Sometimes we get to the black canyon. It takes time to get there. I went the long way around, circumambulating the circumference.
I arrive at night. It is blackness and a bowl of stars. I don't yet see the edges but I can feel them. They make sleep feel new as if I will fall into dreams I've not yet experienced. I'm in the universe watching meteors fall from sky. I learn the language of the constellations. I witness Jupiter's ribbons across his belly. I lose my language for awhile. And then I sleep. I dream black dreams. They are not permanent and they do indeed breathe.
I wake up to sunrise, two baby does and a mother deer. They quietly lead me to the grove of oak trees. I go further and further beyond what is familiar. I come to an edge I've not yet experienced. I come to the most extreme canyon abyss in America. It drops and so does my heart. It's aptly named 'black canyon'. It is appropriately dangerous. I know that one wrong step and it will be the last step ever. I also know that the right steps will lead me further to knowing that edges --despite their danger, are exquisitely sexy. They are natural. And true. they speak honestly about time carving stone carving story carving sky carving gaps carving rivers carving mountains carving me. If sky could speak I imagine he would tell me to simply breathe.
I don't want to fall. Nobody does. I'd rather fly. Either way, sky catches me and lets me go again. I'm different with each breath. I feel both bound and free most of the time. just like how i feel at the edges. at the center i find my stillness. i always return to what i know best. stillness. quiet. It just is. The edges lead me to my center. Always. At the center of this one is a river. It rushes and teaches flow. It teaches that regardless of the distance, flow is always in sight and keeps on.
The wind blows now. It blows the blackness to blue. A veil appears. It is mystery. It is more than cloud speaking a soft hello to the morning. It is cloud attempting to penetrate the solidity of stone and me. It melts into black. It melts into me. It turns each of us blue and then we breathe into each other. Stones really do breathe. It's an illusion to think that our walls are permanent and inanimate.
The canyon is split apart. That's what makes it a canyon. I guess that's what takes away the split. Canyon is what canyon is. I'm split too. Maybe it's my own beautiful dangerous canyon. Maybe it is the accumulation of all of our canyons turned blue, washed out and covered with wise lichen and moss singing about rhythms we knew long ago.
Tolkein said it is dangerous business going out your front door. I accept it more now. The canyon reminds me by yanking my spirit from me. Momentarily my spirit reveals her own gap. It is me inside of it yelling at the intelligence that made it so. But why? Why not? The soul of a stone has many stories to tell on the edge of the fall.
It's natural. Alice in Wonderland fell a thousand and some feet and landed simply on her own two feet. It was and it wasn't. It appeared backwards and it seemed confusing and there were mad hatters and potions and drunken singing mice. She met the caterpillar who spoke of metamorphosis and she said that it was uncomfortable. He said that it isn't. It is quite normal and natural. Why think so much about it? Afterall, the queen of hearts screamed, 'off with her head' for a damn good reason.
Sometimes our wings mirror the call of the bat at night. And sometimes we lay stars in the shape of eggs. My story egg is sometimes fragile. And sometimes it breaks open for a reason. There is some interesting material in the cracks --just like what I saw in the cracks of the black canyon. New life. Sprouts and trees that grow in the least suspecting places. How do they grow sideways towards the moon through a ledge on the edge of the great big nothing?
I'm reminded to trust the stability of sheer cliffs penetrating sky. I'm reminded that if I fall from too high a height I might die. Or I might discover my wings. "Come to the edge." "No, we will fall." "Come to the edge." "No, we will fall." "Come to the edge." They came. I pushed them. And they flew.
I don't know who you are sometimes. Some days you are a black canyon. You are mysterious and your walls are jagged and seem split and obnoxious to me. I don't want to go near your jagged edges and I'm curious all the same. I don't recognize this nature that would welcome rams and mountain goats but not me. Other days you are night and dream and believe. I give birth to light inside of you. And then there are days when you become the sun and dance among evening stars and I am the night, the story quilt, and the blackness of mystery. We know each other and we do not. We know ourselves and we do not.
Black Canyons sometimes make it difficult to speak. They feel confusing too. One minute you are hanging on for dear life, and the next you are soaring with the eagles.
I know the constellation we are making. And sometimes I don't. Some days you penetrate me so deeply that I fall beyond knowing into not knowing. It catches my breath as do you. I know this much to be true: birds trust when they are thrown from their nests. Sometimes it is safe and sometimes it isn't. Nature makes it what it is --natural. I was born for this. I was made for this. I was made for black canyons turning blue amidst rivers running through. I was made for the split and I was made to believe in caterpillars becoming butterflies.
It doesn't always make sense. And then small simple orange and black wings flutter across a black canyon. Opening and closing. That is their rhyme. They want the heart to discover the truth of this piece of nature. Edges are dangerous and beautiful. Trust the Open and the close. Trust this rhythm: Egg. Caterpillar. Cocoon. Butterfly. Egg. Trust this one too: Grow. Eat. Make a cocoon. Dissolve. Eat your own substance. Break through. Hang temporarily to dry. Emerge. And fly.
It IS this simple and 'it' doesn't end. The road I got lost on goes all the way around. I stop but I'm not at the beginning, the middle or the end. It just is part of the journey. It keeps on keepin' on. Just like me. Just like you. Dangerous and beautiful all the same in the same fucking orgasmic breath.
