Eleven

Flight

I love this moment. You have come alive, your eyes shine, your whole being glows with a peace and a sense of place in the universe.
You are going home, and you journey now towards it, across the sky, as I have done for an eternity.
I wonder what you will find at the place you call home? Will there be stone walls, and bare rooms, or sunwashed lawns and merry swimming pools? Who will you share it with, and what will you put in it? Will you fill it with memories or dreams? Will you live in it, or labor after it? Will having a home move you anywhere else? Will having a home be the end of the road, the beginning of a quiet life of desperation, and endless more dreams of love and escape?
You have struggled for a long time to be here, and now the light of the sun has lifted over the great continents of Asia and Africa. Below you is the vast soft sigh of the sea, that spreads between them. This light beams over the blue and comes to you over the wingtips, through the sleepy window, to touch your face.
All the people share this heavenly vault with you. All face forward, as you sweep in this machine, across the sky.

My ball of twine is unraveled. My silver thread fades to gray. You know my presence in this life is not strong enough to hold me in it. My resistance and fear fills up my emptiness, and darkens the void in me. I did not learn to see the colorless light of my life. When I died that water of life, that cloud of love and light and wisdom, disseminated.
Here in this life after life, although I have learned so much, and loved so well, my presence here fails to hold itself together. It is an act of will that allows me to leap between the Heaven and Earth, as I do. I am an underwater spirit, holding its breath, because I never learned to swim. Swimming, you see, is something we need to know in our lives, because we will need it again and again.

Now you know that I have been swimming in your ocean, spending the dying breath of my soul in search of you. Even in my eternity, I came to you.
I understand all that is, and where I, the microscopic broken piece of this enormous floral whirlpool, where it fades like fairy dust into darkness.
I know that I failed to know myself, in my own life. I am fascinated by the lives of others, and finding the truth about who other people are. But here, as I sit with you, wisps form in the footless blue halls outside. And I know what we are here for. We are here to explore it all, and let it all go; all of it. All the beauty and tragedy must move through us like air through a jet engine. All the sights and sounds unfolding before us…we must unfold with them.

We are all in the process of being, of being created. We are expanding, moving, and need to travel light. We must not hold on to the world or its belongings when we know that we’re woven into the fabric of the universe, and the universe shines in each of us. The light of the world that falls below you now, you know, and all of us, shimmers like diamonds and dew, flashing the smallest sparks on the swinging, cycling chandelier of the cosmos. I have seen it. I have seen the furious beauty and the liquid calm of the Heavens.
I want to hear you say my name.
I want to hold your hand for one moment more.
But now even I know that we must not hold on to any thing on this Earth. Have you ever seen a person hold his own hand, or keep his eyes in his face? I look at the piles of luggage below your feet, filling the belly of this flying brute. The body and soul do not need us to hold, or keep so many things in our lives, or to hold things we don’t need or even things we do need, as we run the race of our lives. There is joy in living and lightness and being that you can not find in things, and nothing can be owned, or kept forever. Let ourselves change as all things do. Everything is connected to our being and our being with God.
We must not hold on to anything because we are part of everything.

I allowed myself to live through my memories. You, my boy, have always been a dreamer. Your wide open eyes, drinking in the liquid world around you. Never blinking, forever staring. Do you remember when I told you that you are a dreamer?

You are awake now, watching the people around you eating and murmuring over trays of airline food. I don’t want you to think about tomorrow, or what the future will be. I don’t want you to think far ahead. I want you to stay in the place where you are right now. Remember this confidence in yourself. Remember this wisdom that brought you here. Remember who you are.

I want you to awaken from the dream that waits for you on the other side of every goal, every new target reached. Make each day your destination, each hour your landing. Dreams are better than memories, but dreams are no match for an inspired imagination like yours that wakes up each day and inspires every moment with knowing what to do. You need to do that. You need to learn how to do that. Practice. Live your dreams in every day of your life. Lift yourself up to where you belong. If you can do that then this life, this death, will have meant something.