C R A W L (Part 1)
In the form of a bird, I made it to the peak of that mountain.
There, I found a stone with an odd shape and I sat atop it, settling on snow and slurry piled and still falling. I made room inside of myself and I pushed forth a sound from my beak; it came like a wind and left from me like something more.
Anyway, the sound went with the mountain, and it must have carried itself somewhere, because soon after I was met with a vibrant rush of plume and wing. Another appeared before me; it was a beautiful one, her feathers burning sapphire even through the thicket of a growing snowfall. She did not speak, only hovered, and only for a moment. Her eyes were not there: when I looked to them I grew faint and was taken finally by the storm.
I half-awoke and was covered in cold and shivering, a fading memory dancing in my mind- of sapphire, heat, and an unintelligible Dream.
I am with You, now
Bring me to the peak of that mount once more
I hear this in my mind, and the sound of it startles me fully awake- standing, now, the snow shifts away from me and its restful sleep on wing and feather. I shake off the rest of it, at least what I can; some of the snow has taken the form of wet and dirt and has imprinted itself on me for the moment. I open my senses: I look around and realize quickly that I cannot- the storm is violent now, I am blind, it is howling, and in no time my only awareness is of the calamity around me. I cannot see, I cannot hear: my feeling is reduced to the chill of bone and feathers plucked by a greedy, loathsome, laughing and magnificent wind.
The storm sets me back down, it tells me: Sit!
So, I am forced back to the Earth as I try to make flight away. I try to respond, but I cannot get a word in. I move my insides to make room for a voice again but the storm takes the wind and life from me. I am stuck and my vision becomes an indescribable white and buzzing; the same happens to my hearing. It is so cold… I feel every petal of ice lapping against my warmth, trying to claim and conquer it. I feel a fear growing in me, that I might die here, and the thought also occurs to me that I do not know exactly where I am, and now I am in panic.
What if I died, here, in a place I do not know?
I do not even remember what yesterday brought me, how can I die here?
Oh, no. It is growing, both the ice and the fear.
I do not feel any warmth, anymore, no, it is all cold, now!
I am scared, I am, I am. I try to stretch my wings but cannot distinguish the feelings of still vs movement. When I command my feathers to unfurl, I realize that I cannot feel pinion or even my feet, so if those things are moving, I cannot know. Am I flying, now? Am I lying on the ground unconscious or dying? The feeling overtakes me; it all becomes white, and when it reaches its peak, I hear something once again:
A Babe in the Wind
Do not Fear
Go
I will take you somewhere else
Ah. I wished, vainly, that it would not be this, but at these words, I know what this must become. I move my mind away from my worries of whether I am flying, motionless, or dying; I move away from my struggle to see and make sense of what surrounds me. I see to it the end of these thoughts and fluctuations.
As I approach the edge of my mind, I find something like peace: it is not so different from the senseless storm with its white and buzzing but this time I am filled with a caress. It is a beautiful caress, it is a reaching towards and away from and it is an outpouring. It is a prism and reveals its kaleidoscope and endless form as I draw near. Oh, oh… words fail as I step completely into the form and dance that has now shown itself to me. Yea, I don’t think I Am as I was before.
Yea, I become You.
…and the moment I do, I come undone and tumbling away from it All. I unfurl like a spool around a violently spinning center until the final strand gives way and leaves me cut and dry. There is no momentum once I’ve come undone, everything just… stops. I am suspended. I feel the licking impressions from a previous existence fading: something sapphire, white, violent, and flying. Flight, love, drive, pain, Earth, it fades from me, its place in me taken by the maw of what I can only describe as a familiar dream… Once these memories are gone, I feel a rumble forming inside of whatever I am now. It is low and equanimous; a harmony that settles into me as if it were always meant to be there; it is embrace. I feel a pit forming and I feel scared for a moment; a deep and cutting question and agony enters my mind just before the embrace fully takes me. Whatever the question or suffering, I forget it soon, and now I feel something taking shape, it is a sensation, I am being taken somewhere, a place with sense and Light, the feeling becomes me, and in a moment, I am Born.
In the form of a wind, I howl: I search for a new one to take me. I search for simple; something like amoeba or leaf. As I am now, as Wind, I animate all forms; all breathe through me. Yet, something compels me and yearns for a home. I yearn to contain myself; to take my multitudes and move them into the formed world, where I was once a thing and where now I am a shadow. I move across cosmo and finally my awareness falls on Earth. The place whispers to me:
You will find what is sought, here
Come to me,
Allow me to be your Mother again
Your heart takes after my form,
Allow it to be
There is hurting, here
and learning, too
Take from me, and, after-
Return to me, until you know better
Oh, I am crying. I am crying, and I become the Earth because the Earth is where I am to be, now. It calls to me, did you hear it? Without thought, I become the Earth and then quickly I make myself small, I look for the smallest things; I look for a thing that will teach me something, as the Earth said I might learn, here. The wind that carried me and that I once took the form of is breathed into something fitting of me. I become it.
In the form of a worm, I am carried by what, from my meager position, I can only understand as an oceanic torrent- something other than a worm might describe the outpouring as being a thing of biblical proportions, but I am a worm. Being a worm, I do not quite understand what is happening. I do not know enough to describe it as anything but overwhelming heat and the complete paralysis of whatever little nervous system I possess. Truly, my worm mind is oblivious to itself but terrified in an echoing and primitive sense.
Still, there is a story to tell, is there not?
Such things as stories or worlds necessitate an image, so there remains the image of me, a worm, being carried by an immense flood of water and dirt.
I am scared, but you needn’t be: at least, if you cannot finish the fearing for and about yourself, do not fear for me- I am but a worm, such a showing of water is a natural part of my sprawling existence on this world. I am taken by it, and yes, I am scared, my body is on fire, I am without control- ha, I am but a worm! Who am I to stand against this torrent and stake a complaint, as if I am to say? A worm has no bid in the textures of this world, as when one flow of water decides against its neighboring land. I have taken the form of a worm: if I wanted to move mountains, I would have become a river.
This is I, a worm, I have something to say! I do not know what is happening- I have no idea where I am, all I have known in my existence is excrement and food! What is it that animates me, and why has the question even appeared to me? What in the- I don’t understand this, am I the worm…? The worm is floating now, I– I, the worm, I am floating now; it seems the flood has calmed. There is nothing here, not for me to see: I have no eyes. I have no ears or mouth, or anything like those things, so there is nothing for me here as I float. It isn’t agony to be here, not exactly. Still, I wonder what these wicked thoughts are, the ones written here… I conjure them for no reason, it seems- I am but a worm!
So it goes…
