted and ethereal realm that is Its Home, are

most adamant about reminding It that Its "away

mission," Its destiny, Its job that It made a contract

to fulfill in my time-matter-ego-and-Fate-bound

body, though close to being complete, is not yet so,

and that It will have to wait a few "paddle-strokes"

longer until it is time for Atropos to use her shears to

snip the thread of the "kayak-cruise" of my physical

life at its allotted length.

All of that very clear and distinct knowing,

representing a harsh reality that I, as no less does

my True Self, my Spirit, finds crushingly disappointing,

for I can think of no better place, can think of no more

desirable circumstances, for my True Self, my Spirit,

to soar free of this aging, Necessity-worn body and this

Fate-weary psyche and ego, than this magical, timeless,

and blissful kayak-cruise on this Living Lake in this

enchanted gloaming . . .—

. . . and since such enthrallment are timeless states,

ten minutes are the same as ten hours to those

Elemental Beings,

as no less they are to my

True Self, my Inmost Being,

and when the magical,

D I V I N E S I L E N C E

the timeless,

E N C H A N T M E N T

that has been enwrapping my

floating zafu,

is suddenly shattered to scintillating shards

by the renewed calls . . .

WHOOOOOOaaaaaaaaaaHOOOOOOO!

WHOOOOOOaaaaaaaaaaHOOOOOOO!

of that distant, lonely loon,

its plaintive lament this time

being answered by a loud and startling

WHOOOOOOaaaaaaaaaaHOOOOOOO!

that my nearby "wingman," sets soaring

across those "wine-dark" waters,

which gives me the undeniable sense from my

True Self, my Spirit,

that it is a signal for me to start

paddling back,

and though for awhile I continue to sit there,

devoid of the inclination and energy to

get moving again, soaking as I am

in the hot-tub of my

True Self's, my Spirit's

blissful enjoyment of that

D I V I N E S I L E N C E

it isn't long before I feel a small, inner,

"electrical jolt" coming from my

True Self, my Spirit,

that breaks my meditative trance and turns

my floating zafu back

into a kayak,

and little choice do I feel I have, but to then

force my stiffened arms and shoulders

to again set it into slow, silent motion

with soft, easy, silent strokes.

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

and though I can but know that

I will be arriving back at my starting-point beach

long after total darkness has enveloped this

Living Lake,

and that I do not have the required running lights

for my kayak,

or even a flashlight with me,

I get the clear sense from my

True Self, my Spirit,

that it is nothing to worry about.
Fourth Leg

And not many

of those soft, easy strokes does it take

to propel my kayak to that rocky point on which

the heron

is still doing his standing meditation,

and again my approach sets it to

violent, stiff-wings-flapping flight,

it quickly vanishing from sight as it veers

sharply to the right and flies down the southern

arm of the channel,

though as I draw abreast of that point, I realize

that my prosthetic hip is aching

"like the Dickens,"

that my legs and feet are as

"numb as a hangman's heart,"

that I am getting as

"chilled as a beer in a bucket of ice"

in that damp, darkening, rapidly cooling gloaming,

and that I very desperately needed to

"see a man about a dog,"

so I beach the kayak and stiffly get out for

a much needed stretch and bladder-relief,

and after digging out and putting on my windbreaker,

—I could but chuckle as I remember responding to

the potent, intuitive sense that I should bring it along,

which seemed an absurd thing to do given the baking

heat of that late afternoon and my intention to only be

out on the lake for, at most, a couple of hours; but as

the great poet, Robbie Burns, once so wisely wrote,

"The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men . . ." —

I walk the ache out of my hip and the circulation back

into my legs and feet, and while doing so,

feel no small amount of age-related fatigue,

which induces me to remember that I still have

a cup of tea remaining in my thermos, and four squares

of dark chocolate in my lunch container,

so I dig them out and while enjoying that

tepid tea and the much-needed pick-me-up of

three squares of that chocolate that I know

I will need for my long paddle back,

—three, because I set one out as a thank-you gift

for my friends, the Nature Spirits, who like Nature

Spirits everywhere, appreciate being appreciated—

I stare to the west at the dwindling patch of

dimming, gloaming light desperately clinging

to the forest-jagged, northwestern hills,

and at the "wine-dark" water

stretching out before me,

while listening to the soft, gurgling sounds of

the summer-lowered waters of this

Living Lake,

as they dribble-babble over the dam

at the end of the channel

in order to tumble and swirl,

first,

through the jumble of boulders at the base

of the dam,

then,

make their pressing, but not overly hurried

or tumultuous way,

to the next, though considerably smaller,

Living Lake,

about a half-kilometer away,

the sound of those dam-dribbling waters

bringing to mind one of my favorite

and most evocative stanzas in

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's venerable tale

about folly and redemption,

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,"

. . . the sails made on

A pleasant noise till noon,

A noise like of a hidden brook,

In the leafy month of June,

That to the sleeping woods all night,

Singeth a quiet tune.

and while listening to that "pleasant noise," that

I was most certain would most soporifically give the

surrounding, "sleeping woods" and all its many

and varied inhabitants of both fur and feather,

pleasant dreams,

I could not help but remember my first chilly,

but winter-long-anticipated and much enjoyed

kayak-cruise of late April, when the

high, icy, beach-swamping spring melt-waters of this

Living Lake

rushed and pounded and swirled over that dam

with a living roar

that I could hear from as far away

as that distant beach I'd hours before

stopped at on this paddle-cruise,

and much as I can sense that my

True Self, my Spirit,

would love nothing more than to have me

sharp-turn my kayak to the right and

slow-glide down that channel

that It might have me sit for a bit at the dam,

and while silent sitting,

meditatively listen to its ever-soothing music,

and allow It to enthralled and blissful spend

some more salubrious time in the

natural power,

in the enhanced

consciousness,

of that always-enchanted spot,

and some ever-companionable time

with the family of

Nature Spirits,

that make it their home, my

True Self, my Spirit,

is no fool, so It fills my psyche

with a long, yearning sigh as it acknowledges

that it is getting too late and dark

—and my aging body is getting too weary—

for a delightful side-excursion

such as that.

And when my thermos-cup of tepid tea

is empty and the three, heat-deformed squares

of vivifying chocolate most deliciously

and mindfully consumed,

I bow in reverent Namaste to that

massive, magical and living

Ancient Cliff,

and to the enchanted and

Living Waters

of the

Living Cove

over which it so darkly looms in the

rapidly fading gloaming light,

and to the myriads of very alive and very conscious,

Nature Spirits

for whom it is their summer home,

many of whom I can sense swarming around

the bright and soothing light of my

True Self, my Spirit,

and after thanking them for their delightful company,

I give them a friendly warning to

disengage from my

True Self's, my Spirit's

aura,

and not follow me out of that bay, and

certainly not accompany me to my home,

an adventure which they will most certainly

not long like,

for compared with this

Living Lake

and this

Ancient Cliff-looming bay,

my home is a stark and barren place, totally

bereft of all natural, living energies and

vivifying enchantments,

—save for a handful of houseplants, which much as they

most companionably brighten my days and oxygenate

my rooms, cannot compare to this verdant realm—

and they would quickly sense it to be the

prison-cell that my

True Self, my Spirit,

too-well knows it to be,

and then I stiffly climb into my kayak and after

a slow, meditative glide away from that spit, over the

mercury-mirror of the "wine-dark" waters of that

Living Lake,

I muster my willpower, motivate my stiff, sore muscles,

and begin paddling back to that drear, busy,

noisy, mechanical and oppressively unenchanted

world-of-The-World,

that supports this body's necessities in all

its sterile and corrupting comforts,

—and facilitates the building of these incredible kayaks—

while starving my

True Self, my Spirit

of its necessary sustenance of

D I V I N E S I L E N C E,

of timeless

E N C H A N T M E N T,

of

C O N S C I O U S N E S S,

and oppressing and wearying It with its

way-too-many drear, heavy and practical demands,

and thus do I "put my back"

into my paddling,

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!.

noisily propelling the kayak along the channel as

I gaze into the yet-amazingly bright sky

before me

—bright compared to the rapidly deepening gloom

of that cliff-shadowed bay I'd just left—

though several times,

as I paddle north out of that channel, I feel a

soft-tugging urge to turn around

and momentarily gaze back at that living,

Ancient Cliff,

each time responding to the distinct sense

that it is calling me back

for a longer visit,

—what is night and darkness and chill and dampness . . .

and human frailty and fatigue . . . to the living rock of a

lonely cliff that is over three billion years old and has

undergone the numerous "dark nights of the soul" of many

crushing, eons-long ice ages?—

and on my second look back at that

Ancient Cliff,

I see that my stalwart "wingman" has taken up

his or her position,

not far away on the left side of my kayak,

though now his or her mate

is close beside,

and only but blessed can I feel

to have those two intelligent and spiritually powerful

loons,

accompanying me on long, dark paddle back.

But soon, with all that effortful paddling,

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!.

I near the end of that channel and approach

the rocky, forest-crowding point

where I must make my right turn onto

the main part of this

Living Lake,

in order to commence my long paddle

directly east to that beach

whence I commenced this kayak-cruise

at that time when

Archer Sol

was yet shooting his bright, hot arrows

onto the target of this now chill and darkening

Living Lake,

but when I am yet fifty yards or so

from that point,

movement in a small break in the thick,

looming, and darkening

Living Forest

that close-crowds the rocky shore,

catches my eye,

inducing me to instantly stop paddling

in order that I might silently drift past the two

White-tailed Deer

that I can but barely see standing there,

they having traversed a trail down the steep hill

for their gloaming drink,

and though one, on freeze-staring at me for

but a second, instantly turns and silently

vanishes into the gloom of the thick and looming

Living Forest

the other, after giving me a momentary

and indifferent glance, continues

to drink,

and as I drift past it, not ten feet distant,

I can but sense that my

True Self, my Spirit,

is flushed with elation at the serendipitous chance

to witness this

simple, enthralling and enchanting

wilderness scene, and meld

Its glowing and vibrant energy with that of

the thirsty deer,

and no desire do I feel to continue paddling until

I have silent-glided well past that

beautiful, fearless creature,

and once I am out of sight of it,

I soft-paddle the final yards to the point,

where I make the right turn to the east

that will allow me to begin the long paddle

over the "wine-dark" waters

that are getting molasses-blacker by the minute

under the relentlessly thickening shroud

being draped over Akasha by the relentless

Nótt,

the Norse goddess who rides her

huge black stallion of night

Hrímfaxi,

across the sky,

—Yes, I know, I am mixing mythologies here, which

to those of an academic obsession, is as much of a

sin a mixing metaphors, but I am a poet with a

wallet full of poetic licences,(and alas, very little

money!) not a welded-to-the-rules academic, and

these deities all belong to polytheistic religions,

which by nature are enlightened and flexible enough

to be tolerant of other gods and goddesses . . .

and bad poets!—

Fifth Leg

Though barely do I make that turn and

resume my strong paddling,

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!.

than I almost end up jumping right out of

the kayak when I paddle too close to

an invisible-to-me

beaver,

who in typical beaver-fashion, gives that

mirror-smooth, "wine-dark" water

a sharp, resounding, warning-to-his-kin

SLAP!

with his broad flat tail, before diving into

the safety of those darkening deeps,

and as my heart rate and adrenalin level

slowly return to normal,

I glide along that stretch of shoreline

through the expanding circle of ripples

created by that tail-smack,

I can see that that beaver, and its kin,

have been busy there of late,

for no trouble do I have spying, with my now

darkness-adjusted vision and by the soft,

lingering radiance

of the dimming gloaming light beaming

eastward from Sol's northwestern bed,

the many "beaver-sticks,"

as I call them,"

—the pale-yellow aspen branches they discard

after chewing all the nutritious-to-them bark off,

their equivalent of our discarded corncobs—

that litter the dark shoreline waters, some

afloat, others already water-logged and

lying amongst the rocks and on the rough sand

and mud of the shallow bottom,

and when I glance to my right, I see the

dim-glowing trunks of a very alive,

Aspen Grove,

tall and thickly growing along the shore,

which those ever-hungry paragons

of compulsive "Victorian" industriousness,

have crossed the lake from their lodge which

I paddled past earlier,

have turned into an outdoor bistro,

and even as I am gliding past that living grove,

a gentle

Living Breeze,

a soft

Aeolian Sigh,

wafts down the slope of the forested hill behind it,

sending their gossip-inclined leaves into

chattering motion, and a distinct sense I do get, that

that very alive grove of trees

has requested a visit from their good friend,

Aeolus,

just so they could leaf-chattering say

"Good Evening, Bright Visitor,"

to my

True Self, my Spirit,

and at the distinct, inner-urging of my

True Self, my Spirit,

I rest my paddle, turn my body, and give that friendly

Aspen Grove

a reverent Namaste, and an equally friendly,

soft-murmured,

"Good Evening, White Wizards,"

but my kayak is so swiftly gliding over those

darkening-to-molasses waters,

that within seconds that very alive,

bright-trunked and friendly

"grove of Gandalfs,"

has silently slipped behind me,

though when I resume my paddling,

I realize that I am minute-by-minute growing

more-and-more comfortable paddling on this

Living Lake

in the rapidly deepening darkness,

so accordingly, I slow and soften

my paddle-strokes,

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

and when I soon find myself smooth-sliding along the

rocky shoreline of a shallow cove

lined with a phalanx of thick, dark trees,

it takes little time for me to deduce it to be a

Cedar Grove,

for the damp, gloaming-cooled air rising up from

the molasses-black waters around me is suddenly

and most sensuously alive

with their familiar, subtle, and resinous perfume,

which though is not as heady as pine,

is in many ways more

delightful, entrancing, and ambrosial,

and again I feel the urge emanating from my

True Self, my Spirit,

to rest my paddle, turn my body, and give

that dark and so-conscious

Cedar Grove,

a reverent Namaste and soft-whisper to It,

a friendly

"Hello, my ambrosia-scented Friends,"

the intimation

immediately and clearly coming to me, that

like that very alive and close-communing

Family of Pines

growing in the cove by the living,

Ancient Cliff,

this equally alive, conscious, and

close-communing

Family of Cedars

is intentionally filling the still, cool,

gloaming air with its sweet scent in order

to say

"Good Evening, Bright Spirit!"

to my

True Self, my Spirit,

and as I sense It sending a bright and living stream of

heart-light

out of my chest an into that grove

of sweet-scented trees,

I sense It also manifesting into my

enchantment-addled head

Its own version of

Basho's mystical poem:

Go to the pine

if you want to learn about the pine;

Go to the cedar

if you want to know the gods.

And in so doing, you must abandon

your rational materialistic reductionism,

otherwise you impose its harsh, crushing

and arbitrary limitations on your life

and end up living a small, stark and

meaningless existence in its dark,

cramped and unenchanted dungeon.

That short, instant-poem

encapsulating the philosophy that for years I have

been trying to deepen and mystically live

as faithfully as I have been able,

while adequately functioning in the stark gulag

of this profane, materialistic, and over-rational world,

and more ideas that were close kin

to the ones expressed in it,

soar like hawks-on-a-mission through

the bright blue sky of my mind,

as I uneventfully and softly paddle,

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

along that boulder-strewn, fallen-tree-littered,

southern shoreline,

pleasantly surprised at how well

I am able to see in that ever-dimming

gloaming light,

and just as surprised to hear a low, strange

sound soft-resounding across the lake,

a sound which at first perplexes me

with its relentless

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

though as I, in perplexity, listen to it, it induces me

to think about a monastery full of

meditatively chanting monks,

until I realize that it is coming from that

beaver-created marsh to the north of that little beach

where I stopped for my read-swim-and-snooze,

and that it could only be the sound of

hundreds

—perhaps thousands!—

of bullfrogs,

croaking out their desperate need for a mate,

and as I listen in wonder to this

monstrous, relentlessly chanting chorus,

I look across the gloaming-illuminated expanse

of mirror-smooth water and notice that a gentle mist is

rising up from the summer-warm waters of this

Living Lake,

and obscuring my sight of the area of that marsh

now so vibrant with the sounds

of its chanting frog-monks,

and I slow down even more

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

both because I am wondering why only that area

around the marsh is manifesting a mist,

and because I am about to reach the half-way point

of the long southern shoreline of this

Living Lake

I have been paddling along, and where

I have to traverse the

rock-and-sandbar narrows created by a

natural, out-jutting "jetty" of hard and steadfast

Precambrian rocks stretching

towards a small, hard and steadfast

Precambrian island sparsely covered

with stunted bushes and tall reeds,

the dark silhouette of which I can easily see,

and on which in the spring,

a pair of gulls

had built a nest and raised their young,

and inevitable it was they would raise a

wild and relentless ruckus every time

I paddled too near, something

that narrows gave me little choice but do

when there were motorboats close by,

however much I did not want to disturb

their nursery,

but those young have fledged and now likely spend

their days with their parents in the beggar-flock

that harasses the picnickers and bathers

on the beach I'd launched from,

and that island

is abandoned, so no disturbance does

my late-gloaming passage cause,

though once I am safely past it,

—with only one incident of a brief, soft-scraping

of my hull on a submerged and invisible rock—

I am directly across from that mist-hidden marsh and that

chorus of chanting frog-monks is now

amazingly loud and resonant,

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

and though I rest my paddle in order to

silent glide for a bit as I listen to that

absolutely amazing sound,

when I finally muster the will to commence

paddling again, I do so with some vigor,

though I immediately sense my

True Self, my Spirit,

urging me to keep my paddling at a slow

and gentle pace,

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

sensing from It that the enchantment of that

deepening gloaming is too

blue diamond-rare and precious

to waste with an unnecessarily hurried effort

to end it,

and that there is no danger in

Hrímfaxi's broadening and deepening presence

over this

Living Lake,

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

and though that darkness is incrementally thickening,

my aging eyes are adequately adjusting to it,

and no trouble do I have paddling my way along

that dark, hill-looming shore with the long-lingering,

high-summer twilight

gently clinging to the horizon behind me,

seeing and avoiding the rocks and fallen trees,

though each time I turn and glance back

at that dimming, gloaming light soft caressing

the forest-jagged, northwestern hills like

a mother her newborn's face,

I can see it noticeably shrinking,

as though it is a trough of water being

drunk dry by Nótt's huge, black,

sky-spanning stallion,

something in that ominous and

mood-oppressing vista bringing to mind:

first,

a statement by the shaman, Don Juan, in one of

Carlos Castaneda's

mystical books, that

"the twilight is a crack between the worlds;"

and second,

distant but vivid memories of camping trips to the

extraordinarily alive and mystical

Mojave Desert,

where I would play at being Don Juan

as I sat out each evening in the dying heat of the

insect-busy and Spirit-swarming

chaparral,

that was also most sensually alive with myriads

of soft-swirling, very-conscious,

intention-filled and puckish

Zephyrs,

and deeply inhale I would the subtle, pungent, and

entrancing scent of the very alive and conscious

Creosote Bushes

being watched over, like a schoolyard full of

plucky children, by their ever-vigilant and

religiously passionate teachers, the

arms-tirelessly-raised, "God-praying,"

Joshua Trees,

—It is always easy to smell those humble and richly

scented bushes, but unless you have been in the

Mojave during a rain storm, you have never smelled

anything that compares with the thick, rich and living

perfume so profusely exuded by those stalwart little

denizens of the chaparral.

And so strong and enduring are the oils that create

that entrancing scent that I have a sprig of it which, over

a decade ago, I inserted into a Castaneda book—most

appropriately, The Power of Silence—which I was

reading at the time, and it yet vibrantly, soothingly, and

memory-provokingly retains its rich, entrancing scent.—

everywhere around me,

watching the glorious-beyond-glorious

sunsets slowly being drained of their vibrant, entrancing,

Living Colors,

as they soft-faded to that ominous and very alive,

"crack between the worlds," the

Living Twilight,

—By that time of my life I had already become more

than a little familiar with the "other world," with

what many call the Mystic, what William Blake called

the Imagination, what Henry Corbin called the

Mundus Imaginalis, what Joseph Campbell called the

Mythos, what Lao Tzu called the Tao, what Rudolf Otto

called the Mysterium Tremendum, what Masanobu

Fukuoka called the Ocean of Being, and what a plethora

of mystics over the millennia have called by myriads of

names as they make the vain effort of using words to

describe what my True Self, my Spirit, calls the I-A-M,

the Ineffable-Awesome-Mystery, the beyond-our-puny-

comprehension, Generative Gyre that is spinning out,

this Universe and the essential sentience needed to

apprehend and enhance It.

And since I was already spending too much of my

time straddling the broad "crack," the ever-widening

crevasse between this stark world-of-The-World, this

disenchanted wasteland bequeathed to us over the last

three centuries by materialist science and reductive

rationality, and that ever-enchanted "other world," on

the far side of the "crack," of that crevasse.

Ironically, though on my initial experiences of this

"other world" it, it held as much fear for me as it did

intrigue, now it only holds delight, for it has become a

most familiar realm of which I have learned to revel

in its many enchantments while protecting myself from

its equally-as-many dangers, and the fear (of the

unknown) that I once felt towards it I can now but feel

towards this too-well-known, starkly disenchanted,

uber-mundane, institution-tyrannized, machine-

dominated, noise-desecrated, technology-enslaved,

triviality-drowning, wealth- worshipping, status-

enshrined, greed-deified, shopping-addicted and

ego-deifying, world-of-The-World !—

and as that

Living Desert Twilight

dark-drifted into the soft slumber induced by

Nótt,

as she trotted her ever darkening and broadening

stallion of night across the plains of Akasha,

that magical steed's slowly blackening coat

decorated, initially, with

only a sparse sprinkling of twinkling, celestial lights,

but as the fleeting, insect-chorused minutes passed,

more and more of them, at first

dimly and tentatively,

then rapidly, relentlessly and inexorably,

manifested in the clear dry air of that

Magical Mojave,

and it didn't take me long to call this

delightful, entrancing, and satisfying activity,

Sitting out the stars.

And much as

it took a great effort of will to drag my attention

away from those magical and entrancing

Mojave Memories,

and back to this equally magical gloaming

on this enchanted,

Living Lake,

the residue of that memory induced me to

reverse my cap, the obviously unneeded,

sun-shading brim of which was

blocking most of my view of the sky overhead,

and just as in the glorious, vibrantly alive,

Mojave Desert,

I can now easily gaze up at the vast and arching

"cathedral dome"

of the scattered, brightest stars,

which are beginning to decorate

Hrímfaxi's Akasha-spanning, coal-black coat,

and no choice have I but to give into my

True Self's, my Spirit's

deep-most desire

that I rest my paddle and glide-float

for many timeless minutes

as I lean back and gaze skyward at that

stupendous-beyond-stupendous

"cathedral dome,"

looking first to the north to pick out the

rapidly brightening stars of that most familiar

of all constellations

in the Northern Hemisphere, the

Big Dipper,

though of course, astronomical experts will

be quick to correct me on that assertion,

for to them, the

Big Dipper,

is but an asterism, is but

a mere part of the huge constellation known as

Ursa Major,

as the

Big Bear,

—and known as such in ancient times by many

peoples in many parts of the world—

but though the stars of the Big Dipper are bright

enough to readily spot, many of the stars of

Ursa Major, are not,

so today, there are very few who are capable

of knowing it as such in our modern, urbanized,

electricity-lit world with its rarely-dark skies,

and just out of habit,

I locate, at the outer edge of that celestial

drinking gourd, the two "Pointers,"

Dubhe and Merak,

which allows my sky-gazing

eyes to draw a line from Merak through Dubhe,

then extend it about five times that distance,

and voila—there resides the ever-stable

Polaris,

the

"North Star,"

which directly lines up with the axis

of this spinning sphere of our

Living Goddess Gaia,

thus giving us the illusion, on a clear night, that

the whole of the vast, star-thick night sky revolves

around it,

and giving all navigators, on a clear night, a truer

marker of north,

than any magnetic compass.

And though there are other constellations that

I'd years before memorized the nebulous and

questionable shapes of,

and spent hours attentively gazing at the

"cathedral dome"

of the heavens, trying to pick them out,

all I can readily pick out in this

slow-deepening darkness,

is the big, elongated,

five-star "W" of the constellation of

Cassiopeia,

named after that proud-beyond-hubris,

beauty-vain mother in ancient

Greek Mythology,

who incurred the wrath of

Neptune

by bragging that she and her daughter,

Andromeda,

were more beautiful that the

Neriads, the

daughters of the sea-god,

Nereus,

an act of god-insulting arrogance that enraged the

brother of the mighty Zeus,

Poseidon,

and filled him with the desire to punish Cassiopeia by

flooding her kingdom of Ethiopia, a calamity

she averted by turning her motherly heart

into a coprolite and sacrificing that

lovely daughter she was so

bragging-proud of,

Andromeda,

to Poseidon, through the act of chaining the

hapless girl to a sea-cliff so she could be

devoured by the sea-monster,

Cetus.

But before the lovely

Andromeda

could pen her version of "Mommy Dearest,"

she was saved from this foul fate when

her plight and her great beauty attracted

the attention of the young and intrepid

Perseus,

a demigod famous for his monster-slaying abilities,

who, on Hermes loaning him his pair of

magical sandals,

flew to Andromeda's aid, slayed Cetus,

and then married the lovely

obviously gushingly-grateful maid,

and they now live happily-ever-after in

the heavens as the constellations bearing

their names,

—though how comfortable Perseus feels having to live

so close to a mother-in-law like the Gorgon-souled

Cassiopeia, is anyone's guess . . . but of course, since

Perseus is a famed monster-slayer, perhaps it is

Cassiopeia who feels the most discomfort and thus

keeps her celestial distance—

though I have never been able to completely pick out

those constellations, their star-patterns being

sky-spanning huge, and only but most

vaguely, if at all, resembling their namesakes,

—I have a pretty good imagination, but it is a pathetic

piker compared to the imaginations of those Greeks—

though occasionally, on clear nights in

really dark, light-pollution free areas,

I have thrilled myself by using my

binoculars to focus on

a small, blurry splotch in what I know to be the

Andromeda Constellation,

the limited optical power of that simple device

turning that small blurry splotch into a

little bit bigger blurry splotch,

that I know to be the

Andromeda Galaxy,

our Milky Way's big-sister galaxy

that is two and a half million light years distant

and more than twice the size of our

"little sister" galaxy,

containing as it does about a

trillion stars,

—and surely no small number of Pale Blue Dots

with sentient beings on them who gaze at their

nearest galactic neighbor (that they certainly won't

be calling the Milky Way) as they wonder how

many Pale Blue Dots like their own it contains—

these two lonely sisters on mutual pilgrimages

to visit each other, so if you have a

Galactic Cluster

of patience,

and a

Small Magellanic Cloud

of incarnations available to you,

you should be able to witness this family reunion

in about four and a half billion years

—give or take a few hundred million!—

and that "family reunion" will surely be a

grand and festive event that

will create one

"Mother-of-a-galaxy,"

though by then you will have to have rocketed

off to some other "solar" system, because

our banal and benevolent,

Bright Yellow Sol

will have become

Dull Red Sol,

who in his senescence will have expanded

his girth out to the current orbit of our beautiful,

Mother Goddess Gaia,

and she will obviously have long before

had all her lovely blue and living

oceans and lakes and rivers boiled off

and the rest of her aging essence,

first barbequed to a cinder,

then inconsequentially gobbled up

by senile and ravenous Sol,

though with that grim,

but way-too-distant-to-be-concerned-about vision,

another vision manifests

showing me that much as the lovely

Blue Marble

of our

Living Goddess Gaia,

with her lovely blue oceans and her plethora

of blue lakes and rivers and panoplies

of white clouds,

presently holds her own with the massive, banded,

storm-wracked and multi-mooned

Jupiter,

and the almost-as-massive, multi-mooned,

and gloriously-ringed

Saturn,

in the eons-long contest to be the most beautiful

of Sol's nine children,

but if she was to lose those oceans and

lakes and rivers, and concomitantly

her white, swirling clouds,

she would then indubitably be the

most horrifically ugly and grotesquely misshapen

member of Sol's family,

—most distressing it is to imagine what this hideously

deformed lump of rock of a planet would look like with

all its oceans gone, especially the Atlantic and Pacific

basins, bereft as they would be of their horizon-rounding

blue waters, their bottoms jagged with towering mountain

ranges and lava-spewing volcanoes, riven with long, deep

canyons and crevasses, and of course, littered with the

crushed and crumbling remains of many once-submerged

and eons-long forgotten human civilizations, the wrecked

and rusted remains of storm-and-war-sunk ships, grotesque

mounds of plastic waste and other human garbage, and the

disintegrating skeletons of billions of sea creatures—

and as barren of life and color as

Goddess Luna,

and as I heart-sick envision our lovely

Blue Marble,

our

Pale Blue Dot,

our

Living Goddess Gaia

being reduced to such a colorless, deformed,

repulsive, and life-bereft corpse,

there flashes into my mind, a

potent knowing from my

True Self, my Spirit,

that there is no more accurate a metaphor for

Spirit,

than

water,

and that what our

Living Goddess Gaia

would be so horrendously reduced to

without her blue waters and white clouds,

is what every human being

would be reduced to without the presence

in their psyche, of their

True Self, their Spirit,

for on being reduced to naught but

pure ego,

each of us would be nothing more than a

small, hard, colorless, grotesque, deformed,

fear-paralysed, compassion-bereft, love-barren,

power-grasping lump of insatiable greeds,

unappeasable appetites, sentience-devouring delusions,

out-of-control impulses, and unchecked, and often

over-stoked, cruelty and malice.

But those sorts of philosophical ponderings are

way too drear and ponderous for this

lovely kayak-cruise,

so I willfully bilge-pump them out of my mind

as I force myself to think about

one other asterism that I am adept at spotting,

the easily identifiable

Teapot,

which every bit as much as the

Big Dipper

resembles a dipper, the

Teapot,

resembles a teapot,

with this asterism being a part of the

huge and sky-spanning

Sagittarius Constellation,

though when I try to locate it where it close-hugs

the southern horizon of the summer sky,

I realize I cannot,

because my view to the south is blocked

by the black, looming rocky hill on my right

that forms the southern shore

of this part of the

Living Lake,

though as I am thinking about that

easy-to-pick-out asterism that I can't see,

there comes to mind the easiest of all constellations

to see and recognize,

the mighty,

dear-to-the-Ancient Egyptians,

sky-striding hunter,

Orion,

who is always being followed by his ever-faithful, and

equally-dear-to-the Ancient Egyptians,

dog,

the bright-shining

Sirius,

though of course, in order to

see him and his brilliant, canine companion,

I'd have to be out on this lake,

not in a kayak on warm, midsummer night,

but on a pair of snowshoes or skis on a

gelid midwinter one,

—anything but a snowmobile: I loathe those noisy,

polluting, over-powered, macho-machines designed to

pander to the base needs of morons, idiots, cretins,

drunkards, and sociopathic adrenaline-junkies—

and as I ponder that most famous of

mythical hunters,

I can't help but think about two of the biggest

and brightest stars forming it,

Betelgeuse,

the red giant at his right shoulder, which is so

bloated and massive that if it was our

Sol,

his girth would reach out as far as the orbit of

Jupiter,

and

Rigel,

creating his left foot,

which is a blue-white supergiant

that is up to three hundred thousand times brighter

than Sol

—I don't think even Ray-Bans would help with that!—

and a hundred times bigger,

which mean that if humanity was to exist in this

solar system with Rigel as our Sol,

we'd be living on Pluto . . .

or Zecharia Sitchen's

Niburu.

And since these aging eyes are irrevocably

night-vision challenged, they don't pick up light

the way they did thirty years ago,

and they too easily strain

when I try too hard to focus

on the dimmer stars of most constellations,

so I eschew that youth-eyed endeavor

and am content to just sit in a deep,

meditative silence

on the zafu of my kayak floating on the

mirror-smooth, molasses-black zabuton of this

Living Lake,

m e d i t a t i n g

s t i l l i n g m y c h a t t t t t t t e r i n g m i n d

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . d e e pl y . . . s l o w l y . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .m i n d f u l l y . . . . . . . . . . . . .

e x p a n d i n g

m e l d i n g

m e d i t a t i n g

s t i l l i n g m y c h a t t t t t t t t e r i n g m i n d

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . e v e r . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . m o r e . . . . . .

d e e p l y

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . e v e r . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . m o r e . . . . . .

s l o w l y

e x p a n d i n g

m e l d i n g

m e d i t a t i n g

while wondrously gazing up at the monstrous,

constantly-brightening and ever awe-provoking

"cathedral dome" overhead,

finally shattering the molasses-black, star-reflecting

mirror of this

Living Lake,

by mustering my quiescent will, picking up my

paddle, and slowly sculling my floating zafu

in a circle as I try to

—mind-and-ego-annihilatingly!—

take it all in,

especially now that

Nótt's thirsty Hrímfaxi has almost

finished drinking all the water of twilight in

Sol's northwestern trough,

giving me the darkness my aging, but now

relatively light-sensitive eyes,

need in order to see, in that

clear, chill night air,

the faint, translucent, sky-spanning swath

of glowing talcum powder that constitutes the

Milky Way,

arching across the sky from behind that

southern rocky hill beside me to a similar

rocky hill on the northeastern horizon,

and many deep thoughts poured

into the "little dipper"

of my mind about the fact that in viewing

this swath of lustrous talcum powder,

each faint-glowing speck that I see is a

star,

myriads of myriads of which

must surely have their own

Pale Blue Dots

swirling around them, and of which

myriads of those myriads-of-myriads must surely

have sentient beings on them who stare out

at that same,

—though other-named!—

galactic vista,

the swath-of-talcum-powder effect of which

is created by the fact that I am gazing into the edge

of our parochially named

Milky Way Galaxy,

—one can only wonder how many of those Pale Blue

Dots would have milk-producing mammals on them—

which though less than half the size of

Sister Andromeda,

is still no slouch of a little sister, it being

a monstrous-beyond-fathoming entity in its own right,

—which is between one and two hundred thousand

light years across, give or take a few dozen thousand

light years!—

with our astronomical experts giving a rough estimate of

the impossible-to-count stars in it,

in the neighbourhood of

four hundred billion,

—give or take a few a few hundred million!—

all fleet-flying at varying speeds around the

the obviously-invisible-to-our-eyes,

and impossible-to-fathom-with-our-rational-minds,

Supermassive Black Hole

at its center,

and with our

Pale Blue Dot

of

Living Goddess Gaia,

in being situated about

twenty five thousand light years

—give or take a few thousand!—

from that unimaginable, and

unimaginably monstrous,

Supermassive Black Hole,

it cruises along at half a million miles per hour,

—that's a trip to the moon and back during the length

of a Star Trek episode; not warp speed for sure, but

enough to make me think we should be wearing seatbelts—

and if those thoughts weren't enough to give

my frail ego a spine-crunching,

Hulk Hogan-smackdown, then realizing

that some of the "stars" I have been gazing at,

and meditating on from my

floating zafu,

are no longer living, blazing stars,

but just long, omni-directional "arrows"

of light streaking through the

vast-beyond-imagining-and-fathoming

distances of this

L I V I N G U N I V E R S E,

the bows of the stars that sent those

arrows of light

streaking towards me, having

aeons ago supernova'd into oblivion in

brief, gargantuan, and uber-glorious explosions,

while other "stars"

are not stars at all, but

distant-beyond-distant-and-fathoming

GALAXIES,

and even as I am sitting here, under the vast,

"cathedral dome"

of this

L I V I N G U N I V E R S E,

that was spewed into temporal existence

about

THIRTEEN BILLION YEARS

ago, by the

G E N E R A T I V E G Y R E

of the

I-A-M,

by the

I N E F F A B L E—A W E S O M E—M Y S T E R Y,

a memory-image comes to mind of the

Hubble Ultra-Deep Field,

which shows a very long-exposure photograph

taken by the Hubble Telescope when it was

focused for almost a fortnight

on an area the sky

one tenth the size of the full moon,

which revealed that tiny area to be crammed with

TEN THOUSAND GALAXIES,

which is a reason-pummeling number

in itself, but which gets ever-more

reason-absurd

when you truly fathom

that what you are looking at in that

Ultra-Deep-Field picture,

with its

TEN THOUSAND GALAXIES,

is but a tiny fraction of the

vast-beyond-imagining number of

GALAXIES

comprising this

L I V I N G U N I V E R S E,

for when astronomers extrapolate the

TEN THOUSAND GALAXIES

in that tiny fraction of this

L I V I N G U N I V E R S E,

represented by that miniscule portion of the sky,

so it encompasses the full sphere

of the sky surrounding our

Pale Blue Dot,

and thus the totality of the

L I V I N G U N I V E R S E,

they bandy about some reason-wrecking

numbers ranging from

HALF A TRILLION to

TWO TRILLION GALAXIES,

—giver or take a few hundred billion!—

a number so absurd and

GARGANTUANLY GINORMOUS

that no normal human mind can even come close

to fathoming it,

and fathom infinitely less, can our

scale-challenged imaginations

the size

of our

L I V I N G U N I V E R S E,

that must contain that absurd and

GARGANTUANLY GINORMOUS

number of GALAXIES, and then fathom

NOT AT ALL!—

the equally absurd and reason-dissolving

amount of

time

that the light-speed streaking light,

—a hundred and eighty six thousand miles per second!—

(A trip to the moon and back in under three seconds!)

has been streaking towards our

Pale Blue Dot,

our

Mother Goddess Gaia,

from the most absurdly distant of those

ABSURDLY MANY GALAXIES,

which throws into our benumbed minds

that already-mentioned, abundantly-absurd and

absolutely unfathomable

number of . . .

THIRTEEN BILLION YEARS!

—that's about two hundred million average human

life spans . . . and over three life spans of our

middle-aged, four-and-half-billion-year-old, Sol—

and for a few brief seconds, as I try to

expand my imagination enough to cope with

those absurdly

HUGE . . .

GIGANTIC . . .

COLOSSAL . . .

GARGANTUAN . . .

G I N O R M O U S

numbers and dimensions,

I can feel something in my mind and ego

start to slip, and absolutely certain

I am,

that if I keep it up a minute longer,

I will go stark, raving mad, and either fall

into a state of permanent catatonia,

or intentionally flip

this kayak over in utmost despair,

and forthwith

drown myself!

So I willfully rein to a halt the sky-soaring

Pegasus

of my imagination and all my

mad-meditating on the

absolutely unfathomable dimensions and age

of this

L I V I N G U N I V E R S E,

and the

I-A-M,

the

I N E F F A B L E—A W E S O M E—M Y S T E R Y,

behind Its manifestation,

—though softly chuckle I do, at the thought of those

imagination-challenged, spiritually infantile people

who shrink the I-A-M to fit their conception of the

ego-projection of an absurdly anthropomorphized

divine father, and then devoutly send bended-knees

prayers to "him" for "his" intercession in helping their

favorite team win a Super Bowl or World Series—

and humbly accept it all as something

utterly and dangerously beyond the

limited powers of the

pollen-speck

of my rational mind to encompass

and make sense of.

And with that grounding, sanity-saving thought,

the long bright streak of a meteor

zip——————————————s

diagonally across the sky from

northeast to southwest at the exact instant

that a single, startling, sleepy-sounding

cheeeeep-eeep-eeep-eeep-eep-eep . . .eep . . . . .eep . . .

erupts from the thick dark forest covering the

looming black hill behind me,

and even as I wonder what could have

awakened that little bird and set off

that burst of chirping,

—a dream, perhaps?. . . do birds have good dreams

about succulent worms and bushes full of tasty berries,

and bad, sleep-disturbing ones about cats and hawks . . .

and little boys with slingshots or BB guns?—

I get the most definite sense from my

True Self, my Spirit,

that it is time to end my sky-meditations

and resume my paddle back.
Sixth Leg

So with great reluctance I pick up my paddle

in my chill-stiffened hands,

and with a series of slow, soft

strokes on the left side of the kayak,

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

I slow-turn it in a circle on the

molasses-black, star-reflecting waters supporting it, as

while suddenly hearing again what has

become the unnoticeable, background noise of this

Living Lake

on this enchanted, star-bright night,

the now soft, low and distant

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

of those frog-monks sitting in their

star-domed cathedral, chanting out their

biological imperative,

I gaze at the star-reflecting mirror

created by the still, molasses-black waters of that

Living Lake

surrounding me,

which has never felt so alive, so conscious,

and so benevolent,

a circuit that allows me to catch a glimpse of

two dim patches of white on that

star-lit, star-reflecting, molasses-black mirror,

which as I stare at them, become connected

to two darker forms from which I most

subtly feel the

telepathic communication

that they are my "wingmen," out enjoying, not only

the star-splendorous night, but the

warm, bright company of my

True Self, my Spirit,

and can I then but bow my head and say

"Hello again, good friends,"

and when I have completed that circle,

to the soothing sound of that distant chanting,

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

I perform another,

this time staring at the intimidating silhouettes

of the rocky hills embracing this

Living Lake,

all of them clear and looming back-lit

by the amazing amount of light beaming down

through the clear, chill, night air

from those millions of twinkling stars

—that includes the talcum powder-tiny ones

comprising the sky-arching Milky Way—

and on completing that second circle,

I feel compelled to do a

third,

even slower one,

as I attentively and wondrously gaze up at

the vast, living, star-thick, reason-numbing

"cathedral dome" overhead,

trying to "drink in,"

the

B E Y O N D I N C R E D I B L E,

the

B E Y O N D A W E S O M E,

the

B E Y O N D S P L E N D O R O U S,

the

B E Y O N D F A T H O M I N G,

scope and beauty of it

A L L

without going stark, raving mad!

And then I sense

that it is time to begin paddling again,

though in order to extend this utterly

enchanted and mystical experience,

to the soothing,

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

of those dedicated and tireless chanters,

I paddle as slowly and gently

as I am able

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

as I hug the southern shoreline, all the boulders

and fallen trees most easy to spot and avoid

in that bright starlight,

and spot, as well,

I do,

a number of yards down the shoreline, what

looks to be a beaver

swimming away from the shore and across

the bay, leaving a slowly widening "V"

in the molasses-black, star-reflecting waters

in front of me,

though since it does not make its mandatory

tail-slap, I can but conclude it is

not a beaver, but a

muskrat,

which, several times on other kayak-cruises,

I have telepathically sensed, then instantly spotted,

peering at me from a nearby stand of

cattails it was feeding on,

and as I look up from gazing at that

widening "V" of a wake,

I notice a large bright star slow-rising above

the looming, forest-jagged hill to the east

in front of me

—part of the headland I paddled north along when

I started my sun-bright cruise all those hours ago—

and instantly do I know, from

land-based observations of it on other nights,

that it is no

twinkling star,

but that beautiful, ringed-wonder of Sol's family,

the steady-beaming

Saturn,

beginning its solemn, lonely, nightlong journey

along the sky-trail of the ecliptic,

and though I am paddling as slowly and

gently as I possibly can,

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

while mindfully meditating on that steady-beaming

Saturn,

and entertaining the pleasant memory of a

clear and cold October night many years before,

when my star-gazing nephew

had set up his reflecting telescope

that he'd painstakingly constructed from a kit,

which allowed us to spend an hour

talking philosophy and tracking that high-soaring

Beringed Beauty,

and for the first time in my life, first-hand seeing

its captivatingly beautiful,

seven-hundred-and fifty-million-miles-distant,

totality,

but most enthrallingly

the glorious display of its magical rings,

—I also, for a firefly-flash of a breath-taking instant,

got a most potent sense, not only of how massive that

distant planet was, but how alive and conscious it was,

and that as I was so consciously gazing at it, it was

even more consciously gazing back at me . . .but of

course, I don't expect you to believe that!—

but so quickly

does my silent-gliding zafu reel in

the shoreline-yards,

like a fisherman a tiny bass he just wants

to get off his line and release,

that soon that bright, gorgeous, beautifully

beringed and very alive

Celestial Being,

vanishes from sight behind the black,

looming, forest-jagged headland,

and a fleeting minute after that,

it is time to make the left turn needed

to paddle-glide

along the western shore of that headland,

which I attempt to do as slowly, gently, and

as mindfully

as is humanly possible

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

and all-too-soon I have traversed half of it,

and as I glide past a small beach

I often stop at for a

read-snooze-and-swim,

I again get the intense feeling that I am being

watched,

and on allowing my head to turn in the direction

of that part of the beach from which

my psyche so clearly senses that

telepathic transmission,

I find myself looking directly at two dim-glinting

"lights"

at its northern end,

and after gazing at them for several seconds,

I am able to make out

a small dark shape with large ears

that I instantly know to be a

red fox,

—Mr. Muskrat better be on his "claws" because Brer

Fox considers him a delectable main course . . .though

of course, that might have been Mrs. Muskrat I saw

swimming across the bay, as no less it might be

Sis Fox on the beach—

which is staring at me with its large,

starlight-reflecting, superbly night-visioned eyes,

and to whom I bow my head and soft mutter,

"Good evening, Brer . . . or Sis."

as I slow-paddle past . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

and out of sight of it along that rocky shoreline,

and however much I don't want them to,

those gentle-as-I-can-make-them

paddle strokes,

gobble up the yards of the molasses-black, mirror-still,

starlight-reflecting waters of that

Living Lake

like a hungry flicker a hill of swarming ants,

and way too quickly

I arrive at the rocky point of that headland,

and it is time for me to make the two

right turns around it

that will set me paddling along its

eastern shore and back

to the now-deserted beach where

I'd hours before,

and under the relentless onslaught of

Sol's bright, hot rays,

commenced this wondrous kayak-cruise.

But before I paddle around that point

and have my night-vision degraded by the

bright glow of the streetlights of the small town

hugging its southeastern shore,

I slow-paddle a number of yards out into

the star-reflecting, molasses-black bay

I am about to abandon,

and after turning my kayak to face west,

—and being surprised to see that Hrímfaxi has left

a tiny, dim puddle of water in that horizon trough—

I again transform it into a

floating zafu,

as

m e d i t a t i n g

s t i l l i n g m y c h a t t t t t t t e r i n g m i n d

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . d e e pl y . . . s l o w l y . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .m i n d f u l l y . . . . . . . . . . . . .

e x p a n d i n g

m e l d i n g

m e d i t a t i n g

I again listen to the ever-soporific and

barely noticeable chanting of those

frog-monks,

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

as gaze up at that vast, star-sparkling sky,

and ponder a series of insights

that my

True Self, my Spirit,

was just then

manifesting into my mind:

about how our daylight, blue-sky world,

is the world of

our ego,

a small, self-contained, close-lidded realm

that too easily creates and promotes

a small, confining, easily-charted, readily-navigated,

dangerously-deluding swimming pool of

a reality,

that oft times appears to exist solely to

accentuate, exploit, and dramatize

its small, contained, and entrapping nature, a

swimming pool-reality

in which one can float and swim and cavort

in the warm, safe waters:

of

delusions of power;

of

delusions of grandeur;

of

delusions of safety;

of

delusions of self-importance;

of

delusions of total control of our lives;

of

delusions of total mastery of our fate;

but then!—

as bright-beaming Sol abandons that small,

blue-sky scene he creates

from dawn to dusk, and the

Goddess Nótt

rides her mighty, star-sparkling, black stallion,

Hrímfaxi,

across Sol azure domain,

—and over our weary heads!—

that comfortingly small;

that comfortingly familiar;

that somewhat safe;

that somewhat predictable;

that somewhat controllable,

swimming pool of a world vanishes,

and is replaced

by that perfect metaphor for the

I-A-M,

the

I N E F F A B L E—A W E S O M E—M Y S T E R Y,

by that black, limitless, unfathomable

and dangerous,

O C E A N O F S P A C E,

replete, not only with the uncountable and

unchartable billions of stars of our own,

small galaxy,

but with the even more unchartable

THOUSANDS OF BILLIONS OF GALAXIES,

many of them monstrously larger than

our own small and parochial one,

the vast, unfathomable, reason-decimating

totality of them,

and their

TRILLIONS OF QUADRILLIONS

of stars,

creating our utterly immeasurable and unfathomable

L I V I N G U N I V E R S E,

that our frail, scale-limited, ego-dominated

imagination,

like an over-worked computer,

freezes to impotence in the face of it, and like

Woody Allen,

on being flung, screaming and rope-clinging,

into a ring with

Mike Tyson,

instantly takes a haymaker to the chin and ends up

flat on the mat in a state of

total disorientation and abject humiliation

as it looks up into that vast

INCOMPREHENSIBLE INFINITY

that is filled with, not only those utterly absurd

HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF GALAXIES,

—some of which are in the process of colliding and

combining, though our astronomer-experts claim that

in the process of doing so, few of their stars actually

collide, so vast are the distances between them—

and with the

TRILLIONS OF QUADRILLIONS OF STARS

that fill their varied, swirling shapes,

and while vaguely hearing

the referee's shouted ten-count,

being forced to wake up enough from that

Mike Tyson-haymaker

to acknowledge that we are not even big enough to

call ourselves specks of dust being blown about in the

C O S M I C W I N D

of that

I-A-M,

of that

I N E F F A B L E—A W E S O M E—M Y S T E R Y,

and that:

all our vaunted and cherished

ego-dreams;

all our vaunted and cherished

ego-power;

all our vaunted and cherished

ego-status;

all our vaunted and cherished

ego-importance;

all our vaunted and cherished

ego- accomplishments;

all our vaunted and cherished

ego-possessions;

are no more substantial and enduring than

the fog-breath of a flea hiding in

the coat of a winter hare

being devoured by a

ravenous wolf.

But no ego can long entertain

such

ego-bombarding;

such

ego-shattering;

such

ego-shrinking;

such,

ego-annihilating

thoughts,

without plummeting into the

Challenger Deep

of a total catatonia,

or

snapped out of them by the blinding

L I G H T N I N G FLASH!

and deafening

K A B O O M—CRACK!

of a deep and shuddering sense of a

mortal danger,

of the terrifying sense of teetering on

the threshold of being swallowed up by something

that is so

G A R G A N T U A N

and so

U N F A T H O M A B L E

to our

puny reason,

that we are nothing more to it

than a plankton being swallowed by a

Blue Whale,

or a comet-fragment plunging into

Jupiter's Great Red Spot,

—which is big enough to hold three Earths!—

and as those thoughts

zip and bash around in my head like a

wasp in a wine bottle,

my

True Self, my Spirit,

manifests into that small,

confounded bottle of a head,

the song,

"Dust in the Wind,"

by the '70s rock group,

Kansas,

and as the catchy tune and

Kerry Livgren's despairing, humbling

"All we are is dust in the wind,"

lyrics play out in my mind,

I sense, coming from my

True Self, my Spirit,

a soft, mocking chuckle as It clearly

fills my head with,

"If you live solely in your ego, truly all you are is a

speck of unconscious 'dust' in the cyclone-winds of Fate,

but when you live in Me, you instantly become what we

Spirit-beings are: vortexes of consciousness in the

COSMIC WIND of CONSCIOUSNESS.

This means, that we—and concomitantly you—are as

essential and integral to that COSMIC WIND as is every

molecule of the gases that make up the air, essential and

integral to any terrestrial wind."

And even while contemplating the profound,

beyond-reason truth of those

enigmatic-to-my-limited-rational-mind words,

—even as I write this, my understanding of the mystical

truth of those ideas and insights about consciousness,

given to me by my True Self, my Spirit, drifts in and out

of focus, and though for milliseconds at a stretch I can

intuitively and insightfully understand that truth, that

understanding is as fragile as a hummingbird in a

hurricane and ever too easily smashed to the ground

in a feather-scattered smear of rational chaos—

a vivid memory-vision forms in my imagination

of the cover of the famous album that song

is on,

its name being

Point of Know Return,

and the artwork of it being a most

striking and disturbing picture

of a frail, wooden ship on the tipping cusp

of sailing out of a dark, wave-riled world

and over what looks like a steep

and destructive waterfall,

but a closer look reveals that frail ship

to be sailing,

not to its doom by plummeting

over a waterfall,

but to be sailing into a

brighter, sun-rising, more expansive world,

and as quickly as that vision forms,

the word

gnosis,

fills my mind, along with several potent

and profound intimations

coming from my

True Self, my Spirit,

the first being—

that to our ego, and to the

world-of-The-World,

which it so greedily cherishes, and for which

and is always so ever-ready to betray its

True Self, it Spirit,

that transformative event of

gnosis,

that spirit-expanding

point of know return,

always makes our ego feel

like it, and its dark, familiar world,

is on the cusp of plummeting over a

deadly waterfall,

that it is at the point of imminent destruction;

the second being—

that the most important

point of know return

in our human life,

—that happens to too-few of us, and is

understood and cherished by fewer yet!—

is an event in which we finally and essentially

W A K E U P!

from our mindless, limited, limiting, ever-deluding

and True Self-betraying

ego-slumbers,

and become aware,

not only

of the existence of our

True Self, our Spirit,

in our psyche,

but of Its

essential and foundational role

of making us everything that is

truly human,

with the "tipping point" of that "waking up"

being perfectly captured in the metaphor

of the frail ship of our

consciousness,

sailing over "the waterfall"

separating our dark and life-long obsession

with,

and abject servitude

to,

the always self-serving;

the always self-enhancing;

the always self-reflecting;

the always self-obsessed;

the always self-important

Spirit-betraying

rat

of our ego,

and the tiny, dark, dank, rank and confining

lair of unconsciousness,

it lifelong exists in,

and willingly escaping both its influence,

and that tiny, dark, dank, rank and confining

den of unconsciousness,

by sailing over the that "waterfall" of

gnosis,

and into the bright and expansive realm of

H I G H E R C O N S C I O U S N E S S,

that is the eternal home of our

True Self, our Spirit;

the third being—

that our

True Self, our Spirit

is a tiny vortex of

consciousness

eternally spinning in the

C O S M I C W I N D

O F

C O N S C I O U S N E S S,

and though it is but one of uncountable myriads of

tiny, eddying " vortexes" of consciousness

eternally spinning in that

C O S M I C W I N D

O F

C O N S C I O U S N E S S,

in being a vortex of consciousness, it is thus

an integral and essential part of that

C O S M I C W I N D

O F

C O N S C I O U S N E S S,

and therefore inherently capable of always

knowing

the totality of that

C O S M I C W I N D

O F

C O N S C I O U S N E S S.

And know not, do I,

how long I would have stayed out on

the placid, molasses-black, star-reflecting

zabuton of that bay,

sitting in the

zafu of my kayak

under the vast, splendorous, ego-swamping

"cathedral dome,"

of that pristine, star-sparkling, Milky Way-arcing,

midnight sky,

m e d i t a t i n g

s t i l l i n g m y c h a t t t t t t t e r i n g m i n d

. . . b r e a t h i n g . . . d e e pl y . . . s l o w l y . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .m i n d f u l l y . . . . . . . . . . . . .

e x p a n d i n g

m e l d i n g

so deeply with my

True Self, my Spirit,

and with the

L I V I N G T O T A L I T Y

O F T H E

U N I V E R S E

displayed above me in the black and

living expanse of the

star-and-galaxy-twinkling

sky above me, and lost in an

e x p a n s i v e

and

m e l d i n g

and

ego-annihilating

m e d i t a t i o n

on those

C O S M I C V E R I T I E S,

which, much as under the aegis of my

True Self's, my Spirit's,

integral and essential vortex

of the

C O S M I C M I N D,

I was able to intuitively and nebulously understand,

that to my frail and frightened

ego,

and to my

Mystery-swamped, pollen-speck of reason,

they were nothing more than the

loud, frightening, and incomprehensible

bouts of cackling of

a lunatic,

and how long I would have stayed

in that deep, meditative and extremely

conscious trance

so intimately communing with my

True Self, my Spirit,

and thus the

C O S M I C M I N D,

the

L I V I N G T O T A L I T Y

O F T H E

U N I V E R S E,

I have no idea, for I was abruptly yanked

back into the

world-of-The-World,

by the sudden, resonant, and eerie

Hoo, hoo-hoo . . . hoo . . . hoooh!

Hoo, hoo-hoo . . . hoo . . . hoooh!

of a

Great Horned Owl,

that came soaring across the molasses-black,

star-sparkling waters of that

Living Lake,

from somewhere deep in the thick, dark forest

of its northern shore.
Seventh Leg

And on being—

snapped out of

that meditative state;

on being—

snapped out of

my blissful, timeless communion with my

True Self, my Spirit;

on being—

snapped out of

my blissful, timeless communion with the

L I V I N G T O T A L I T Y

O F T H E

U N I V E R S E,

on being—

snapped out of

my blissful, timeless communion with the

C O S M I C M I N D,

by that night-haunting call,

I suddenly realize how chilled I've become,

sitting there so meditatively still in the

chill and damp night air, and no choice do I have,

but to pick up my paddle with my stiff

and deep-chilled hands,

and flexing my aging, chill-stiffened arms

and shoulders,

I take one final, long, intense,

intentional and meditative look

at the glorious arch of the

Milky Way,

and one final,

intentional listen to the soothing

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM-AUMMM

of those dedicated and tireless frog-monks,

and then bowing my head and saying goodbye

to that dark, star-reflecting, almost-wilderness part

of that

Living Lake

—This lake runs east-west and is split into two, unequal

parts by that long headland, the small part to the east

of it being the "civilization-sullied" part with the town on

its southern shore and a day-noisy highway skirting its

eastern one, while the greater, almost-wilderness part of

it lies to the west.

And as I think about this, I get from my True Self, my

Spirit, the clearly transmitted sense that this unequally

divided Living Lake, like the unequally "divided" Goddess

Luna of earlier in this long kayak-cruise, and the vision of

our Mother Goddess Gaia with and without her blue oceans,

lakes, rivers, and swirling white clouds, is another perfect

metaphor for my psyche.

The small, sullied, "civilized" eastern part is my ego

and its worshipped, world-of-The-World that it is always

totally immersed in, while the large, wild, western part, is

my True Self, my Spirit, which in Its natural state is pristine

and holy, (whole) but when coupled with my ego, gets more

than a little sullied, fractured, and fragmented with the

"water-and-noise polluting motor boats" of my ego's

insecurities, paranoias and delusions, and the "highway

noise-pollution" of its too-many dark compulsions to serve

its trivial, base, self-serving, and endlessly multiplying

wants and needs.—

I paddle-turn my kayak east, and after

a half-dozen slow and reluctant strokes I reach

the point of the headland, which sporting as it does

an array of half-submerged rocks, forces me

to swing wide as I reluctantly paddle-turn it south,

that turn allowing me to regain my view

of that bright-shining, beringed jewel,

Saturn,

who is slowly but steadily climbing the slope

of the ecliptic,

and after bowing and saying,

"Hello again, Mighty God,"

after which I slowly and gently paddle

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

along the eastern shore of that lake-dividing headland,

and with the soothing sound of

those chanting frog-monks no longer audible, the

absence of it seeming to leave a huge void

around my kayak,

I most reluctantly paddle towards the beach

I'd so many hours

—and so many thoughts and insights!—

before, started out on this kayak-cruise,

beyond which lay the bright and depressing sight

of the lights of the small town in which I

live out my dual life comprising my

ego-fate and my Spirit-destiny,

and as I make my way,

as slowly as I can,

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

along the boulder-strewn and shoal-scattered

eastern shore of that

rocky and forested headland,

I can feel a subtle "force" gently tugging at

my attention, which I at first cannot figure out,

though it does seem comfortingly familiar,

and with that sense of familiarity,

comes the intuitive knowing of exactly

what it is, and I allow that

subtle "force"

to turn my head to the left, and

no trouble do I have seeing, in the ambient

glow from the lights of the town,

two, shadowy, white-breasted forms

following along beside me

in those molasses-black waters,

and surprised I am to realize that my

two loyal "wingmen" are still with me,

and I can but stop paddling, rest my paddle,

and bow in Namaste as I glide beside them,

while saying aloud,

"Hello again, Dear Friends!"

the intimation most powerfully filling my being,

that these aren't just ordinary loons,

but loons

who have allowed a pair of Spirits, a pair

of Eternal friends and guides of my

True Self, my Spirit,

to temporarily comingle with their essences,

so that They might accompany It on this

special kayak-cruise,

and when once again paddling in slow,

soft-gliding motion through the chill night air

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

and over those mirror-smooth,

molasses-black waters of that incredibly alive,

Living Lake

I meditatively open my heart and allow my

True Self, my Spirit,

to send a bright, rose-colored beam of love,

not just to Its eternal friends, but to those

loons as well,

for so willingly hosting their presences,

but I cannot gaze long in their direction

because the headland, at that point,

begins to gently curve to the east,

and unless I pay attention to where I am going,

I will certainly crash into

a jumble of jagged boulders,

so I paddle solely on the right side for

two quick, hard strokes,

stroke!

stroke!

changing direction enough to follow that curve

outside the range of those rocks,

then I slow paddle along that curve,

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

watching,

as closely as I am able,

for partially submerged boulders and dead trees

now that my once-keen night vision

has been compromised by the bright street lamps

towering over the parking lot behind the beach,

and as I gently paddle towards where

I think the yet-invisible, western end of

the beach is,

I hear a soft, scratching sound

running the length of my kayak,

which informs me that I am plowing through

the large array of

water lilies,

their green, flat, floating leaves

covering,

and their lovely, yellow-centered white blossoms

decorating,

a small cove just to the right of the beach,

and I instantly know that I have to angle sharply

to the left

stroke!

stroke!

if I want to land on the soft sand of the beach

and not the hard rocks

of that water lily-covered cove,

and after exiting that cove, I decide to turn my kayak

and gentle-paddle back out into the lake

for a few dozen yards

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

s t r o k e . . .

so I can turn to again face the beach,

set my kayak in swift motion

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

stroke!

towards it, and once I have enough speed

and momentum, I rest my paddle

and end my glorious cruise

with a

silent, mindful, ritual glide to the shore,

during which I keenly focus

on the exquisite sense

of flying towards the beach over

those molasses-black waters,

while reminding myself that the whole of

my kayak-cruise has been at the

behest of my

True Self, my Spirit,

and that it is the perfect metaphor

for my life,

—for every human being's life, for any life that

is not lived in a keen awareness of, and ego-negating

service to, the True Self, the Spirit, is a wasted, and

meaningless existence—

and that

this swift, silent glide to the shore,

that ends with the soft

thump

of my prow into the sand of the beach,

perfectly represents

the instant of my physical death,

the instant when my

True Self, my Spirit,

can finally glide gloriously free

from the restraints and limitations of the

prison of my body,

and more importantly,

from the oppressive control and influence of

La Trinité Terrible,

of that dark triumvirate of

Process, Necessity and Karma,

—aka: Fate!—

have over my body and ego,

for at the instant of the death of my body,

my ego's dim, limited, hermetically-sealed, and

always in-turned and self-obsessed

consciousness,

with its

plethora of delusions;

with its

myriads of attachments;

with its

dark greeds—

for gain and power,

with its

dark greeds—

for status and importance,

with its

dark greeds—

for dominance and control,

will dissolve into oblivion, like

a snowflake falling onto lava,

thus rendering the

instant

of the termination of my physicality,

and the

instantaneous

melting and evaporation

of my ego

and all its vain and shallow

values, obsessions, and self-serving compromises

on the red-hot lava of non-existence,

being a long-awaited event of

joy and ecstasy

to my

True Self, my Spirit,

as It meets its friends and guides and begins

Its return journey to its timeless, glorious,

and distant Home,

from which It came at the moment

of my physical birth

in order to commence Its

"away mission,"

here on

Living Goddess Gaia,

where It has had to take up its

temporary, vivifying, and spiritualizing

residence

on "space-ship Earth"

in the "spacesuit" of my

infant body,

a challenging and

traumatic-to-It-process that

the poet Wordsworth

so eloquently and poetically-perfect described

in his great poem,

"Ode: Intimations of Immortality from

Recollections of Early Childhood,"

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory . . .
Epilogue

And no easy thing it is for me,

to pry my stiff, chilled and aging body

out of this

"winged-wonder"

that is my kayak when it is afloat,

so I can stiff-legged, stiff-backed, and

sore-shouldered stand on the soft, sloping sand

of that beach,

and after profusely thanking my

True Self, my Spirit,

for having provided me with the inspiration,

the prodding, and the gumption,

to take such a long, splendorous, star-gazing

kayak-cruise,

I perform the ritual I always perform

at the end of a paddle-cruise:

that of bowing in Namaste to the

Living Lake,

and to the

Living Forest,

close-embracing its shores,

while gazing out over its once-again

mirror-smooth and molasses-black,

star-sparkling, Saturn-reflecting expanse,

and the so-alive, hill-covering forest

looming over its shores,

and thanking both it, and that forest,

for having welcomed me into their

wondrous and living domains,

and for enhancing my limited and confining

human consciousness

with their huge and pervasive,

lake and forest

C O N S C I O U S N E S S E S.

And then I gaze up and around

at the splendorous

"cathedral dome"

of the vast, black, star-sparkling sky in which

I can still

—though but barely with my light-dimmed eyes—

make out the glowing, mottled, "talcum powder,"

swath that is the

Milky Way,

arching over part of that headland on my left,

after which I bow in Namaste to it

while thanking it for enhancing

my limited and confined

human consciousness

with Its pervasive, embracing, and

vast-beyond-rational-comprehension

C O N S C I O U S N E S S.

Then finally,

I gaze out over those mirror-smooth, molasses-black,

star-sparkling, Saturn-reflecting, and living waters of that

Living Lake,

until I spy two faint-glowing

white shapes,

and momentarily and totally becoming my

True Self, my Spirit,

I bow in Namaste while allowing It

to blast open my heart

and send another rose-glowing beam

of thankful love

to those two faithful

"wingmen,"

feeling, as I do, my

True Self, my Spirit,

expressing Its deep-felt gratitude, both

to Its Spirit-friends and to those two

beautiful loons,

for their silent and unswerving companionship

on this kayak-cruise,

and barely have I finished my bow,

than there floats across the distance

between us, a soft,

WHOOOOOOaaaaaaaaaaaaHOOOOOOOOO . . . . ..

and barely has the last note of that

haunting, feeling-rich call trailed off

into the enveloping night,

then I hear two soft

plashes,

and seconds later

spot two small, circular wakes disturbing the

molasses-black, star-reflecting mirror that is that

Living Lake,

which quickly roll out from the area where

those two, dim-white shapes

had been . . . . .

but are no more . . . . .

and I can but feel . . . . .

blessed and . . . . .

h o l y

* * * * *
About the Author

Gregory, foremost is a mystic/shaman, and only secondarily a poet. In becoming a mystic/shaman he has, in the parlance of Carlos Castaneda's shaman/teacher, Don Juan, "lost his shields," has lost his normal human defenses against the psychic, telepathic, and emotional emanations—positive and negative—of those with whom he interacts. Because of this, he lives in solitude and accordingly must remain anonymous.

The creation of this work is the culmination of a four decades-long mystical/shamanic journey deep into the Mystery, or what Joseph Campbell called the Mythos. It has been a journey that Campbell elucidated in his masterwork, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, and the writing of it is a small part of the stage of the journey that he labeled "the Return."

Like all mystic/shamans, the author, for the last forty years, has had to live and "journey" in two worlds: the mundane world of our ego-oriented material reality, and the "other" world of our Spirit-home, the Mystery. The outer details of his "journey" in the material world are too mundane and tedious to make interesting reading, while its counterparts in the Mystery are too extraordinary, and irrational—within the framework of our Western, rational, scientific worldview—for anyone to willingly believe.

The inner details—the ideas, the insights, the revelations, the understandings, the essence—of his "Hero's journey," are contained in this, and other poetic works, and represent what Campbell labeled "the boon," the raison d'être for the whole, long affair.

Other titles by Gregory

The TRAIN

Smashwords

METEORS: A Shower of Aphorisms and Short Poems

Smashwords

Embracing the Lotus:

A Long Journey to a Reluctant Enlightenment

A Poetic Allegory

Balboa Press

Connect with the author

Intelligent and insightful comments and queries about this work can be sent to the author at

museandman@gmail.com

The author does not spend a lot of time on-line—there is too much creating to do, and so little time and energy to do it—so replies may not be immediate.

Smashwords Interview: https://www.smashwords.com/interview/mojavedreamer  
Smashwords profile page: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mojavedreamer

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