SHADOW PUPPETS DANCING

 

 

In the lake, when the atmospheric conditions seem just right and the banks are not too muddy and slippery, I can lean over and see what I believe is my own reflection. I do just that, and there is a face surrounded by water, engulfed by sky. 

Rustling sounds happen, and my mind interprets the sound waves as meaning they are happening nearby. The girl moves next to me, and seems to imitate my gestures. I imagine that when she looks in the lake, she sees a different reflection, one she has learned to call an Anna, who she believes has lived 18 human years and is from a strange land far, far away called the United States of America.

We seem to stand there a while, in silence because it is a silent retreat, but even were it not, what words would be said? I gaze at the lake and the sky and the trees and birds, so many things that I conjure up like a magician whose thoughts create reality. That’s what the newage people say, isn’t it? Your thoughts create reality? I smile and laugh; they are right in a way they would never want to be right. And of course, the thoughts belong to no one, and though they seem to name the paint-by-numbers images in what some call this dream of life, it is only thoughts that create the illusion of any one seeing. As if anything creates or doesn’t create at all…

Anna makes some kind of sound. It seems I can distinguish it from a bird call, and I remember she is there. Or really, I just turn to look at her. I can’t really say “I remember.” When was she ever there or not there? 

She is looking at me with tears in her eyes. I am grateful I can’t ask, “what’s going on?” as it is clear all she could do is tell a story I would never believe any more than if she told me she was a Princess from the sunken island of Atlantis. I think I might have smiled gently, but maybe I gave her a bizarre grin. I am told by Fiona that sometimes my facial expressions don’t seem to match what’s going on, or at least what most people think is going on and how they would react. Somewhere I heard that was the symptom of a mental illness, but I’ve forgotten its name. I note it as one more symptom of Miranda-phrenia.

Anna sits on the ground, which is damp and cold. I go over and sit next to her. I put my arm around her, and she collapses into me like a child. It’s a primate gesture, programmed by life or evolution or the unknowable mystery of what is--- which isn’t even an unknowable mystery, as how can you name what is unknowable? What a species. Not even a way to say something is unknowable and yet all the so-called knowing is never accurate.

We stay like that for awhile, and at some point she smiles back and lightly brushes my hair away from my face and gazes into my eyes. I hug her tightly and take her hand and lead her back on the path to camp, which I doubt she could find on her own. There are no words, but the forest is singing the song of which we are but a single refrain. But that’s just my story. Anna no doubt has her own, and neither of us has any story at all, as all we are is stories fading into dusk.

So why is this being written when the silence seemed so perfect in that apparent moment that now is only a series of impressionist brushstrokes called a memory being translated into words? I used to think of Facebook as writing letters back home, which I did at university when there was home and people I wrote to who I imagined understood what I was saying. Now there is only the appearance of anyone writing or being written to, and only the appearance or illusion of understanding. It’s as close as we can get, and it’s not getting anywhere at all.

I don’t know what the human creature that I call an “Anna” really is. Not what she thinks or feels or how she even seems to exist. And it’s not because she has no words to tell me. I don’t know these things about the Miranda thingie, either.

Late that night, or is it early the next morning?---- there are no clocks here--- I watch Anna dance and play the flute and guitar. The music and the movements seem to animate her like an Indonesian shadow puppet coming to life upon a translucent screen in a mythical story of life and love. That seems to tell me more than any story she could share in language.

But it still tells me nothing at all.

<3

 Aoetl, my beloveds,

 the Miranda thingie