At The End Of The Earth

Upon a large rock, on a yellow, sun-burnt hillside, beside a flock of white sheep and a sleeping shepherd. There, upon the rock, was the book that I had seen. 
It was thick and bound in a reddish hued leather. Although there was a slight breeze, not a page wavered. I had lost count of the days, the moons that had passed as I slowly wandered to this rock, this book. Now I was shy to approach it.  
I sat on the path and rested my head against my hand. The grasses, the tiny white flowers that crowded the book like a garland, the wind, the tree leaves, all of them gently swayed to a slow rhythm. The book held a place in the center. What it was, dream, myth, truth, emptiness, I did not know.

*   *   *
In a tavern at the end of the earth, just past the forest where the thickets grew so dense no light penetrated, beyond the huts where the banished lived and died of loneliness, in a tavern that hosted the wisest of seekers, their hearts blackened by courage. There Josephine sat among the dirty earth scoundrels.
She sat before a mug of mead, the cup so large it mocked others in the cupboard. Her gestures were both calm and wild, a hurricane contained within the confines of a small woman bound in leather and pauper’s armor. 
She turned to me as I entered and watched me approach. I knew we had never met before. But I also knew that the magnetic bands of earth and star had brought me to her feet, had pulled me through the vacant valleys of sand, past the meadows and siren’s songs, through the cities and graveyards and wastelands of the dispossessed, had brought me here, to the end of the earth, where the black hearted sat on wooden stools, watching time unfold and refold, unwind and rewind.
I took in her lips, her pale skin and tousled purple hair. I took in the presence of magnets, wind, stars. I observed how the push and pull of all energy ended and began with her. 
“Would you like a drink?” she asked. 
The mug slid towards me like a comet. I grabbed it easily and brought it to my lips. One taste of her drink shocked me. It burned, and as I swallowed, it moved through me like fire, lighting me from the inside.
I saw myself, sitting there before her, beside the other earth men that had come, the others that would follow the invisible paths for years through sandy valleys and burned grasslands, past the cities and stark villages until they arrived at the end of the earth, at the tavern where all energy began and ended.
“So you see now,” she said.
Her words came from my mouth, from my eyes. There was the large rock on a yellow, sun-burnt hillside. In one second I saw the route, the many moons, the many years, the thousands of steps through valleys and forests, away from the end of the earth and towards the waters, then the seas and rivers, down through the ancient caves. 
There were many scenes at once, one imposed upon the other, each of them changing as easily as water. They arranged themselves in a line, then spherically, then rotated as a series of shapes that touched ends like a mandala.
I looked at her then, on the wooden stool beside the bar, stone walls on all sides, torches lit on the walls flickering, casting their stories along the floors and our faces. She smiled, her dark eyes alight with mischief, with knowledge of earth and wind, happy to share her secrets with me.
We did not talk. We shared the mead and the silence, the visions which allowed us to see one another from the inside. I saw the book on the rock beside the white sheep and the sleeping shepherd. One day I would find it.

Tracing Footsteps

I wondered how long could I trace the footsteps.
They were there in the sand for miles, across lands that would later be states and then called by proper names. But for now, it was just land.  Wide open land that crossed pine laden forests thick with owls and foxes and all the creatures that come with such dark mysterious places. 
I would cross myself out of habit, never for one moment believing help would be heaven sent- and after a pause, I entered the darkness of those trees, spooked as much by the unfamiliar sounds as by the lack of light.  My horse would move, sensing my hesitation, feeling the same shift in perception as shadows and the wild creatures of bedtime stories appeared before us dancing. 
Still now I wonder if it was the place where monsters and fairies and wizards were made, there in the darkness of sweet smelling pine. Was it there? Or was it the light- was it me? 
Let me pause as I laugh and reflect, reading the words I have written thus far. Such a mind I have, always trying to land on the truth when there is none. 
It was the darkness and the shapes created by light. It was I, the man upon the horse following the footsteps who saw them.
And they were there, as real as shadows and perceptions.  They played on the thick tree trunks of those mountain pines. I, who lost all bearing as the light vanished.  
Where I had been, where I was going, those thoughts left without a trace of memory, not a single remnant stuck to my boot.  Every rock and bough, every creature with flittering wings was intertwined with my story, and I with theirs.  Here to help or thwart my journey, I could not tell.
So we moved forward cautiously, tasting lightly the treats brought forward by the mountain creatures. The footsteps brought me to those mountains covered in pines and creatures with red and white spotted eyes and to the dwarf women with hair that trailed behind them like fine golden cloth and furry animals covered in stripes and the gold of kings.
The footsteps that had brought me thus far, those footsteps that had crossed the sand covered deserts and stone-fortified towns of the south, the places beyond common language and religion where I had been a foreigner, sometimes god and sometimes devil depending on the most recent tales spun around campfires in the night; those footsteps which I followed had left my mind as well, not just the ground. 
Sitting here now I wonder if I had ever seen them, had they ever truly been sunk into the mud or sand or was it just me again, looking for what I wanted, seeing what I needed? 
And again I laugh, perhaps all those things wrapped up in the leather armor of the young man on that land. That grand land shaped and etched in patterns as varied as the clouds.

Vessantara

When the people heard of Prince Vessantara, they thought of his long black hair, his glossy mustache and the scent of women that rolled off him like roses. When they saw his chariot approaching over the yellow dunes that had baked in the suns for much too long, then they exclaimed, “Prince, oh Prince.”

When the people heard the prince was coming, they fell to the ground and let the flaming sand burn their knees. The sun burned them as it always had, as it continued to do, for the sun knew no mercy. The sun had forgotten them. The sun had become angry. The sun was lustful and raging. The sun shone down on them with love so hot that it strangled the throat of the very man she loved. And so the sun burned them, as it did each day, but when the prince rode over the dunes, the light became pure fire. Flaming heat followed him wherever he went. Each little city and town, along the dirt paths and sandy landscape. Sun followed him like a glowing shadow, trailing him as he crossed country and continent searching for the black stamens of the mudak plant. Beside it would be the woman with the purple eyes, the master with his whip and the mind that turned elephants to gold.

The prince went to search every cave in his mountainous land, every village. He went over the protests of his loyal people and the pleas of his own young wife. He came and went, staying in his palace just long enough to eat, bathe and produce an heir. Each time he left her on the marble steps of the palace she begged,
“Stay with me my love.”
And each time he said only,
“I must go.”
And she wept. Her sobbing could not be heard over the sound of the chariot wheels turning over the road. The King would wrap his arm around the young princess’s shoulder in a gesture of paternal consolation, but in his mind’s eye would be the face of the purple eyed woman. His heart joined his son, his body could feel the bounce of the chariot and the restless yearning of the boy’s young heart. He could see the long roads stretched out ahead, the nights of endless stars and the campfires that burned away nearly all thoughts of home.

The Prince found the woman with the purple eyes, met her not in a bed of silk, but in the chilly air of a dark cave high in the mountains. They nearly reached heaven standing so far above the earth, the clouds became their ever-changing door and from where they sat so deep in the cave, they could hear the wind howling outside. The woman with purple eyes sat across the fire. Her long white hair was matted and tangled and she chewed the spices of the mudak plant with him and spit into the fire so that it hissed. Her wrinkled tan flesh hung loose over her bones but she could move quickly dancing around the fire and catch hold of a doorway if one came by. When she caught one the prince would pass through and she would wait for him to return, holding the door open. It took great strength, but the woman with purple eyes could do it despite the terrible weight of the doors.

There came a time when she held the door open for three days, the longest she had ever gone and still she held it, hoping he would return. He had gone too far into the land on the other side of the door, searching always for the master with the whip. This time he had gone too far and not turned back in time and the woman with purple eyes grew weaker and at last slipped, letting the door slam shut.

Prince Vessantara had no choice then but to find the Master, but the world he now inhabited was strange to him and riddled with peril. Decades passed within that world and 5 years in his home land. At last he met the master who gave him only part of the secret and then cracked his whip to open a new door for the prince to return home.

He returned to the palace, but could not be comfortable. They shaved away his long beard and the servants whispered about how unnaturally the young prince had aged. His young princess said,
“You are not my husband. The husband who left me has never come back.”
Prince Vessantara nodded,
“You are right. I am not the husband that left you.”
The King had grown ill in his son’s absence and died shortly after his return. Prince Vessantara was crowned King, but ruling a kingdom mattered little to him. He longed to discover the rest of the secret that had been imparted to him by the Master.

His ministers asked for a son. Without a son the administration was weak, but the princess would not touch the strange Vessantara, she waited for the husband who left her to return. The ministers suggested concubines, but Vessantara would have none. At last, unhinged by her woe, the young princess declared that King Vessantara was an impostor, an assassin that had murdered the young Vessantara to usurp the throne. The people were outraged. They asked that he be punished. There was much debate among the ministers.

Prince Vessantara was banished when the red Moondam tree dropped its ocean scented flowers, looking more like a sad flower in winter than the masculine tree they all knew it to be. The night was crying with several of the young villagers. Tears flowed from their eyes and nose. Mouths opened and shut with nervous ticks. They remembered the young prince that had left them in his chariot.

The old Prince exclaimed,
"The ministers do not understand. The princess does not understand. The people do not understand. I am not the young prince that left long ago, but still I am Vessantara. You banish Vessantara from his father’s palace.”

Then slowly, in sadness, he turned his back once more, looking into the shadows and finding only unopened love letters sent from a flowery hand. The letters, gleaming white under the full moonlight, still had much to say, but they required effort. A quick motion of the wrists, a jab of the fingers and a voyage of the eyes.
He walked towards the urn that contained his father’s ashes and kissed it and cast a sorrowful eye upon his wife, Princess Maddhi, to bid her goodbye.
The princess did not beg,
“Stay with me my love.”
Vessantara did not say,
“I must go.”
He simply went away, looking for the spice of the mudak plant. Looking once again at the mountains for the woman with the purple eyes, looking for the master with his whip and the mind that turned elephants into gold.

First Of All

First of all,
there are many questions,
many things I’ve never asked you
many strands that cling to my thoughts
like thick green ivy
over an old wooden banister.
There are many questions
and this is one of them
only one of them.
One of many.

I had been writing and reading about this
About that day that I mentioned
That night in a circle
With a kind of silence punctuated by the noise of cars and people,
A crowd of bicycles outside the door
Whispers and an old man that says no
Even if you want him to say yes.

I remembered that day, that moment.
And you want to know
Why?
Why that moment and not another?
It is never easy to answer that question.
Why am I writing this now
And not a year ago
Or five years ago
Or a decade from now.
Why today?
Why moments before I have to go
And it’s already late
And I’m still sitting here writing.

In itself, it stood out,
Because it had a brilliance to it
A certain shade of colors
That refused to fade into each other
That refused to decay like a lonely afternoon
It held a promise
And also a door that closes
A door that we close ourselves
Then it stood out even more
For other reasons,
Reasons that I could say I didn’t begin
At least not the me that is consciously speaking.

She mentioned it several times.
I never fully followed her down that route.
I didn’t want to.
Not even then.
(Old habits,
and it is all about habits really.
Yours and mine.)
When she did mention it,
it made me hesitate,
it made me doubt the rest of what she told me,
it made me wonder what she was getting at
it made me look away.
She was clearly wrong in this one thing.
In this, she was wrong
She had been wrong
She would be wrong
She had to be.

Just the fact that She mentioned it,
that in itself made it so I would remember it
more clearly, more often
than I would have otherwise.
When it came into my mind the other day,
Completely out of nowhere
Under the cooling stream of water from the shower
I thought that there was some kind of clue
hidden in its its folds,
a path, a route, a way towards understanding
understanding what happened
between us.
What happened at the beginning
what happened at the end.

I don’t have a preconceived notion of an answer.
I hope you don’t have one either.
I don’t believe such answers are simple.
I see it more like a detective story,
A detective story that refuses to yield an ending
A detective story where we are the detectives,
But we are also the criminals
And the only witnesses,
The only witnesses that can be trusted
Even if we constantly lie
To others
To each other
And to ourselves.

Now it’s just a path
We could have followed
A path we didn’t follow
Like so many others
One more among many
And it is only to be expected
That we should think
That it is as it should be.
What else could we possibly
Say?

Buried Treasure

It had drifted to them during the waning-hours of a beach party. Almost everyone had taken off, packing up their backpacks and heading back into the bright lights of the city. Only they had stayed because Kate insisted on beach-combing. Whenever they came to the water, she would take her little plastic bucket, one she had had since childhood and walk to the far ends of the beach. She would disappear for hours and come back with rocks and shells and things that most anyone would consider litter. Why she brought the lone sneaker, the lens-less sunglasses…he could never understand. He would just shake his head and laugh when she showed him her treasures. It was no surprise to him to find himself in the dim light of the setting sun, resting on a colorful beach towel and waiting for Kate. A wind blew in from the ocean, “a cold front,” he thought. He reached for his backpack to retrieve the hoodie inside.
“Max! Max!”
He looked up and to the north, running along the shore, small and white against the blue background of the ocean was Kate. He could see the white outline of her body in the even whiter bikini that came towards him. “I wonder what she found this time…” He got up, pulling the hoodie over his head. He started walking towards her.
“Max! Max! Look what I found.” She was carrying something large in one of her hands, the red plastic bucket was in the other. “Look,” she thrust an old bottle into his hands. It was worn and white. It was cold, cold from years of travelling the ocean currents.
“Wow, look at the glass, it’s all cloudy and milky-white, it must have been out there forever.,” he said with a slight hint of curiosity.
“Yeah, and you know, I think there’s something inside it, listen,” she held the bottle to his ear as she shook it slightly.
Max smiled slightly, “it’s like from a movie,”
He took the bottle from her hands, he gave it a little shake and then tried to unplug the cork. “ahh, I think it’s useless, the cork’s really in there, we’re gonna have to break it.”
“Oh, but the bottle is so pretty, I thought you’d be able to open it with some sort of tool.” Her eyes showed a bit of worry. This was her treasure, now he talked about destroying it.
“Well look, don’t you want to see what’s inside?”
She nodded her head.
“Well there’s a years worth of salt buildup along the cork, I’m not sure if I can get it out, if I push it in, it could destroy what’s inside. I think the only thing we can do is break it.”
“Really?” she said, still a little worried.
He nodded. He took her silence as consent and turned and started walking towards the cement bathrooms. There were lots of rocks near the bathrooms. He picked one that was slightly larger than his hand, he brought it down tentatively, striking the bottle. Nothing happened, the bottle was slick. He raised his hand higher, he brought it downward and closed his eyes upon impact. There was the sound of glass breaking.
“Max! you said you’d be careful!”
“It wasn’t going to work any other way, it needed some force.”
He carefully reached his finger among the pile of creamy-white broken glass. There was a small tube, a tube of paper. He brought his thumb and index finger to the edge of the paper and pulled it out, shaking the paper gently and letting the glass shards fall.
“Made a little mess,” he said with a devilish smile.
Kate shook her head, “you like destroying things, don’t you?”
He smiled. They turned their attention to the paper. Their fingers fumbled together as they tried to un-scroll it. “It’s a map,” she said in disbelief.

Three months ago they had found the map, and now they were here, tromping along the south side of Tikam-sui, a small island in the Sampui Republic, which was really a collection of a dozen small islands in the South Pacific. The map had taken a hold of them, like a plague of the imagination.
“What if it’s really true?” Kate would wonder at night. “What if it was the last message sent from a sinking ship? What if a defector made a map and threw it overboard in the middle of the night?”
They came up with dozens of stories, they wanted it to be true. And now they were here, animated creatures following the lines of the map, looking for the buried treasure. Was it jewels that the map promised? There was no picture of a treasure box on the map, nothing that overt. But there were complicated lines indicating the ocean currents and this was the modern-day nation that the lines all pointed to. This was the place with the “X.” The “X” that promised nothing but mystery.
“So…I’m not sure how the topography has changed since the map was made, but if it’s still slightly close, then we’re on the right side of the island. This beach is big, how the hell are we supposed to find it? Whatever it is?” Max wondered out loud.
Kate shook her head, “just pick a place and start digging,” she said. “But you know,” she added, “don’t try to use your head, just walk ‘til it feels good and then start digging.”
They held the map between them, four hands held the corners open in the light of the setting sun.
“Well, we should probably make a nice fire and carve out a place to sleep…maybe eat some chocolate…we can start looking tomorrow, soon as the sun rises.”

They slept among a sparkling blanket of stars. They were at least a thousand miles away from any big-city noise and neon signs, here the night lights came out from hiding, they showed themselves to wondrous eyes in unabashed openness. Max and Kate lay together, in the double sleeping bag they had brought.
She nestled her head against his chest, “I can’t believe this all exists, it’s too beautiful.”

The sun came up against a layer of sinewy blue clouds that burned away quickly.
“Ok, remember, pick a place with your body, not your head,” Kate said with more confidence than she felt.
Max nodded. They each started walking, in slightly parallel lines and then, after a couple of steps, they diverged. Kate walked for forty more steps, then sunk to her knees and started digging with her small metal shovel. She dug until the sun was high overhead and her stomach was rumbling. She climbed out of the sandy hole and went to look for Max. She walked down the beach half a mile and saw three holes that were close together, each was a couple of feet deep. He was shoveling into the third hole.
“Ready for lunch?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, looking up and squinting, there was sand stuck to his cheeks. “You know, this is gonna be a big job.”
She nodded. “How come there are three different holes?”
“Well, I started and then, obviously, didn’t find anything, so I started digging in another spot.”
She nodded, vague memories rushed to her of all the things Max started and then stopped. The two hours of guitar lessons, the two weeks of Karate, the single lesson of sculpture. Nothing held his interest too long. She imagined a beach pocked with a thousand knee-high holes.
“I’m still working on mine, it’s pretty deep,” she said. “Cool, different styles, I guess.”

They ate their lunch and returned to their respective places on the beach. At night, they returned to their camp and made a fire and held each other in the soft confines of their sleeping bag.
“This is gonna be a lot of work,” Max said as he drifted to dreamland.
Kate knew Max would never find it, the mysterious “X.” He just never went far enough, he always stayed at the surface, giving up before making a committed effort. The only thing she had ever seen him commit to was her. She smiled a little and kissed his sleeping forehead. She thought to herself, “if there is anything here, it’s sure to be buried deep. Anything worth hiding is worth hiding well. They would have hid it thinking ahead, thinking of storms, of the ever-present sea, of the coming years, without the certain truth they would ever come back. Whatever it is, it is probably buried very deep.”

The next morning the sound of a small bird awoke them. It spoke in the rhythmic intervals of a metronome. Somewhere in the thicket of tropical trees behind them, a chorus of little birds answered.
“Time to get up,” Max said, kissing Kate on the forehead.
“Let’s find the mystery…” she said with sleepy eyes.
“You want to come over to my side of the beach to help me?” Max asked.
“No, I want to really make sure that it’s not there, or make sure it is. Either way, I need to keep digging.”
Max shrugged.

They dug for hours, they dug for days. The days turned into a week, the week transformed, moving out of the regimented intervals they had grown accustomed to. As she had seen with her mind’s eye, Max had indeed dug a hundred small holes over the beach. Time only had two designations for them now, light and dark. They dug when it was light, they made love when the sun moved away from them. Each morning, Kate went back to the same large hole she had started with. The one her heart had chosen. With each movement of her shovel, she thought of something precious she would want to hide and protect, she thought of how deep she would have struggled to protect it from unworthy hands. There was nothing else to do. There was the sun, the beach, the sand and the work. Sweat ran down her forehead as she came to realize that nothing else truly mattered anymore.

Parchment

“Parchment.” I heard a voice say. In the translucent layers of sleep, the double syllable was clear. I was in my bed, warm beneath the covers…and I was alone in a black void, naked, looking for the source. I heard the word once, from a disembodied voice, it came from the darkness, beyond an enclosure of safety where there was no roof, no floor, no walls. I stood, in the center, in the middle of a darkened bubble that seemed to stretch past the furthest sun. Without forms to admire, without colored shapes or lines of meaning to decipher, the word was clear. Rich, beginning with pursed lips and then opening wide before the tongue closed against the roof and the teeth came together…this was only one half, in the other, the mouth opened once again in a circle that closed with the finality of a depressed tongue against a hard roof. I heard it ring like a thousand bells…my eyes fluttered in the search for reason. “What do you want?” I asked. There was no response. I stared into the darkness, waiting for an answer.

Upon waking, I held onto the word. I thought of my mother. When I was young, my mom would burn the edges of parchment paper and we would pretend that it was a pirate’s map. On its textured surface was the charted currents to a secret island. A land were mermaids laid beneath the sun, their milky breasts never tanning, their songs never ending. The map held the directions, the clues, the coordinates, but it was up to us to decipher the codes and take to the waves, to the open sea. Yes, it was charted, but it was one thing to stare at the journey on a piece of paper, half a world away, quite another to brave the winter swells, the scurvy, the delusions amongst the endless water and treacherous calls of the sirens. The path was given, we held it in our hands, but our will, it was our will and determination that could not be drawn or charted or predicted. This changed by the day, by the hour. The map was there, the secrets were everywhere, and the map promised a chest of diamonds, it was up to me to begin the quest.
I looked into the darkness, still, the sounds rang in my ear. “Ocean water” he said. His words echoed with bass. “Who are you?” I asked. There was no reply. I stood, naked, waiting.

On the water I must ride. With the map in my hand, I look past the wooden ledge into the endless buoyancy, the mini crests and valleys of liquid that jiggle like dancers holding onto each precious second, up and down. No concept, no thought, they move because they do, nothing more. There are no birds in sight, no land, no people…nothing but the water below and the water within. This vessel of flesh, made from the same mixture- the liquid carpet on which I ride. I float upon myself, the extension of me beyond the skin, I look into the endlessness, we are the same. An ecosystem cycles beneath the wooden ship floor. A world beyond my understanding. Complex, unforgiving, dark. The valleys, the currents. I am just a drifter with a map in hand, seeking the island, seeking the diamond I remember. My mind takes me as does the ocean’s path, the wide, unforgiving openness of consciousness. A thousand lives move beneath me, nearly hidden. Mammoth whales, sharks, plankton…the journey of currents and tides, unending in their cycles. I take the ride in this ship, again and again, following the current, grasping the map. Seaweed floats by like the green hair of an empress, alive and pungent, smelling of my gifts.

Upon waking, I held onto the words and drank a glass of sea water.