MISSING WHAT NEVER WAS

 



After the retreat, people invariably write that they bonded more deeply with some of the other guests than they ever have with anyone in their life. I want to write back that's because at a silent retreat you don't have to listen to anyone's ideas and complaints, but I actually get it. It’s usually only lovers…or stoners…who can sit with others quietly for hours on end. And even in silence, maybe especially in silence, you can feel as if you are as deeply engaged with another appearance of a human dreamling as in the most intimate all night conversation.

Shortly before the retreat ended, Fiona asked me if I will miss everyone (as we were allowed to speak, as long as we did it away from the guests, so that verbalizing a word seemed like a forbidden act). The question made me smile, then I noticed tears. I never know why I cry or smile, the thoughts that come up to explain my reactions are never true, only an attempt by a brain that can’t even see outside of itself to make it all seem understandable.

I don’t miss anyone. Yet I miss everyone. Ephemeral appearances come and go. Sometimes I am engaged in a wonderful series of messages and then the person just disappears, sometimes a visitor will touch my heart but then it is time for them to return to their “real life.” While I have no life to return to, real or otherwise.
How can you miss anyone when you are already gone? I can’t even miss that poor girl named Miranda who tried so hard to be what everyone thought she should be, what she thought she should be, and who never ever was at all. Yet she is as real as you and the guests at the retreat and Cinderella and Snow White and the Wicked Witch of the West. Just a thoughtdream. Not even a dream, and not even a thought.
Sometimes it feels as if I could just walk into the lake, go deep below the surface and keep breathing, keep walking on the very bottom. There I would finally meet the monster who lives in the same imaginary world we do, the mysterious and unknown realm where we pretend to believe what we see and think and feel, realizing none of it has any substance, including us, and knowing that there is no one and no thing behind this facade of dreamstuff.

We are such stuff as dreams are made of, after all; wispy, diaphanous gowns of skin and bones with enigmatic smiles, translucent tears, and an imaginary heart made of love ♥

Comments

  1. Dr.Ilangho RPNovember 28, 2021 at 1:50 AM

    Thank you for your blogging 🙏🙏🙏🙏

    Keeps me sane,
    Amidst Human Inferno🙏🙏🙏

    Wordless.... 🙏🙏🙏

    Gratefully yours
    🙏🙏🙏

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lee BwaoNovember 28, 2021 at 7:01 AM

    No one no thing … made of love …

    ReplyDelete

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