DANCE

Dance, in its earnest and naturally channeled expression, is a way of being completely present in the world, without allowing rational, human complexes to take over consciousness. It is a kind of expansion of consciousness in the sense that, when the rational and practical voices in the mind have been quieted, the consciousness is liberated from its situational blinders, and is able to unfold into a fundamental experience of physical and mental existence. It is a way of communicating the simplest truth of existence, a ritual to participate in, and reflect on, the endless motion that is presence in the ensouled body, i.e. human existence. We are wondrous contraptions, built subtly of the crude materials of the universe, and infused with a vast spirit. In dance, we drift effortlessly and artlessly through the universe, projecting out only what we fundamentally are.

THE DOOR IN THE TREE

I climbed through the gnarled orchard in a soft rain, searching for the shining medallions. They glinted and glowed all around; the wind wove and danced through the water, and pressed the leaves, which covered them and then revealed them in all directions, at all points.

I crept to one tower, a dark and looming one of twisted limbs; it was bottomlessly green and its savage thorns guarded a great load of the golden fruit. The life in the earth gathered around it, raging umber to ochre to verdure, roaring into spots of incandescence. I saw the light in the earth pouring out of the tree, the force in the soil.

I climbed through the rough substrate, the rain pelting down now, and grabbed and twisted the fruit with my long, leather hands. The tree fought and wounded me, but as I came around to complete the circle, it opened its door. I walked into the tree, the silent room, the living temple, the twisted spirit gut where I was born and will die.

The wind and rain were gone now, and the fruit hung calm and harmless around me.

Tell me of the Steely Oncorhynchus that swims through the veins of the earth. It struggles down from the towering places of its birth and spends a life in the vast ocean. Tell me of its return, its following a spirit thread back up into the mountains, back to the spot where its soul was woven.

I'll tell you of our birth in the forests and orchards, and our odyssey through the fire and blood of human life. I'll tell you of our return to the sylvan chambers, of their reflections in hospitals built from wooden skeletons, earth, and sand.

TRUE DARKNESS

I crawled down into the South Dakotan Wind Cave; it was all decked in ancient stone scaffolding and a snowdusting of delicate crystals. In the depths, I reclined on the rock, curving my back around it, and turned off all the light. I had never experienced true darkness before; it seemed like something thick and moist, something dense and aromatic that held me up. I passed my hand around in front of my face, detecting no motion. I turned around and around, finding no sense of location, losing awareness of my body. Eventually, though, I could see an outline of my hand as I waved it; not so much where it was as where I intended it to be. I believe that I saw the extension of my spirit into space down in the Wind Cave. Up here I can't see my spirit for all the light.

What kind of light is a blinding light? It doesn't seem like light at all, just some powerful intoxicant, or maybe such an excess of a quality that it folds into its opposite. What is a light that does not penetrate spirit?

The rough hewn spheres on the path to Ventura hold a darkness in themselves. It is not true, but nearly so. I went wandering in the abandoned oil refinery - through frescoed echo chambers and iron rivers. I found rust cliffs to climb, and a vast globe of shadows to peer into.

The air was heavy and bitumenous; the darkness thick and impure. I gazed up into it and saw one subtle point of light at the zenith. My eyes would not see it, but I know that the entire sky was projected through that pinhole. The hole, the mineshaft into the upper world, pulled me into an ocean of sky image.

What is up and what is down? What is light and what is dark?

I seek darkness for its promise of light. I look down because it shows the way up.