Well, Being

I remain here, at the bottom of this well, or at least I think it's the bottom.
No point moving. What is up, what is down?

Some friends have passed by, I hear their voices. Quiet, subdued, as if caught in a soliloquy. For a brief moment the sun flares and light slips down here, only to be halted in its tracks. I imagine green fields and cottages warmed by gentle winter fires. Up above the skies constantly change, in colour and in weight. So much so that I have come to think that the only reality is down here. And didn't the wise man teach : what is, is ? I have become the space I occupy.

Who is to say which life is more real; that one or this , down here. Do I only remember that other, wider life or is this the dream? Aristotle had taught that if one can think the frog then something of his soul passes into the intellect. Perhaps, as in some shamanistic trance, I passed into his body as well.

Life here is nothing but a waiting. What to write? The words have dried up. The patient waiting of a stone, for that light from above; the gathering up of one's thoughts to snatch at the moment when it happens as if all life down here was but a mere shadow play, its time a mere reflection of that unfolded instant. Without that focus would we even have any sense of the passing of time?

But it has been a long time, hasn't it? Here in this vertical column that is a ray from the black sun. The sheer vastness of time collapses into the meaningless. Has a day passed or a year? Is it day or night, summer or winter? Bewildered, we must always remember to look up.

Lying in me, as though it were a white
Stone in the depths of a well, is one
Memory that I cannot, will not, fight:
It is happiness, and it is pain.

Anyone looking straight into my eyes
Could not help seeing it, and could not fail
To become thoughtful, more sad and quiet
Than if he were listening to some tragic tale.

I know the gods changed people into things
Leaving their consciousness alive and free.
To keep alive the wonder of suffering,
You have been metamorphosed into me.
----Anna Akhmatova