The next step is to master the process, to train and strengthen, to engage the muse. When that happens, we are enlightened. Are. Active. Not a noun, not a goal, not a level-up. An activity. A state of being. We enlighten; ourselves, our progeny, each other. That's the hope. That's the big idea. It's ongoing—but we just want to BE there already. And that impatience is the perpetual-motion machine that had already existed for eons before we ever put a name to it. Or maybe that's just what we tell ourselves.
The Hopi Old Oraibi ruins have been here since 1050AD, figured out by comparing lumber age-rings from the ruins with known regional tree-growth data. So much knowledge and lore has been lost in our commodification of everything. Are we on the right track? Does inevitable mean right? Are we losing touch with nature in psychological preparation for upload to the cloud?
I sit and contemplate depths unfathomable, thinking of pueblos observing each other from afar, some on the rim and some by the river down below. All transient and aware of it. Erosion. Scarred troughs of rubble, knife-edge ridges and steep shoulders where land slid, hard core skeletons of hills like neck bones awaiting replacement heads.
Thin zigzags of footpaths, a day's journey between, with water in gourds and bladders, and salted meat against the takings of the sun. On a slab beside the path a raven lopes jauntily away, his good eye cocked toward the travelers, flat of his beak displayed in profile like a cutlass. One elbows the other and points with his chin. The other nods and takes a sip from his gourd.
The moon waits patiently while the sun goes down in a blaze of glory. Hills impossibly far away appear in the sun's last rays, shades of purple stretching west into daylight. Sheer immensity gives way to alien terrain, and observers rub their arms, comfort and reassurance that we're still at home. That our small world contains THIS as well, a nearly untapped wealth of insight into this Grand Story.
Layers of warm pastel colors appear after the sun clears the edge, orange and pink and rose toward peach and ember, behind shreds of cloud ignited to gold. Green spreads to indigo around the bowl of the world, and all around, creatures sing their thanks. Crickets chirp, bats flit about with barely audible clicks. It's time to prowl, to forage. The all-holy shadow now encompasses everything. Until the moon finds her place and bathes the nightly battleground in poetic patterns of pale light.
Venus appears amid the sun's last glow, the first to appear, psyching herself for the upcoming transit between Earth and Sun. Make a wish.
I hear lovers' murmurs in the wind, and can't tell what's real and what's Venus' song. Vanished already, flaring briefly and hotly, and following the Sun to bed. She may or may not be a cock-tease—depends who you ask. At her suggestion I wander down beyond where anyone can see me, in search of shelter from the brisk and panoramic breeze. The moon's light washes out the stars. Leaning against a still-warm rock, waiting in vain for the Milky Way, I milk my own whey into the Canyon. Goodnight Venus.
This is all so cosmically unlikely. How did we get here? What is awareness? What is soul? re we just amalgamated sensory information and perceived memories? Or is there something more to it? Where does this Drive come from? Is it simply inherent survivor's attitude? Or are we meant to be hurtling toward whatever's looming, like a butterfly to a second chrysalis?
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