September — The Feast of Trumpets
The sun set slowly in the sound of the trumpets, falling like a large orange ball into the sea. The trumpets kept calling as the light subsided, and the people looked out into the open waters from the elevated platform of the market square.
“Today we release our burdens. Cast all your regrets to the winds, don’t let them follow you into the future.”
As she spoke, she took a handful of sand from her pocket and scattered it into the winds. Aifa followed her example, with almost mechanical gestures; she watched the grains of sand be carried by the breeze out to sea, and with them all the cares life had brought. Her heart felt lighter, but somewhat hollow too, and she expressed her misgivings to her grandmother.
“You are looking at things the wrong way, granddaughter, and burdening yourself with sadness in the process. It is easy to fall prey to the illusion that the years are falling off of you, like leaves off a tree, and when the last leaf has fallen, you are no more. We know that the tree will leaf out in the spring. It is not the time or the season that dictates what kind of leaves the tree will have then, but the very essence it holds inside. That is what persists through all the changes. Everything else is just dust in the wind.” With these words she took another handful of sand and scattered it, while the trumpets continued their piercing song. “Don’t attempt to keep the leaves on the branches through the wrong season, child. No sane tree would do that.”
“It’s easy to say that, doyenne, but I am not a tree.”
“You are not mortal either, and yet you act as though,” grandmother said, listening to the sound of the trumpets before the sun got completely swallowed by the sea. “Last call, if there are any worries and upsets that you would rather not carry for another year, cast them away now.” Aifa obeyed, scattering the last of the sand in her pockets and turning them inside out. The wallowing sounds continued, insistent, like a baby’s cry.
“Who are they calling to?” the girl whispered, suddenly realizing that the eerie sounds that accompanied the sunset were not meant for people, but for somebody or something out there in the open seas. There was no reason for her to believe this, but she knew it, without a doubt.
“Ah,” grandmother smiled. “Now that is a mystery! Maybe they are calling for the Twins.”
“But, doyenne, the Twins are still here.”
“You say that because you are looking at the world through the lens of the things you already know. Who is to say that they can’t be both here and there at the same time? Just because we can only see the footprints of reality, it doesn’t mean reality is flat.”
“You don’t know that!” Aifa protested the physical impossibility which challenged her view of life as a placid and docile river, well set in its unchangeable course.
“You are so young, child, and yet, against your will even, you know I’m right,” grandmother said softly.
The Twins were standing very close to them, gazing with longing at the horizon, searching for themselves out there on the open seas.
There had been a marked change in their behavior since summer solstice. They almost looked like they floated on top of life, undaunted by circumstances and events, like seasoned sailors maneuver a ship through varying seascapes, always focused on the journey, not the change in scenery.
Since their unexpected conversation, Aifa got into the habit of following the Twins around, despite the unspoken disapproval of several other Caretakers, who thought her familiarity with the divine was bordering on sacrilege. She watched their every move, fascinated by even the most mundane of their activities. She watched them eat, she watched them dress, she watched them busy themselves with various crafts, in an effort to discover in what way they had fashioned their very beings into an outlet for the divine. They looked so normal sometimes, in their day to day activities, that it seemed absurd to believe their form was a mirage, and every time she looked at them she saw their solid state where there was none. They made the semblance of their human bodies so unshakable, that the knowledge their true form was so far removed from it made Aifa question all the things around her, everything she’d ever taken for granted, almost to the point where she hesitated touching the floor with her feet every morning when she got out of bed, out of fear that its illusion of solidity would choose that particular moment to get dispelled, and she would find herself falling through it, all the way down to the center of the earth.
Grandmother couldn’t stop being entertained by Aifa’s new take on reality, but did her best to resettle her world squarely on its foundations, also immaterial.
“That’s the trouble with over thinking things, granddaughter. Pretty soon you are going to question whether the sun will come up in the morning.”
“I am questioning whether the sun will come up in the morning,” Aifa thought, but said nothing.
“The training of a Caretaker teaches you the art of interpreting the things you see and living in your surroundings, in whatever form they happen to reveal themselves to you at the time. When I told you about the illusion of the real, you didn’t believe it, because you couldn’t see it. Now that you see it, you let it control your life to the point where your life loses consistency. Learn balance. You don’t get to choose between these two extremes, you have to incorporate both of them into your understanding of being.”
“So, I continue walking the streets of Cré in full knowledge of the fact that they aren’t real?” Aifa asked, tormented.
“What is real? You thought you knew ‘real’ yesterday, and last month, and the year before. What are you going to think ‘real’ is tomorrow? I will tell you again, now that your perspective has broadened a bit: if you can’t just be, you can’t be anything.”
“What does that even mean, doyenne?” Aifa blurted, so upset she didn’t watch her tone. Grandmother frowned.
“Watch your manners, granddaughter. Among other things, what that means is that you don’t let your behavior and your moral code be dictated by the current appearance of things, especially since you know better.”
“I’m sorry,” Aifa looked down embarrassed. No reason under heaven could justify her being disrespectful to her grandmother, not even the dissolution of reality itself.
“Don’t give it another thought, child,” grandmother soothed her worry. “Let me try to explain to you what that means. When you plant a seed in the ground, it’s small and round and hard, but then it sprouts roots and a stem, and leaves, and it looks like a weed the first year, and then it grows taller. After ten years it is a small sapling, after a hundred years it is a majestic tree, dominating the landscape. After a thousand years it stands so tall, and unmovable against the winds, it seems its very trunk is made of stone. It takes ten people to embrace its circumference, and from the ground you can’t see its canopy, hidden as it is beyond the clouds. And here is my question to you: which one of these images is the real tree?”
“All of them,” Aifa replied.
“Not only that, but all the transitions from one state to the next, also. What we see as static pictures is in fact constantly in motion. The moment you try to get a firm grasp on the here and now it melts under your fingers, because there is no here and now, just motion and transformation. The same way the tree just is through all of its changes, so must you be through all of yours. By the way, we ran out of water. Could you bring some, please?”
Aifa looked at her grandmother puzzled, as if her request made no logical sense.
“Did I say something strange, granddaughter?” grandmother asked gently.
“No, no,” Aifa shook her head, trying to put all the pieces of the conversation back together, to figure out where the dissonance was.
“This is the balance I’m talking about. If water is needed in this moment, that’s what you do: you carry water.”
Aifa went to the well in the garden and filled the water bucket, and while going through the familiar motions she couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that she was bringing to the world tiny pieces of the Twins to drink, mixed with only goodness knows what else.
“We’re all in this together,” grandmother laughed at her misgivings. “Now, back to the Twins. I said that they were both here and out into the ocean, but you found it preposterous because you can’t see them in their form yet to come. For the divine however, there is no past and future, just the wholeness of being with all of its details, and it was to that aspect of the Twins, that is too all encompassing for us humans to understand, that the trumpets called out. Speaking of the current state of things, please stop gawking at the poor Twins, granddaughter. One day they are going to run away from here just to escape your pestering. Don’t you have anything else to do?”
Aifa wanted to point out that looking after the Twins was in fact her primary duty, but she’d already gotten chided by her grandmother for being disrespectful that day, so she kept her opinion to herself.
“Believe me when I say, child, that if there is something that the Twins want you to know, they are going to show it to you, whether you lose sleep over it or not.”
Aifa was quiet for a while, trying to take in all of reality, or absence thereof, and wrecking her mind trying to figure out how to fit together pieces that seemed to have nothing in common into a coherent and harmonious whole. In the end she couldn’t help utter, almost in a gasp.
“I don’t think I can do this, doyenne. It is too hard.”
“Look at me, child. I have been around for more years than I care to count, and I have been where you are right now. For what it’s worth, I am living proof that you are going to be just fine.”
The strange light of the sunset followed them all the way back home, almost too intense, glowing orange and purple and casting long colorful shadows across the old stones of the buildings and streets of Cré. Aifa tried to picture a time when Cré was nothing but a wild cliff, hanging over the sea, and for a moment she saw it in her mind, the place’s ghostly presence shadowing its current form. She looked into the future too, and saw the city there, completely transformed, so much so that her mind couldn’t recognize it or make sense of it, its old bones barely visible under the new garments of the real. Its future appearance was so alien to her that she tried to hold on to the familiar landscape in front of her eyes, as if its imagery was going to dissolve at any moment.
“This is the reason why we don’t get attached,” grandmother commented. “Attachment brings sorrow when the things you love disappear and it brings fear when the things you don’t like appear, but all things change eventually. And so will you, and so will I.”
“What if I don’t want things to change?” Aifa replied.
“Only yesterday you thought that the appearance of things in their solid form was an immutable law of nature, and you wouldn’t think of questioning it, and yet, now that you are faced with the actual immutable law of nature, you can’t accept it at face value. Our only certainty is that things will change, whether we want them to or not.”
“What then is the point of doing anything at all?” Aifa asked.
“You can leave it up to nature to tend to your garden, and nature will do it. But if you want your garden to have your favorite flowers, you have to plant them and tend to them yourself. In both cases, the garden will change with the seasons and in both cases nature will take care of it, but in the first instance your landscape will look random, and in the second instance, it will reflect your intent. It is the gift of the spirit to be able to lend your will to things. You are like a potter, shaping clay into pieces of art.”
