Life and Fantasy

On the window sill, I saw a wasp, yellow and black-striped, translucent-winged, lying on its side.

Its dead body had reverted to a curled fetal position, it was a worker that, after carrying out its share for the stock, saw its time elapsed and let life ebb from its limbs without protest. It lowered its head, gathered in its abdomen, accepting, complying, playing the game of existing to the very end.

Near the path I take to go home, I saw a yellow flower, limp, its petals loosened, its head bending toward the earth, seeking to lay its averted crown on the field where all the flowers lie in the end.

It did its part in the scheme of being, took in sunshine, soaked in light, gave of its most precious substance, doing what it was meant to do.

Now the cycle has closed. What held it up slowly left it, and it has become prey to gravity, acquiescing, giving in to the decline of its months of beauty, reentering the realm of grayness.

I meet many workers as I walk through life. Some do remind me of the wasp.

Their body has lost its arrow-straight tension, their back is rounded, the forces of gravity begin to prevail.

There is a reverting to the foetality of the unborn.

Most will slide unnoticed into that compacting of their somatic structures, the weighing down of their corporeal being and of their minds as well.

They accept the signs, comply with the portents that signify the coming end in the game of living.

I meet declining beauty, where youth hides more and more behind a facade of grief, resignation, regret. I see many heads that ceased looking straight ahead, seeking a hold on the earth which in due time will open to reabsorb them.

They act beaten, limp with the knowledge of their impending passing, eyes sparkling only at intervals any more, awaiting the extinguishing inherent to the transition, souls reflecting in the pool of dimming light.

On the way to the house I live in, I walk slowly, aware of the waning of my strength.

I still carry out what my stock expects of me, turn my vision toward the now autumnal sun. But the days are growing shorter and the years keep dwindling.

T h e b u t t e r f l y

Against the background scenery of my thinking, I keep brandishing intuitive tools.

Yet I have not so far been able to break out of my prison! I remain captive of that shell that biology provided me with. I am a sort of caparaconed knight, a chitinous beetle, a turtle in its house!

That brings to my mind an experience that I had and which has remained unforgettable to me.

Under anesthesia on the table of the surgeon, I was just about to slip under. Abruptly it was like I was truly free, my awareness remained crystal-clear, my mind was without shackles, I was not aware of any restraining obligation or pressing duty toward anybody or anything.

All of a sudden, I sensed that I was being forced back into something I just succeeded in overcoming, into a state I just barely escaped from, a gaol I felt to be abhorrent all along.

I fluttered about, fighting desperately to hold on to my just recently regained freedom.

I kept encountering barriers in every direction. I was on the verge of asphyxiating, of suffocating. I increased my efforts, pushed against the walls that were holding me tighter by the moment with frenetic energy, I fought against the box, the shell, the carapace.

I felt like the butterfly that had been netted and found itself imprisoned in a small, airless container, a trap, inescapable.

I tried every artifice I could mobilize, increasing my resistance, fully aware that it was a struggle for survival, because it was that

I was dying.

Reaching me from some far-away realm, a voice said: stop, stay quiet, don’t move.

A nurse or the attending physician had noticed me moving and was admonishing me not to endanger myself!

Then I was back in my body, and this awakening was like a reverse death-transition. My soul was back in my soma, subdued, subjugated.

Once more I was back in the world of dimensions, of measurable reality.

I have reflected often about that experience and I see it now as proof of what I am: a free Essence caught in its own web, a spirit boxed-in by Creation.

I seek to escape, in detestation of the Earth-boundaries of my human status.