Painting: Paula Narbutovski
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Swimming in the Ghost River
One
Ghost Deer
A dull
thud, like an apple falling in late summer.
Out of
mists that rise from where deep roots deepen among dead leaves and twig litter,
the Ghost Deer appears.
It is
blue as the moon and filled with dreams that swirl like milt. Its eyes dazzle.
They are webbed as if with starlight and with the pulse of starlight. It
acknowledges you with a soft nod.
What
does it want? Why has it found you out here in the open field of your solitude?
You thought you were alone here, as always before.
The
coal-lump of its nose twitches, reading your scent. It nods again. You’re the
right one.
“Come,”
it speaks in a voice unsprung from sound, empty. How do you hear this quietness
that fills your dark? “Follow me.”
“Why?
Where are we going?”
“To
the Ghost River .”
The
answer is there, is gone. The Ghost Deer’s words unroll urgency. And this
urgency opens wider in you. Out of the thinnest air, awareness arrives: you
have spent your whole life asleep.
The
Ghost Deer turns. Its hindquarters glow against the dark, a cloud riding the
last light of the sun.
If you
follow, the future collapses. If you follow, you know you can never come back
to where you are.
You
must decide. Are you the now that fills you now? Or are you the absence your
next step fills?
Two
You
cross the field of human mystery, following the Ghost Deer. It’s a wide field
and dark. The sky looks like a drowned kingdom, the stars watery reflections of
a submerged city.
The
Ghost Deer floats ahead pursuing green scents etched on the night.
The
moon is a diamond hammer above the forest. It disappears when you enter the woods.
Chains of moonlight among the trees restrain the dark.
Under
those big trees, the Ghost Deer moves with the melody of a silent song. You
hurry after.
The
giants of the forest stand aside, and you find yourself before a broad river.
The river’s black fathoms offer no light but for the moon, which swans on the
surface.
Along
the riverbank, fog rolls.
Not
fog. Flocks of spectral birds swirl like a moonlit dust storm. Below them,
herds of phantoms swarm. They flow through each other: cattle, swine, sheep,
deer and buffalo. And no noise pounds from their hooves. No sound of their
prodigious voices reaches you. They drink the dark wind off the river,
endlessly moving.
“These
are animals butchered without prayer.” The Ghost Deer’s dream voice speaks with
emotional strength. “People killed them and gave no thanks to the Beast Maker.
And so, they are exiled on the shore of wandering.”
“Why
have you brought me here?”
The
shimmering deer shimmers closer. “Do you know who I am?” Its voice in the congested
shadows glows inside you, brightening your blood. “I am the ghost of the
animals your ancestors killed with sanctity that your forebears might live. And
you stand here on the ground of their blessing.”
“What
do you want of me?”
The
Ghost Deer’s voice hovers in silence, “You are the human animal brought here to
bear witness.”
Three
Dreaming Tortoise
Here
is the Dreaming Tortoise. She is very old. To her, life is a slow dream, an
endless blue summer evening. You know this the instant you meet her wet eyes
watching you from inside her mossy shell on a stone shelf of the riverbank.
She
touches you with her luminous telepathy, which shines a light down the long
tunnel of your body. She sees all the thoughts that suture the feelings that
rise in the heat haze of your flesh. She sees all of you.
And
you see her. You see all the seasons of humanity in her memory: our African
womb-time that delivered us to Ice Age winter, then our river delta spring, the
giddy summer of Enlightenment that eventually followed, and now the fall of our
manufactured world.
And
there you are in the Dreaming Tortoise’s mind, tucked in the events of your
life. There you are, oblique with ignorance. What do you know of the dead? You
know little enough of the living.
Not to
worry. Your brain may continue to sleep in its mysteries. She will waken your
heart with her radiant telepathy.
Weightless
omniscience lifts you to falcon heights above the Ghost River . Down you gaze upon the
milling animal-souls on the shore of wandering. You see the ponderous slow
drift of their sorrow, surging like the sea and as deep.
Upon
the far shore, a circular glow shudders against the dark. A night fire? No.
Your heart feels something stronger yet. Something untranslatable. This is the
Sunstone. It is the little house of rock where the Sun retires at night.
Cross
the Ghost River . Claim the Sunstone and carry
it to the exiled ghosts of the abattoir animals on the shore of wandering. Do
this, and those souls taken by people without thanks shall enter heaven. The
Sunstone is the gateway.
But
you must cross the Ghost River without a boat. The Sunstone
will not abide made things. The door to heaven will never open to made things.
Can
this be true? Are you the one to end the long suffering of the stolen souls?
The very question returns you to the long tunnel of your body. You stare out at
the wet, unblinking eyes of the Dreaming Tortoise.
And
you know.
Four
Sky Pony
Stars
flutter on the surface of the Ghost River . The moon wobbles, and bright,
widening zeroes riffle as you wade in. With blood warmth, the water receives
you.
You
will swim to the far shore. You can see the Sunstone from here, glowing softly
under the nape of night. You push off with a confident breaststroke that fixes
in your gaze that shining mote upon the far shore.
Ahead,
slick water reflects the silence of space and a splatter of stars. They rise
and fall with the ripples of your swim.
In the
same way that dewdrops can light up like diamonds, the starry reflections on
the slick and moving water harden. They glisten with the glint of dark hooves,
shimmer like glossy fur, streak a tail, a flaring mane, and spark the brave
intelligence of a horse’s eye.
Within
the soft gel of that stare, awareness peers from alternate worlds. “What are
you doing out here, swimmer?” The vanishing horizon within the eye pulls closer
with curiosity. “You are not nearly strong enough to mount me. Why are you
swimming in the Ghost River ?”
“To
get to the other side.”
“Turn
back! You will drown. There’s an undertow ahead.”
“Who
are you?”
“I am
Sky Pony. Strong Dreamers swim out here to mount me and ride the glittering
path of the Milky Way to the Beyond. But you are not strong enough to catch me.
You will drown.”
You
tread water. “Sky Pony, carry me to the far shore! I’m getting the Sunstone! To
free the animal souls!”
On the
ruffling water, the Sky Pony gallops. “I can’t help you, dim swimmer. You
haven’t the strength to catch me. Let alone hang on even to the near shore.
Keep calm. Swim back. And get a boat.”
Five
Shaman Salmon
Bobbing
in the Ghost River , you peer toward the far
shore. Night paints the black water acrylic. The topaz gleam of the Sunstone
beckons from among trees slender as Van Gogh’s cypresses.
Wisely,
you turn away. You will swim back to the near shore and seek advice from the
Ghost Deer. You kick, and a chill hand seizes your ankles. The river twists you
backward. Your arms flail empty spirals, struggling against the surging current
that pulls you under.
A song
comes into your throat, your last breath bursting to get free. You swallow it.
It won’t stay down. It tries to push out from behind your eyes!
And
then, you are staring into a hooligan face. A salmon has swum up close. “Stop
struggling!” his chiding voice teems. “The way up is down! Follow me!”
The
instant you stop trying to swim, you plummet. The song of your life spins above
you in crystal bubbles.
Gritting
your teeth against the next moment’s grim inhalation, you bounce off the river
bottom’s soft trampoline. You somersault through a cloud of silt and land in a
kelp forest that sieves the current.
“Take
hold!” A slippery flash of salmon sews a path among the leathery fronds.
You
claw your way through that nightmare jungle and strain against the undertow.
The salmon skims close to your ear and whispers encouragement: “As every ray of
light is free, all darkness has design. Hold on. Keep crawling. You’re
defeating defeat. A little farther. Okay, now. Let go!”
Your
fists unclench the river weeds, and you rise. The salmon pushes from under.
With a
wet gasp, you break the surface and inhale moony air. Rolling to your back, you
gape at the breathing stars.
The
salmon slaps its tail and declares through a pugnacious grin, “It doesn’t take
a Shaman Salmon to see you shouldn’t be swimming in the Ghost River .”
When
your breath finally fits words, you say, “The far shore… I must reach it.”
“Then,
you better get yourself a boat.”
Six
Dancing Goat
From
out of the Ghost River , you slog to the shore where
you began, and dawn lights up a fairy tale of summer castle clouds and
witchcraft darkness in the forest. A black vibration of bats swirls overhead,
dropping out of the sky’s attic and into the trees. You decide not to go there
to dry out.
Oracular
mists part where the fog of animal souls had stampeded in the night. You follow
a dirt trace among tasseled reeds. It climbs away from the river and the forest
of big trees. There in those woods, night has gone to hide.
Soon,
the land opens wide, a broad page of geography scribbled with creeks. Mossy
steps ascend to heather slopes. You sit and stare down on silver swerves of
river.
“You
there!” This fluting voice arrives from every direction. “Yes, you! Come here!”
And
you are there, at a higher elevation, above the rocky margin of a failed
forest. In every direction, flinty mountains fin the horizon. Myriad ice peaks
pierce the sky, and their snowy stones chime with light.
You
stare squinting across a chasm at a frozen wall of rock ledges. A goat prances
on the glare ice. It leaps through the snow-dusted air and lights with
supernatural grace on a round boulder balanced atop a pinnacle rock.
“I am
the Dancing Goat,” the magical being announces, capering nimbly on its stone
pivot. Fat as a bulging wine-skin, white fur tufty as feathers, churlish eyes
cracked agate, it dances with tiny, agile hooves. Questions fall away, like the
pebbles the dancing hooves flick into the abyss. “You can’t really tell where
dreaming ends or reality begins, can you?”
“Ah-ha!”
you realize, feeling reflective as a mirror. You’ve been dreaming since the
Ghost Deer fetched you. Maybe far longer than that.
“What
is a dream? Mind. And mind? Electricity in a brain made of atoms. And atoms? The
atoms of your body are excited fragments of geometry.”
In the
mind-mirror, you see all of time in one instant. The Dancing Goat is both glad
and sad to meet you. Glad because you will figure out how to cross the river
without a boat and the Sunstone will ignite soul-fire in all the slain animals.
And sad because it sees, however long you may yet live, your life is already
over.
When
you move, the mirror shatters. So many selves reflected among the shards! In
some, you remember this truth. In others, you forget.
Seven
Spirit Fox
Now
it’s night. The moon runs like a dog among the clouds. You are lost.
How
did you get here? Stony horizons vexed with thorn trees veer in every
direction.
What
do you remember? Wraiths of birds and phantom herds flowing through each other,
their pain drained to silence in the world’s dark estrangement.
What
are you going to do? The way back to the Ghost River is forgotten as dreaming is.
“Hey!
I can get you there.”
Stenciled
in neon fire, the Spirit Fox comes bounding. Psychedelic paisleys whorl behind!
She
pulls up short at your side, sparks spitting from whiskers and ear-points. Her
famous bushy tail with its lightning tip whisks brilliantly in the dark. And
she smiles.
Yes,
her smile exposes acetylene-sharp teeth, which should be warning enough. But
you’re lost. In biblical darkness. And this burning bushy tail with smiling
snout and tapered eyes of dreamy emerald offers help.
“Come
on! Let’s go!”
The lustrous
vixen sprints away. She lights a path deep as a summer lane velvet with
fox-gloves. You follow. The drum song of her trot paces your heart.
Soon,
you are exhausted. Under the pink bone of the moon, you squat to catch your
breath. Oh, look! Your breath has run off with a kick, a startled chook!
The Spirit
Fox turns and pounces. In a blur, the sly spirit shakes your breath free of
you.
Breathless,
you watch the Spirit Fox swell on the energy she stole from your life. She
drinks space, bulging bigger. Her tawny fur strains like tight trousers until –
with a whooping shout! – she jumps out of her skin!
Fur
flies everywhere! And where the Spirit Fox had ballooned, now struts a bird
with flamboyant plumage.
“Look
at me!” An alchemist’s fantasy spreads iridescent black wings sheened with
gold. Her slow pirouette displays breast feathers shiny as pearl under a lush
red ruff, silver beak, and caviar-dot eyes.
“Foxes
are boring! Freedom is a bird!” With a wag of her snow-bright tail, she lofts
into the night and calls back with wicked glee: “The Ghost River , by the way, is in the other
direction! Can’t miss it!”
Eight
Omen Bird
Atom
by atom, you pull yourself together. It’s slow going. Atoms are so small and
jumpy. And you’re dream-sick. The Spirit Fox tricked you, took your breath,
your spirit, and left you vast and empty.
Time
reaches you like thunder, long after the lightning flash moment has passed.
Slowly, clumsily, you fit together the jigsaw pieces of you.
Radiant
beings wiggle-waggle around you like bee dances. These are the engendering spirits.
Or are they your dream-sickness? They taught Earth how to stitch DNA, weaving
by feel plants and animals.
They
help weave you by feel, chill and electrical. With strength and suppleness,
they fit you back into this reckless moment, into the irreplaceable now of
difficult longing. Or do they?
In
sick dreaming, you are an emanation of death. You ray forth from nothing. What
an erotic experience! Self and void!
Demonic
desire strums dark power from the luckless event of your broken life. You grope
like a drunken lover, feeling to be felt.
Slowly,
clumsily, in your fetal enchantment, you fit together the hot pieces of you.
You
are numb on the bone when you can finally stand. Wild crags surround you. Gray
scree sparkles with diamond ice in the star heat of the faint sun. And a
crystal moon hangs frozen in the day sky.
Upon
that deep blue, a winged shadow turns and turns. The Omen Bird that stole your
breath has returned! She descends in a flare of feathers, gliding by so close
you feel the cold air ring. And you cower!
“Relax.
I got fed up with a bird’s life.” She alights before you, heraldic plumage
burnished black and iridescent gold. “I’ve had enough of flitting about as a
feathery target for claw and fang. I much prefer being the predator. And what
bleeds, I will bleed.”
“You
almost killed me!”
“Oh, I
thought I had. But look at you! Half a ghost and a flurry of life dust! You’ve
had help, haven’t you? You must be doing something important for the bright
ones to fit you back together. So, you’d best have your breath back.”
A
blurred flap of her wings snaps her again into a Spirit Fox. And the gust
drives your breath, your spirit, into the dreaming depths of you.
Nine
White Owl Goddess
While
you roam the delta of dreams looking for the Ghost River , the White Owl Goddess looks
for you. She covets all the talismans of power installed in your heart:
-
Ghost Deer’s quest courage, your Way Power in the
spirit world
-
seer wisdom of the animal souls exiled on the shore of
the Ghost River
-
oracle strength of the Dreaming Tortoise
-
clarity from Sky Pony
-
Shaman Salmon’s compassion
-
mirroring mind from the Dancing Goat
-
cunning of the Spirit Fox
-
knowing of the Omen Bird
The
White Owl Goddess is looking for you, and when she finds you, she will rip you
into fractal pieces and feed you to her young.
Where
is the Ghost River in this dragonland veined with
ice brooks? Winter has come on while you lay inert in the Spirit Fox’s
breathless spell.
Snowflakes
big as white quartz crystals glitter in the windy light. If you don’t soon find
your way out of this treeless maze of tundra bogs, you will perish.
Among
high cirrus streaks, the White Owl Goddess appears. Has she spied you?
Her
wingspan eclipses the sun. Night wafts over you, and stars sieve time: light
years and parsecs measure the nothing-dark between you and the furious freedom
of the universe. From that lonely feeling, you know she holds you in her
raptor’s gaze.
Run!
You
dash across flinty tracts under the midnight shadow of the White Owl
Goddess – and collide with a pincering blizzard!
Dazzling
darkness and burning cold seize you. You hurtle into the smoky gale, a
deadweight in the white wind. You will die!
Instead,
you fly!
The
Goddess has snatched you with her talons and hauls you into the far blue above
the sodden wool of the storm. You soar across the sunny surface of the day.
In
that supernal moment at the violet zenith under the swimming moon, peace comes.
And beauty weds you to the moment.
The
White Bird is your lover. You feel the truth of this. She can eat your heart if
she wants and feed your pieces to her young. You belong with her in this lucid
moment above the tilting earth.
And
peace holds you.
Ten
Sunstone
White
Owl Goddess surges higher into the sky, beyond blue and indigo, into the garden
of galaxies.
Is
this her killing field? Your whole body lights up with fear!
But
Snow Owl is a goddess. She recognizes you. Like the vivid, engendering spirits
who untangled you from the Spirit Fox’s trance, she knows you are not food. You
are a love-gift of the Dream.
She
shapeshifts. Slowly. Into the disheveled glory of night. And your waves become
particles standing on the burnished shore of the Ghost River .
Nearby,
exiled animal souls flurry and migrate on the broad embankment, fragile as fog
and as beginningless and dense.
You
throw your gaze to the far shore, seeking the Sunstone.
Its
unearthly luster in the night spills a path on the river. For a dizzying
moment, you peer at this glimmering road, surprised at the hard gloss of ice.
You
laugh!
Everything
that delayed you – nearly drowning, getting lost in the mountains, and then
tricked by the Spirit Fox – everything that stymied you has actually advanced
you to this dicey chance to cross the river without a boat!
You walk
onto the Ghost River . Frost crunches underfoot.
Wide panes of frozen water crack in starburst footsteps. Quickly, you tiptoe
over the buckling ice. A giant step, a gutsy jeté, lands you on the far shore!
The
Sunstone squats atop a gravel knoll. It is small as an ingot and almost
invisible in its radiance, smudged to a shadow. You lift it easily.
Staring
ahead through the Sunstone’s bright aura, you peer across the Ghost River . You catch sight of the Ghost
Deer. Her phantom body dazzles into many overlapping spectral deer, a Cubist
painting, a kaleidoscope.
What
you observe is the Many Worlds – all the possible future paths you can follow
back across the Ghost River . They appear like prism planes
inside a diamond.
These
chromatic reflections reveal every conceivable way ahead in your given life and
all your potential lives. The Sunstone combs them with its rays.
Among
the prismatic swirl of options, you spot where the ice gives way and you vanish
in a slurp of black water. And there, among the many futures, you see spangled
facets of time untangling the one slippery path that crosses the river safely.
Follow
this track. Bring the Sunstone to the exiled souls of animals slain without
consecration. Already you feel the Sunstone revealing its truth: The light you
carry once burned deep in the stars. Now, that light is you.
# # #
2 Comments:
A dazzling and spectral presentation neatly stacked in ten parts that each echo back to be read again. Thank you for this special gift of a story, my friend.
Life’s long history of voracity completes its work in us, where hunger opens into a greater dark than instinct. Thanks, Shaun, for recognizing the narrative continuity I tried to thread through that human darkness with the luminosity of fable.
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