i.
there, in the middle of infinite
space and infinite energy, grows
a membrane, elastic, extensible,
pliant yet definite, bounded. it
is skin, and all the things inside
(but not the mind, oh not infinite mind)
the skin and organism of embodied
perspective, stretched taut, the
rebounding surface on which the
resounding beat of infinite space
and infinite energy echos and plays:
as above so below; as below, above.
this membrane is the stage of love.
the allegory of the skin may be opaque,
may take some explanation, for those
who have firm brain-based metaphysics,
who have never dreamed or been elated
or traveled out-of-body or relegated
all these to endocrine neurochemistries
-those who pooh-pooh and psshaw, in
peer review literature, such non
reductionist holistic mysticism.
too bad for them. now must not be
their time to see these words, read
these lines, as in the story of the
pearls and swines. but those who have
the taste, let them savor the wines.
where was i? oh yes: here, in the jetsam
and detritus, accreting on this shrieking wineskin --
but that's no way to tell it now, no way to
flesh out the intimations of the sketch,
with hard words like detritus and shriek,
value-laden words already; no way to speak.
ii.
my skin does not close around me with a zipper down
back and all my viscera held in taut like sausages;
of course it does in gray's anatomy, and appears to
physiologically, but it doesn't around me. it
stretches out majestically, there in the void, poised
between infinite space and infinite energy on
the one side, and on the other the same - their
opposition beating time, striking flame.
as above so below, they cultivate who know;
as below so above, sowing sage, tilling love.
i left my body once and toyed and played
with dear ones there in infinite space
around an incomprehensibly mammoth tree,
a great axis of asymmetry, towering infinitely
in the great space, we were joyful.
it was like . . . recess -- a place so
primordially bright i have to remember
it inverted, dim -- where we did not run and jump,
wanting bodies, but did the discarnate equivalent,
childish and laughed like summer sunlight on water,
then we -- i misspoke above, i never did leave
my body, i, holding that membrane in place
'tween infinite energy and infinite space; 'twas
not i, who left my body, somewhat more like we,
swung down from that membrane deep into infinity --
then, recess was over and we (the we of me and
all the other dear ones) still laughing, moved
through the tree at what seemed fantastic speed!
we were a'rush through the archetypal tunnel,
suffused in light, with no end in sight but branches
breaking out to every side as we sped by.
curious, i turned my attention to one side, espying
through one the world outside, where my embodied eyes
gaped. then my attention fused; the dear ones, the we,
rushing on into infinite space behind my attention,
while the surface of my skin, outside and in, squeezed
like athletic tape being pulled off in reverse
until i was wrapped tight up in my body again. . .
iii.
key to me is to see that the tree and infinite
energy and the infinite space remain; somewhere deep,
behind my attention (which i roughly locate
at the front of my brain) i hear their laughter,
rising from within, from the infinite energy
and infinite space on that side of my skin.
and on this side, the commonly conceived outside of my skin?
here it's the simple empirical infinities of physics
and the cosmos, all the expanded universe, pressing in.
well, that's the allegory on a half shell for you,
but there remains so much to say, about the membrane
of embodied perspective, about the heave and play
of the infinite energies and spaces held at bay.
the kingdom of heaven is learning the infinities within,
the jewel of the lotus, philosopher's stone, home:
as below so above, as above below; they love who know.
of course i misspoke again above to suggest that
i was, in any way at all, or am now even in capacity
of humble narrator, as i misspeak still to speak at
all of my particularity. i am not. i am not in this skin,
nor this skin itself, nor its brain, organs, its
perceptions, pain, ambition, memories. i am not
these, though oft' confounded by these to believe it. sure,
the narrative capacity inheres in tongue and breath and larynx
and in the linguistic historicity presumed to reside in memory,
which is grossly equated to mind and thence usually brain.
to speak metaphysically of me and my is to lie yet again.
who speaks? out in the cosmos, this side of skin
the speaker seems constrained in sin, contained
in skin, separated from the outside world in
identity-bearing personality. under that
skin, when you open it up and let the
cosmos in, internal organs, driving anatomy,
in the cosmos, and of the cosmos. all leatherbound
actions in the world depend on that
skin pressing out against the cosmos. out
here i seem a meat machine, a bag of air and
personality, sharing this bounded end
of universal infinity with other such
bags and the things we can define. yet,
for all we probe the brain, and strain
to plumb the heart, we cannot find the mind.
iv.
posit two beings upon a firey mountaintop,
the first a bag of air and personality, yoked
to the imperatives of ego and biology, the
other, unreacting awareness, dwelling at the
friction point where being meets world, in awe.
as the fire rages closer through the trees
the first, gibbering, flees in fear, while the
other exclaims in awe, even here, amid the roar
of flames, the majesty of being reigns! two iambi:
this i am of air and that i am of awe. says the
latter, not this at all, even here i am that.
but fleeing i am of air didn't hear, so
no one carried this wisdom back.
the friction point, aye, there's the rub! where
being meets world at the surface, there lies
the thing called i, residing in the habits
of the mind, of the membrane stretched, of time.
it seems that i am within my corporeal skin, as
in deed the thing that thinks it is i am, but
this is a sham, moldering on a misconception
of the body's world, of infinity stretching out
in all directions from where i am, inside.
a subtle misconception, susceptible to correction
upon reflection, for certainly infinity does
stretch out from here across the cardinal
directions into the vast cosmos, but not exclusively
and not from where i am inside, for the infinite
energy and infinite space of the cosmos reels and
plays against the skin, is seeking equilibrium with
the infinite space and infinite energy within.
a diffusion gradient then, i am, a contingent
arrangement of channels between these infinities
at best. my habits of perception, my perspective.
but these are just the parts of mind that stick
to the skin, that i conceive of as myself and so
constrain my being in - all that i am - but not
all of mind, which mind, pressing through the portion
of the membrane i identify, and pressing through
that portion which you do, and through all contiguous
sentient entities, is infinite and common as the cosmos.