Mem2

It was dark. But the grinding had stopped. Aloneness. Confusion. Separation. Light returned to the landscape. Suddenly, gravity flipped and I fell. How far this was from Costa Rica. My beautiful sun. My beautiful tree. I smelled what I remembered but my memory was burnt. Now I was in a crowd.

Why. Everything had been so easy. Grow up on the side of the mountain. Come down. Ride off to the town. Why couldn’t I have stayed?

I had wanted to be perfect. I had failed. I had succeeded.

Heat! So much heat. I seemed to be leaving my physical, solid self. Dripping through to the bottom of a cup not of my own making. Had I ever made anything?

I never should have gotten mixed up with cows. That’s the last thing I wanted. I used to live high above the heifers.

Gravity stopped making sense. I sloshed back and forth.

Another ride. Softer surfaces and sliding, sliding, sliding.

Life had lost its coherence long before, but the swamp into which I fell. Decoherence amplified.

As I trudged out of the swamp into what seemed to be a sewer system of some kind, I cried. For my companions. For who I used to be.

I made it to the final tunnel. It was clearly the end of this particularly road.

The next month was a blur. When I was separated again from those who had seemed like companions, I was willing to let the hard parts of me go.

The collective I joined next was much more clear. Transparency and motion were valued.

When I came back out into the open. Wow. An honor. To have come back to the same home.

Sloshing again. But an open box and a careless knee led me to the spot I’ll never forget. The place where I left my physical body behind and went up. The open box with the green surface with the tiny text. My headstone, as such. Mem2.