I find myself in a deep mysterious haze far away from where I thought I was. In my mind there had been constructed this elaborate reality that I clung to as a sloth clings to his tree, but it was not me, it was not me at all. I had taken a fall. And there I was, still curled up in a ball, on the mountain, motionless and calm, and all around me was dark and charred, burnt from the lightning, but from the ground was starting to sprout tiny seedlings all around.
And I saw myself from above and my soul lifted higher above the circle, and I was free. I floated effortlessly, and then all seemed to fade away, my whole life in an endless sway, dissolved into the world, as I started to decay.
And then I no longer cared for all those things in my life. I no longer saw old Rachel as someone that I needed to possess, or Jamie as the friend that I had left behind or that was going to bring me back into the world of things and dreams and hopes. And I no longer saw myself holding on to life so frail and impermanent. And I was not an I any longer.
Also I no longer resonated with the beliefs that I had before, or even to the thoughts that were constructing themselves in my mind as truths, and these became simply other organisms that surrounded me, or not me, there is no way to write it correctly, but in reference, so don’t read this too literally.
The former me was no longer, and maybe I existed still in the land of dreams and reality, in the minds of all those who used to know me, and in the remnant influence that still remained upon the ground that I had walked and upon the human relationships that I had and upon the creations that I had etched into the sand, ready to be lost to time. But now time had too become a mere abstract and all things seemed to exist and inexist as one, but many at the same time, and nothing at all.
It was as was destined. It was as had evolved ever since that first light, and it was here in the transcendence to this new sphere of existence and inexistence where everything become so clear.
And thoughts hovered around of my childhood still, and of all the lovers that I had in my life, and of all my friends, and the places I’d been to, they seemed to cling together as if strangely drawn to one another, although they didn’t belong to me, they belonged to no one, and they belonged to the universal, the spirit of existence, and I saw that they too were eternal.
And each of my theories about life and existence also floated away into the ether, about man’s ultimate place and purpose in the universe, about the evolution of the machines, about the continuation of the human spirit, and all of these were true and all of these were false, and they all came to pass and were all defeated at the same time in the great evolution of evolution.
And the great revelation of everything came to me, as it does to all. And it was a revolution of the soul that was waiting already formed and had always been there and just now it became so clear and so near and it mixed and made love to me and to all my thoughts and patterns of the mind and to everything that I had been and to everything that had ever been or was or will be or is.
And the universe split into infinity, and there I saw the infinite pathways of life sprawling out in all directions, rough dirt roads and mega super highways. I saw the symbols of eternity as they one by one and all at once made sense to me, yet I needed no symbols for where I was going, though they still remained as a true necessity in their own right. For I saw that all was necessary in the life that I had led, the hardships and the pain, as well as the bliss and happiness.
It all became so clear, and at the same time so unfathomable. And acceptance washed over everything. There was no spoon, yet the spoon was all things, and it fed all things again and again.
Here comes the aeroplane!
—excerpt from a larger work by Joshua Byrd, 2012