From the Oubliette

A Handful of Meditations Via the Usual Prosy Stanzas

Artwork by the author, Isaac Valdiviezo

Reflection

Reflection is amusingly difficult for us humans. Mirrors, ponds, other such surfaces, perennially reflect whatsoever might appear before or above them — effortlessly, it would seem — and probably unknowingly.

Eclipse

We are a curious species, us humans. We’d flee from inner darkness for a lifetime, but chase a planetary shadow across at least four states just to lay beneath it — for about a quarter of a day, amazingly. Silently and entirely alone, in my case. Lost within a painfully familiar, melancholic emptiness, I was — alongside a barren highway somewhere in the great Midwest.

Whispers

In the quiet of the night, when all alone, you may hear cryptic whispers whistle mutely. Whether through your ear canals, or merely echoing amid thoughtless thoughts, you couldn’t know — this is beyond you. But you needn’t fear either way. Your mind is far from lost, let me assure you. Even if yours — like mine — is a mind too often considered too irreparably far-gone, what you alone appear to hear is hardly its unmaking, rest assured. Your birthright, an ancient secret — no less — is what you alone hear murmured faintly in the wind. You have my word. Whispers for you, and only you, those are; coos bubbling forth to baby you, out from a gentle Mother Earth. Never mind that “you’d be wise to listen.” Wisdom can be superfluous at times like these. Everything, in fact, becomes so depressingly superfluous during times like these, you’ve surely noticed — so rightfully superfluous. A lifetime spent fleeing all that you’ve ever sought, unknowingly, is simply just too great a loss. Wouldn’t you say?

Canvas

I hate an empty canvas as fiercely as I hate that I love so much that I need so desperately to write.

Labyrinth

I recently learned that labyrinths are used ceremonially by some for meditation. “Stuckness” is, to wiser minds, an aspiration, and not at all a thing to flee from, said Pirsig once. Yet here we are, in 2024-America: daily inventing “new and better” ways to circumvent the mere thought of it — completely oblivious, of course, to how stupefyingly stuck we’ve become, doing that and only that. “Exponential progress” we call it, virtually planet-wide.

To where or what do we progress, exactly?