Phoenix
by Dale J. Sprague
Op. 2 The Original Peace
In life, we journey forth, we course like a river, but only with remembrance of its beginning shall one proceed unlost. Only with remembrance of the original peace can one journey forth, fearless of death and transfiguration
Feeling born there is a beginning. Once there is a beginning, there are the living. What is this present?..this happening of now, but the end of all that is past and the beginning of whatever is future. What length may the dimensions of now be in the midst of newborn radiance? How deep can it be while sadness wishes to be freed from the center of a storm? How long or deep can simple aspiration make this now seem, this happening prepared by memories and dreams. To what length may this steady state, this 'here and now' grow?..in the vast physical world
In this world there are living souls, shrinking and swelling in eternities. Being perhaps, only of eyes, ears, touch, and smell, or being the whole of these limited worlds, touching lightly, perceiving only a bare glimpse of one's self in times of change..during upheavals of weakness knowing no place to rest, no place ever where the soul can be all of what it is. Forbidden mirrors within, we are. A creature of this world, we are, yet doomed to extremes of chaos and order we surely are..if creaturehood is denied, and innocence thereby, denied within
We are the running who hasten from the dead, avoiding the light cast down upon us..hastening into and dwelling amid past wishes and fantasies of future dreams. Or withdrawn, I dwell in eternity as a child, as any other creature would. Fearing to live we otherwise be. Knowing living fear, we fear the light of eternity. Feeling eternity, and so deeply of it, that life passes by..faintly, like a fleeting dream in the night
We are the down'trodden, the darkness within, the sleeping soul yearning for some hold'fast. To feel alive..to feel that life is more than a dream. A dream at least..some aspects of which we may effect ourselves
While of past or future, and being most careful not to become ensnared within these phantoms of time, I may dwell in this now, appearing unliving, without spirit. Yet within, most keenly aware! My spirit pauses. Like an eternal moment we are, knowing ourselves vaguely, and feeling all else as alien. Feeling all as a strange and compelling universe inhabited by so much unawares of itself..that they are alive. How can the unconscious possibly say it has lived?..while being of timelessness, the eternity moving, resting, flowing into, around, throughout all that lives
With a self'perceiving eye in motion seeking union with the spirit of some haunting song, of aspirations and dreams comingling, I live still'spirited. Living with remembrance of living, and I especially remember when a new awareness, a new feeling or emotion has united with what already lives. So predisposed and fated, I feel distinguished from so much that seems to be unconscious things existing passively reactive to other things
Through passive bits of matter, I feel, I think. Within an intricate body of systems within systems, we are as the stars are..bits of vision. Purpose and aspiration seep'out from every bit of matter I call me so intricately and precisely formed, that I know creation by its irregularities. By variations do we seek our selves when rigid form predominates. And by rigid form do I see..especially when chaos superintends order
Awake, so much passes through me into an irretrievable past, into the darkness there, within chambers of ghostly brooding. And moments of life are readily consumed by the mood, as it were, lost within thick fogs of emotion. I do not always need the products of an ordered mind to sense some purpose or destiny..for life springs also from all that is random and self directing. Origins of existential query are inherent in passive convolutions of light, self ordained and vainglorious. And so, self conscious bits of matter have become impassioned, seeking relevance..and caught up by its own dark vorticy, lives isolated between immutable order and all'consuming chaos
From chaos are we compelled to seek finite order. From rigid order, am I impassioned for infinite variations of space. Only between them do I feel greater..do I need to enter this 'now' within every bit of matter. Bits that are systems among countless systems coming together, making larger and larger systems until the very large cannot distinguish itself from the very small
Somewhere between my extremes is life, is there living with remembrance. Is there a thought crystal born by single elements of need. Arising many times. Enough times so each need joins another to become a large crystal born from a single need many times over again. Born in need, I am changing rapidly from my beginning. Whenever so much new enters me, my pulse quickens. Anticipation builds. And a moment of eternity passes throughout within. And suddenly, magically awake, something new is seeking unity within, and with all, without
For birth, living, and dying do the forces of creation serve. A body is made through which I come to be, an ordered system hosting disordered me. And our sensitivities evolve into a delicate body that would shrink away from the flesh in an instant if it were pressed upon too much from without
Like a spiny sea urchin, I have felt withdrawn within a hard shell. Strong thin spikes emerge from all sides, reaching to feel the life, to sense it in every way. Isolation inevitably seeks the light. Striving for some change to feel a larger world. To feel all life in it. Waiting for the primal impulse of ravenous desire to become less so. To become more gentle toward the dark creature I am
As a configuration of elements compiled into flesh, within a complex system in a vastly greater world, we are born. And soon, memories pass into thought for some master dream, for which some edict of soul and aspiration of heart, we become future caught. And for such vision, limited valuables of matter are not weighed to be exchanged. For the integrity of dreams, we be the strength of memories, we be the links between them, the links between links..between abstractions in eternity, we be. Between eternity and this conscious moment passing, we are the changing, moving, transforming, the self transcending paradox being of time. And some words stay and claim the immortality to which they belong. Yet to live, words must incarnate and live in some invented world of time and become..of precious relative value. Such is the fate for any word aspiring to live in a larger world than itself. That is, to be of substance, a word must be known by the light of other words to survive the trauma of birth, to bear the pain of impending change that begets death and transfiguration..anguish of obscurity, anxiety of subtlety
Within the body, from the womb, we emerge from the moment of conception. Of completion and union between two incomplete beings we are. The womb is where earthly Eden is. First awareness. A place where we rest in peace while ontology recapitulates its phylogeny, and emerging, and growing, this original peace...we seek its memory
To survive and be, we would become like the spines of a sea urchin if need be. We would be the sting of a scorpion, the claws of a hawk, or jaws of a she'cat. Yet, no matter to what incarnation we are impassioned, there is always the memory of an all'nurturing garden deep in earthly soul. As the eye of a great circulating storm, our deep is, the peace of an all'serving womb
Far from this peace are we carried by a dream or an aspiration..or driven by fear and desperation. This peace I need, to journey farther, I must know my beginning. I must anchor to it for my soul to keep. Its memory I seek..for the original peace lives as memory, the gift of Eden, outside of which I muse, the instant I became self aware amid a sea of broken disconnected words with an uncertain horizon..its anthelion rising, moves the tides of darkness in me
Upon so many passageways of desire, pleasure for pleasure's sake does wantonness seek. And I bear the weight of blind desire but secretly seek within the vacuum of pleasure's gain a dream of peace amid all that lives. For the peace within, I do not perceive, I do not feel the very deep of me. I do not know..carried upon rapids of a raging river, wandering..meandering forward to some premade destiny. And I anguish over a faint memory, by which to make a haven I could fashion..some quiet harbor, a piece of silence, some spanse of pure nothingness, some touch of gentle emptiness. This, I yearn for..and driven I be, to manifest the means through which I may feel this peace already within me. A peace that is the beginning of what I have specifically become
Such a hold upon my beginning I keep. From the time of conception, and soon after first perception, we emerge into the open light. We are breathing, and even after crawling, walking, and perceiving self light, we are still emerging from the natal womb
Growing, I am distracted more and more, traveling far away from my beginning as starry bodies are also but images of some deep uncertain past. I cannot stop my mind, not even for a moment! Ceaseless motion becomes constant. Ever constantly increasing, by which I become quartered and tethered to a figment of light, lacking volition, helpless condition, spiraling to some uncertain where or when, but nevertheless traveling there for love's sake, for some dark need, some deep reunion. Needing a foundation standing, I live for communion with peace, within the mist of my airy abyss
The dark of my past is commanding, beckoning me. The darkness there compels me to enter. To live, I feel I must enter. Bite the fear this darkness bears! Infinities of mind shall in time find their end..seeking darkness, any greater darkness as passage into my past, I pass through..to feel my beginning. Endeavoring, striving, reaching with uncertain power, embracing equally, both the limits and the unending of things..moments flickering, far away..so distant from me, that I only know cold darkness between me and the deep where my beginning is
As the center of a storm, I feel agony when my cry goes no farther than my own ears. Unheard, unfelt, or unseen..suspended within deep silence, frantically searching for some place to rest, I perceive my bed, my personal things and my uncertain station in this earthly world that arose so quickly, so easily, so readily it seems. The light of day urges me. I perceive the barrier of my window, and the trees, and the grasses, and all moving things outside. The sky, the clouds, the wind and rain...why do all these things seem so strange? They are in harmony I sense, and I!..the estranged
From where do my patterns of logic arise? From what source do bits of light I call me, come to be? I live with these queries all too ready to impose themselves..keeping from thinking myself as a component within a vast machine. And being as others of passion, I sought satisfaction..yet, my misery, my myrrh outweighs my pleasure
Simple pleasures are shallow and temporal. I live with subtle agonies, in dim isolation..in some purgatory where life seems far less than a gift, and more than an unbearable burden. Yet..if only I could find a feeling for a greater world to distract me from this relentless self'conscious "I"...some beauty to hold me closer to here and now. I fear that I could become but a dream of some sleeping over'soul somewhere. A passing fantasy in the sky. This vague mirage, I
From my deep, do I need to perceive..do I need the wisdom springing from there while not knowing where or how it arrives. Not from shear experience alone, I know, but of the eternity I am, I must learn, I also know
Unchanging, fixed..immovable, I sometimes feel like a tree that cannot bend to the spirit over land and sea. Like the cold crystal of my bedroom window, or the dense carapace of an old tortoise, do I feel the deep of my own currents..do I sense fear corrupting...gaining speed from infinities of mind, we would be, in division, to inevitably only be, in essence, the darkness within..living, barely feeling me..vaguely feeling the memory of all that has been, and proceed directly beyond and become the oblivious dust from which we came. Yet in that dust!..like the things existing passively reactive to other things, there is peace..that is, no burden of self delusion
From invective pointed words, such fear in command would be overlaid by anger threatening..and I know not what would break such a carapace, the barrier between the fears I am and the peace I once was. I know not, within this eternity, how to open up as I once was. Deeper within, I move until the roots of my passage disappear. Trapped by my own darkness and so unfeeling am I, that even the biting cold of bleak snow I would welcome..seeking such extremes, feebly feeling the world around me..sinking, penetrating ever deeper
Intoxicated by the wine of who I think I am, I cannot help but be drunk with what the idea of an eye, a hand, a body, or another being has become to me. Blurred from so much wine distilled, how can all of life be?..but from some chalice of vanity
And my acts of judgment are made of a foundation shifting, wavering. I live within the space of unending mind, within a heart petrified by vague notions of a greater cosmos. Great obelisks of false light. Monolithic tombs of hurt and bitterness..eternally restless, we be the airy spaces of mind that keep the world as an outline of a book. As perfected angles and planes, and absolutes of love overlording love, we would be ever'ascending powers of fear and its progeny, hate. Within immutable space of perfected images, seeking some vague peace of priceless love and beauty, I am in vain, attempting to live and love without the peace from which life and love springs. I live, governed by some twilight'instant of sweet mystery...between light of consciousness and darkness of moon
In the midst of my night, the stars shine and blink as though they were freshly made. The texture of the Earth is soft, moist, and distant..yet profound because it seems ageless. The waters in the sky just arrived. No time to stay, but those that do, remain suspended as a grey ceiling, veiling the radiant sun, lone castles arrayed throughout its misty kingdom, the living everywhere is busy as though born with some clear impassioned purpose. And I, a recluse in a grey sky
The mist of cascading streams rise and brush against my eyes. The reeds of a meadow, the yellow shafts of grass in a field stir as though alive. All of this is ruled by some distant memory of peace within me..passing like the faces of the moon and the turning of Earth that puts the radiance of the sun into phases. Phases of light, as I am, seeking the darkness, I am here and now..a mere witness to everything I see, enslaved by my own nature I be
I feel that from the dust from which I emerged, I shall inevitably be separated. Why, therefore, should one seek an end and surrender again one's life to dark vanity with so much to gain!? Beyond me, ahead of me, deep within, I sense there is more..I feel there is. A greater world to live! A world that I once saw long ago..when I was fully embraced by my Eden. And now, at the dark roots of my own intangible beliefs, I pass through, bearing the eternity and transfiguration brought about by denying each self there upon the basis of its own darkness. I am greater! than any sovereign dictum, any presidiary axiom, or system of them that could be. Any change I pose for myself is but a challenge of love. Each love, a proper death. Each belief...eventual revelation of its dark roots, whereby a fatal blow is made to its immortalness. Perhaps such is the way immortality finds its end...seeking the specific time, place, and occasion that it may love and live
The barrier of a thousand eyes weakens and fades as my need to feel life deeply seeks one bit of death after another..until suddenly, imperceptibly, my journey within, ends. And there, in the center of my storm, deep peace pervades all that I am..perceiving my beginning, my dream of peace becomes strong. Within it, I fear not!..to live or die, and I, alive!..quietly rest awake
My beginning, my many beginnings were nurtured, carried and protected. I was formed in a womb and evolved within another, having been passed from one to another. This is the peace of me, my very beginning, carried upon the spirits over land and sea, from which all matter radiates. And through any storm that should arise, I perceive at its center what is greater than me, what inspires the death and transfiguration of me, among the living