Undercurrent

 There is a tide in daily life that cannot be seen.  It is that subliminal pull that defies logic because of its primal power.  How can everyone not see its overwhelming strength?  It burns through me, starting inside, then pours into the space outside of me like light flooding the void of darkness. Waves push against me as I try to catch my breath. I look for the reassurance of who I am, the definition, and suddenly the current sweeps me away. Today, no stand is taken, no argument given, no flag placed in resolution.

Into the ocean, the battle lines are drawn.  I am just as I was in 1969 looking out into that hallway light on Lillian Road.  The longer I looked at the light, the further away it got.  One can only understand dimensions that are not their own while they are there.  As I returned, I thought for sure I could hold the memories I what I just saw, I knew I could.  But as the light grew closer, every second that passed, understanding slipped through my fingers.  

It took nearly a decade but I could at least describe something of what it was like. I was lying on a cold countertop-like table and there was a light but scratchy blanket over the top of me.  Someone I knew was there. They coexisted just barely from sight on the edge of a water clearing that I could see for millions of miles. Suddenly she lifts her arm and points at me and starts lecturing me.  As she takes one step after another toward me with the arm raised, I begin matching her steps to keep the same distance.  She is like distant thunder that I cannot avoid later. I cannot let her reach me, and even though she is a million miles away still, she is so powerful she has already overtaken me 100 years before I was born.

It was quiet for a few years and without warning, I journeyed back.  Every time I go, I seem to be able to carry something back across the terminator between that dimension and our own. This time, it was crowded around me.  There she was, one million miles away, in pursuit, yet having already won.  There was silence in the crowd.  We could all hear ourselves trying not to breathe too heavily and that is when we heard words that meant, what did you do? Our lamentation swept through us all like a shock wave from an atomic blast.  It was so hard that it flung me across space and time and right through the barrier.  I woke up sad and scared because I thought I finally understood where I was.

Since then, I have only peered through the window when it was found.  I could momentarily feel the table, the blanket, and a fast sharp strike against the strings of a cello. 40 years have passed since I returned.  I cannot say that I understand today any better than I did then.  I often wonder if maturity allows powerful things in your life to get sorted out and manifest. When we don't understand it is chaos.  Or is it nothing like that at all. 

I like to believe it was the around-the-bend thing.  Time is for our convenience and is relative.  Looking at it from a different angle with everything really happening all at the same time, and being able to see in linear form instead of in the curvature gravity provides. That eternal shoreline is the only way my mind can explain it upon my return.  Talent, purpose, drive, and desire personified. Suddenly I am exhausted.