What if we look into the night sky,
but can’t understand what it says?
This happens all the time,
because we sent Meaning away once.
All of us.
Banished it from our minds.
Cut ourselves right in two
like cosmic butchers.
Each from each.
Then each from each again.
For our own good, we said.
Looked up at the stars.
Lost count.
Lost our way.
Every half blamed the other.
We’ve got the right half, we said.
All of us.
Of course we suffered.
Walked a dry land.
It made sense to call the skies
unpredictable, to resolve
what was left into factors
and quotients,
random combinations.
Strange weather we’re havin’, ain’t it?
Just the way of it, we said.
Can’t be trusted.
World’s full of
strangers and half-breeds.
All of us.
Everyone’s a stranger
in someone else’s mind.
Don’t get infected.
Now that you’re cut down the middle,
keep your purity.
Cling to the half you have.
That’s what’s reasonable.
Some truths
you can’t avoid.
Example:
everything you see,
you’re mixed up in it.
You’re touched by it.
You can’t cleave yourself free.
All that Original Cutting,
it was like swinging
hatchets through smoke,
trying to cut space into slices.
Our minds became
choked on strange-shaped clouds.
We’re gasping for Meaning.
All of us.
But there’s good news.
Meaning never gives up.
She’s always hunting,
always prowling around.
She sneaks up on us,
crawls through the brush
with a face painted like
the first drop of water
that got moonlight
inside of it.
She steals up close,
holds her breath,
pops the hatch,
climbs inside,
pulls the wires out of the box,
strips the insulation from the leads,
Zzzt! Zzzzt!
Peooourrhhh!
Like hot lead and tiny lightnings,
mind and heart come together.
The smoke clears.
Then Meaning is all we see.
Meaning is all we’ve ever been.
Any of us.
Each by each,
Meaning undoes
what never was.
Example:
History finally resolves
into something less blurry.
We finally see It.
Everything we’ve
ever encountered has been
stalking us,
quietly orchestrating
a lifelong ambush
in plain sight,
masquerading as the life
we thought was ours
and ours alone,
waiting for each one of us
to give the signal.
Instead, we’ve been hiding
out like haughty bandits.
All of us.
Cackling like petty thieves
at the rendezvous.
Trying to shoot stars.
Hootin’ an’ hollerin’.
Unable to believe our good fortune.
Like we got away with it.
That’s what we fall back on.
That one triumph.
We got away with it.
Or did we?
How could we have,
if all the while
we were held
in the Loving embrace
of a stalking Justice
that was dressed up
like everything
we ever saw, and
everything we ever took
came right from Its
happily extended hand?
Embracing Forever 
“Meaning is all we’ve ever been.” 😉
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You said it, sistah!
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I’m not sure if I quite understand what you intend by the word ‘meaning’ Michael, but the whole seems to make sense nonetheless! I read your work as if ‘meaning’ meant ‘knowledge’ – how things are as against how they appear in concepts. But yeah, ‘all of us’; none of us are special, we’re all perfectly ordinary in the sense of us all being ‘petty thieves at the rendezvous’. I like the way you feminised your concept of ‘meaning’, perhaps implying the role of what is often considered to be a feminine intuition in arriving at it?
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Hariod, for me to read you using the word ‘yeah’ is… wow… 🙂
I thought on the ride home from work tonight about how to try and describe this concept of Meaning, and I came up with this: Meaning is the boundless sensation that flashes to life both within and as us as we quite literally become the discovery of the truth that Creation would not be the same without us, and not only that it would not be the same, but that it would not be at all. It is the visceral realization that Creation– being the integrated, living expression of the All and Nothing, the Alpha and Omega– could not express that which is its nature, without the unique presence each of us offers. It is as if Creation is an infinite language both seamless and complete, and that the elimination of any single world would leave something vital unexpressed, tear open the seams and render the whole incomplete, and that this simply cannot be.
We are all equals, indeed, in the sense that we all express the same Meaning, albeit in our own delightful and idiosyncratic ways. None of us have wholly dodged the thought forms we might describe as the ego, and none of us are bound by them. We are all called to freedom.
I don’t quite have a thought-out answer as to why I described the Meaning divorced from us as feminine. In part, it seems that in a world over-reliant upon reason and analysis, we need that intuition to help us recover this aspect of ourselves. I’ll admit, however, that for some it works the other way, and that sometimes clearly formulated logic, based upon discernment and wisdom, can aid in bringing union back to the heart and mind if the intuition is altogether untethered or ungrounded.
Michael
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How amusing that you should pick up on me using casual language – horror of horrors – as I have just returned from a lengthy exchange with someone on a site who themselves utilise, shall we say, ‘relaxed’ syntactical constructions. You might not have guessed as much Michael, but of my desperately meagre skillset, I am one who may skip with ease between differing styles of communication. I tend to be somewhat formal when presenting opinions on blogs, as one does well to show a respectful consistency, but like, well, you know dude, hey, I mean, really – whatever!
I like your definition of meaning; it engenders within me the sense that every detail of the phenomenal world is in a sense both vital and perfect, and so worthy of our respectful consideration. In fact, when the mind is settled and tranquil, this is just how phenomena present to us is it not? When we cease grasping at sense contacts, when awareness runs undirected by any imagined agency of selfhood, and there is a ceasing of our relentless pursuit of self-interest, then so it is that we integrate more so with phenomena, perhaps even at times absorbing into them in perfect intimacy. As you say in your work above ‘mind and heart come together.
Hariod. ❤
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“Relaxed syntactical constructions…” I love it! As to your “desperately meagre skillset”, I’m not buyin’ it, man. 🙂
I concur with the experience you describe, that a settled and tranquil mind readily finds itself in a world both vital and perfect. Were it otherwise, the claims of suffering might have more claim to validity than they in actuality deserve.
Michael
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I am in on it, looking for it, lost in the jungle of it, dying back into it, birthing it, hiding from it behind it disguised as a tree. You twist everything that ever was all back on in on itself so beautifully, Michael!
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Yes, we are all of that and then some, M! Meaning is bound up in the whole muddy mess of it, holds it together, encircles our every heartfelt scramble. She stitches our vantage points, our impressions, our secrets, and our cellular clinging into something that always connects and inspires in the end…
Michael
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