A self is a heavy burden
to carry with you
across the desert.
Despite being invisible
and weightless in principle,
it is the often overlooked,
but necessary battery
of accoutrements
that are required to
render the self
manifest and functional
that take their toll.
There is the steamer trunk
full of historical data, for instance,
with its rather robust
coefficient of sliding friction
across the hot sand–
the modern take on an old classic,
a ballistic nylon upholstered
carbon fiber case
with kevlar bottom
and shattered mounts
where the useless spindled wheels
lopped off in the last existential crisis
once resided. The trunk
contains all of the
maps, slides, instruction manuals,
theory books, server racks,
fold-out solar panels,
instrumentation, servo motors,
coiled wires, oscillators,
piezoelectric crystals,
spy glasses,
solar flare almanacs,
pirated algorithms,
notes to self by self,
torn out journal articles,
scribbled judgments, conclusions,
and prognostications that
the self has accumulated
over time.
Without those,
the leather bound
book of procedures
with the locking gold clasp–
procedures such as the
Instructions for
Masking the Scents
of Your Passage
From Skulking Bands
of Rabid Coyotes, or
The Stepwise Chymical
Reactions Used in the Production
of Rattlesnake Anti-Venom–
would be all but useless.
And without that book, well…
as the rules of a self dictate,
all would be lost.
It is the self, after all,
who takes care of things–
keeps track of how many steps
are taken in a day,
weighs the count against
your physical capabilities
and the weight of what
lies ahead, understands
the quantity of calories
required to facilitate
your continued progress,
maintains the log
of the distance
already covered.
(If only the book
contained a procedure
for determining
the distance remaining…)
A self is a heavy burden
to carry with you
in such a place,
too much, in fact–
an assurance of failure,
notwithstanding the fact
it’s sole stated purpose
is to the contrary.
What remains
when the self is discarded
is a field of experience
consisting of a desert, a being,
and a need that has been
released from its shell.
The being and the desert
will feel the need and respond.
Stars will feel the need
and twinkle to life in the skies above,
raining ten thousand years
of possibilities upon the
being and the desert.
The earth below the desert
will feel the need
and place those possibilities
in her timeless womb.
At dawn, the being will walk
over the next rise
to find the stone
placed there by the desert.
The being will tap
on the stone
and the stone
will yield water
from the earth.
Neither the being
nor the desert
nor the water
nor the stars
nor the earth
will think of this
as a sign
of worthiness,
or a product of chance,
for it takes
a self to entertain
that sort of interpretation,
and there are none to be found.
Instead,
there will be
a field of experience
consisting of a desert, an earth,
a being, a stone, the stars, water,
a bird,
and a need.
It is not hard
to imagine what happens next,
for this is how it began
and always will be.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
