Photo by Sanket Deorukhkar on Unsplash Withdrawing to the secret recesses within I find you present. There you are, as you ever were, awaiting my return -- My solitude. You greet me with cheer, though I cannot understand your greeting. What is so happy about being by oneself? Are you mad? Yet the warmth of your fire comforts me, Beckoning me to sit, be still, and just listen to the crackle of the flame on my heart’s own hearth. This presence. My home. Will you hate me if at morning light I set out to search again? Forsaking you for days, weeks, even years on end? Or will you, as always, receive me back with open arms when the journey fails me and I remember that there is none with whom to share this space? Nor could there ever be. I know it now, though of course I will forget: in the end, as at the beginning, I remain utterly, awfully, wonderfully alone.
1 Comment
Andrew Wehrheim
10/30/2021 09:45:17 pm
I've thought of this often. And love the tension it holds with the reality that really "I" am no more different from all other things, or from the all, than a wave is from the ocean. These things both exist at the same time. But one is deeper and more true. We are born alone as a wave rises out from the ocean. And we die alone as a wave crashes back into the ocean. And yet, the whole time the wave was simply the ocean. Never alone. Never apart from the other waves or all the other life hidden within the ocean. Both are true. Life is incredible.
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