1
"Sorry
to hear about your bad news, Miro", the neighbour shouted, looking up
from the garden he was weeding. Miro walked on, dismissing the
neighbour with a smile, a wave and a shrug, determined to continue his
constitutional without interruption.
He paused at the country
lane at the end of his road and contemplated which direction to walk
today, when his thoughts were interrupted by the noise of a bright
green sports car driving up and screeching to a halt. The driver
appeared to be a lady in a ridiculous long tan-coloured cloak that
spread across most of the front seat, and wearing a sombrero and dark
glasses. She nudged the dark glasses down over her nose, peered at him
and asked "You Miro?"
"I am" Miro replied.
"Get in", the lady replied, throwing the dark glasses into the small rear seat of the vehicle. "We have a date".
"My mother always told me never to accept rides with strangers", Miro said, smiling thinly.
"You up for an adventure or not?", she replied, pushing open the passenger door. "And do you want the top up or down?"
"Down is fine". He peered at the lady more closely. He was struck by her green eyes, alert like a cat's. He got in.
She
drove in silence for a few moments. Miro grimaced as some of the car's
vibrations hurt him. "Can we stop somewhere and get some water?", he
asked. "I need to take my medicine".
"In the glove box", she replied. Miro found the water and downed his pain-killers.
"We're going to be awhile", she said. "Why don't you sleep and I'll wake you when we reach our destination."
Miro nodded, uncomfortable as he waited for the morphine to take effect.
"But
first, take off your clothes, except the shoes", she said. "You won't
need them where we're going. Wrap the mantle around you when you're
finished", she added, nodding at the large expanse of tan cloak draped
over the back of both seats.
The cloth of the cloak was
luxurious, astonishingly soft, like chamois. Miro did as he was told,
and then said "So now we are sharing an item of clothing. Seems a
strange intimacy, as though we were sharing a secret."
She
nodded approvingly. "It's plenty big enough to share." She reached
behind her seat and pulled out an oilcloth hat and placed it on his
head. "Perfect", she added. "This is how all men should dress -- a hat
that makes a statement, a non-binding cloak, and sandals laced up to
their thighs. And nothing else". She laughed.
"Sounds like quite a costume party we're going to", Miro said.
"Here",
she replied, drawing her hand down across the brim of his hat, and then
softly across his eyes. "This should help you sleep." That was the last
thing he remembered.
2
When
he awoke it was dark, and they were in a forest bathed in moonlight.
What's more, they were in some kind of observation platform high up in
a tree. Miro looked around in amazement. The platform was large enough
to walk around on, and had an edge, perhaps two feet high, all around
it. It was soft as down on the feet, like an overgrown nest, and seemed
constructed of some sophisticated thatching rather than wood. There was
a large cloth-covered chest on one side, and at each of the four
corners, a large lit candle burned. The green-eyed woman was seated
behind him, and had drawn the cloak around both of them.
"How the hell did you get me up here?", he asked, turning his head and shoulders back to look at her.
"I'm
stronger than I look", she replied with a guarded smile. She stared
right back at him, studying him with her eyes. He was unnerved and
averted his gaze reluctantly.
"I thought the male was supposed to be the nest-builder", he said, quietly, trying to absorb the situation.
"Depends
on the species", she replied. She gave him water to drink, and a clay
bowl with berries and nuts in it. The bowl had two paws or hands
imprinted on it, as if to instruct the user how to hold it. He drank
and ate quietly. As he did, it began to rain, first a fine mist, then a
downpour that, in the silence of the forest, was as loud as thunder.
The woman drew the cloak tighter around them and under them, although
the canopy of the tree already provided some protection from the rain.
She turned Miro to face her.
"Close your eyes", she said. "I am
going to teach you something important that you have forgotten." Her
voice was like a robin's, musical, as sweet and as intoxicating as the
rain. "Open your mouth just a little and do exactly as I say. Feel me
getting closer to you. Anticipate
it. Break the distance, in time and space, between your lips and mine,
into a million tiny pieces, and then, as slowly as you can, move one
piece forward. Now stop. Pay attention. Without speaking, tell me what
you sense."
Miro could hear the birds in the nearby trees, some
of them luxuriating in the rain and others sheltered from it. He could
hear their voices and understood what they were saying to each other.
He could hear the rabbits and skunks and field mice scurrying for
shelter on the ground far below. He could smell the woman's breath, and
parse that smell into molecules, each different, each landing on his
tongue or in his nose, this one with the scent of red current, that one
walnut, and this one with the scent of love and concern.
Each
moment brought their lips infinitesimally closer, and a profusion of
new sensations. Now the wind was full of stories, of a wounded
blackbird, the birth of a baby raccoon, the discovery of a patch of
blueberries, wet with rain, the first thing a young sparrow saw when it
opened its eyes. Miro learned these stories from the scents, the
colours, the tastes and sounds and touches that were carried by the
wind, each, like a snowflake, complex and rich and complete in its
detail. Now he was parsing, miniaturizing
time and space so finely that he could sense subtleties that he could
not have imagined. The bird's song was a symphony, and he could hear
the elaborate melodies, the interwoven harmonies, the thousand messages
of longing and love and connection that were encoded inside them. The
bird was speaking to him, not personally, but as aware-part-of-this-place.
Now closer. The smell from the woman's breath was not just berries, it was those
blackberries, there, that cluster, with a unique mix of acids and tones
and nuances that only belonged to them, in that place, because a
particular weed that shared their soil infused them with some of its
flavour, because a bee had alit on them, briefly, imparting on them the
precise mix of pollens its feet had touched before, because the angle
of the sun and the leaves protecting them or not protecting them from
the rain was slightly different there than anywhere else.
Closer
still, and now as he opened his eyes he could see in her eyes all the
truths that were captured in a mere flicker, in the dilation of her
pupils, in the flecks of blue and yellow that made up the stunning
green that shone into him with the force of a thousand suns. In her
eyes he saw what she felt. He was so overwhelmed that he cried, and
each tear tumbling from his eyes was a torrent, a cascade of colour and
the tinkling sound of it bouncing off his cheek and then off her cheek.
And then the touch, as each cell of her lips caressed a cell
from his. As the flavours from her mouth poured into his and he had to
slow down even more, to savour each one, to hear its story and learn
from it, to open himself up absolutely to it. He let go of everything
and just became that endless
moment, became her, became them, became all-of-life-on-Earth. Now he
understood why the word 'sense' initially meant 'to find one's way'.
There was no urgency in the kiss. Time stopped. There was all the time
in the world. The kiss lasted forever, as if days and seasons and the
rising and falling of mountains was all happening during it, and still
it lingered, with the parting as slow and gentle and sweet as the first
touch.
She smiled at him, holding his head in her hands, her
eyes downcast, almost shyly. "That is the time that all the creatures
you see and sense around you live in. That is why, unlike humans, they
are never in a hurry, never afraid to die. They have all the time in
the world. That is what I wanted to teach you."
The rain had
stopped and the woman rose, re-lit the candles and opened the
cloth-covered chest, drawing from it two rough-hewn wooden instruments,
a guitar and a recorder. She handed him the former, and when he made to
protest that he did not play (at least not well), she shushed him.
"Drink this", she said, passing him a bowl with a thin blue liquid in
it.
"You do not need that to intoxicate me", he said, smiling at her. "You already have me at a disadvantage."
"We
owe the creatures of the forest a concert, and they are waiting for us
to play. But first, I need to get your stubborn ego out of the way",
she said.
Miro wasn't sure if it was the effect of the kiss or
the strange beverage, but he was beginning to see things, hear things,
imagine things. "The creatures are sending you their dreams. Now play",
she said.
Somehow Miro was able to find the notes to play a
madrigal, one he had never heard before. It just came out of him. And
now the woman was joining him with the recorder, playing notes that
responded to and built on the deeper notes he was sounding. He played
like a madman, as if his fingers did not belong to him, finding notes
and chords and sounds he had never studied and did not 'know' to play.
The
woman nodded as she played, and then as he continued and moved into a
frenzied, lightning-fast flurry of rhythm and melody way up on the
frets a whole octave above open-string, she said, "Now you see, you are
the instrument and not the player. The song is merely being played
through you. You have opened yourself to it."
On and on they
played the song of the forest, rising and dancing as they played, until
they were exhausted. The woman put the instruments away and said "Now I
have something else to show you. You know this. Your instincts have told you this truth. But it is time you saw
it." She re-wrapped the mantle around them both, drew her legs up under
him and plunged them both off the side of the platform. She hovered
just above ground-level, and pointed. First, in the moonlight, to baby
rabbits being born. Then, a trio of young foxes wrestling with each
other, then yawning and curling up into a ball together. Then, in
closer, the intricate work of a spider, so close that Miro could see
the weaving, and witness the wondrous speed and intricacy of its
construction. And even closer, an aphid, lustrous in the moon's glow,
making its long journey to a new leaf -- turning colour to signal her
departure to her community, growing wings and soaring away, borne on
the wind miles to a new and unknown home, and then the delight of
discovering it, knowing it was waiting for her.
And then the
woman turned Miro's face to hers and kissed him, and plunged again into
a deep pond, using the cloak like fins to swim to the bottom. She
breathed life into him, keeping their mouths locked, willing him not to
panic, and by swirling around showed him the mysteries of life under
the water, where all life began. She showed him creatures so tiny and
strange that he could not believe his eyes. She showed him creatures
that were transparent, that you could see right through and were so
much a part of the pond that
unless you were paying attention you would not notice them. She showed
him, by guiding his hand, creatures that lived in continual darkness
and therefore had no eyes, but which responded to his gentle touch so
powerfully it was as if they purred.
And
then rising from the water she drew him up into the clouds, soaring,
the cloak becoming wings, and pointed out to him patterns you could not
see from ground level, or without the eyes of a raven or eagle. And
then still higher, until the horizon of Earth was passed, and on into
the stars, until even larger patterns became visible, even obvious, and
then into other galaxies and universes that were beyond his
comprehension, so he couldn't see them at all. He began to get dizzy,
and the last thing he understood was how the vibration of a single
string, with no physical existence at all, could create everything.
3
The
car rounded the final curve before the street that Miro lived on, and
he woke up with a start. The woman was smiling at him, as she drew the
car to a halt. He moved to say something but she put her finger to her
lips and shushed him. He opened the car door and climbed out, weary and
a bit disoriented. He was wearing his normal clothes again. She pointed
up and he looked, instinctively, into the cloudless, dazzling blue sky.
When he turned his gaze back, the car and the woman were gone.
He
made his way unsteadily back along the street. His neighbour was still
tending his garden, and rose, wiping his forehead, and said, "You won't
get into shape if that's the farthest you walk. At least walk around
the block. D'you want me to come with you? We could share a beer."
"I feel like I've been gone for days, an eternity, even. You mean to tell me we were just talking?"
"Not
two minutes ago, my friend. I think you'd better take it easy with
those medications. If you overdo them, they'll drive you out of your
mind", said the neighbour.
"I need a rest", said Miro. "I'll
take you up on your kind offer soon, though." And with a wave he
continued down the road towards home. Suddenly a crow flew down and
landed by his feet, not five yards ahead of him. The crow kept jerking
its head up and down, finally staring into the sky. Again
instinctively, Miro looked up too, and as he did, the crow cawed, rose
up and landed on his shoulder and then on the outstretched hand he was
using to shield his eyes from the bright sun. The two creatures looked
at each other intently. Then the crow balanced itself on one leg,
lifted the other to its breast, nodded twice, and flew away.
Original artwork by the author, 2003. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
