Maras leaky promise

Maras leaky promise

A group of people watching a family of ducks walk across a field in the pouring rain. The people sit under a large magnolia tree, and big drops of water gather on the leaves, and when particularly swollen fall through the tree and land on them. With each drops landing they recoil slightly. Pulling away from the impact, their rude invasion onto the flesh. Their brash intrusion into the flow of perception. Pulling away from the impact of life and reality. Pulling away from the water of life as it appears to tear at the bag of skin. Pulling away as it tries to reconcile the life within with the life without.

With each drop a door opening into a universe within. A world of worlds waiting to be explored. But the humans resist the urge to look and instead rebel against the sensation. Resisting its offering with the utmost of their energy, instead fixating themselves on some activity appearing to happen some place called 'out-there'. Out there beyond the edges of the human form, in the rain and cold. The place where they can divert themselves from their feelings of unease. Where they might find peace, or at least distraction. If only for a moment from the immediate pressing weight of life.

The ducks march along, quietly quacking amongst themselves. They talk of their life and happenings, and the other birds quack at them from up in the trees. They quack loudly and confidently, for they have learnt this language and will use it well. They quack loudly, and the call comes as laughter across the fields at night-time.

They laugh and quack and quack and laugh as the ducks fly, struggling to reach the wide open spaces in the sky. They quack and laugh at their long necks and heads stretched out ahead of them. They quack and laugh at the ducks as they land on the grass, stumbling and crashing and falling on their noses. All in a day of duckdom. Waddling off into the bushes. Quack quack, ha ha. But then they find water and set sail into it. Off into the low mists, navigating a course amongst rushes and flaxes and mossy rocks. Not caring whether it rains or is dry. Out in the water they are so very happy. For it is their true and correct place. And with this the birds stop their laughter – for is it not a fine thing ? To walk with your feet on the earth, to travel in comfort and ease on the great ocean, and if it is ones desire, to fly off into the boundless sky.

The humans eyes see the ducks, but their minds, in all of their grandeur, have left this scene in search of lesser things. They find themselves tied up in ever-increasing descriptions of the world. Bogged down in ever increasing manipulation of the world. More shining shackles and prisons to polish. Clever little monuments of knowledge which they can turn into all sorts of useful and useless things, but most of all into money and posessions. That and the curse of power. Things that can be held and things that themselves will hold.

The rain stops shortly, as summers rain so often does. The flowers on the magnolia were big and white and have been out all summer. Over the passage of long days they became crisp and brown. Eventually the wind shakes them and the break-off from the tree and begin their journey back to the earth. The earth itself will not receive them until more water has fallen and softened all things.

The rain becomes a part of the distant past and its soothing effect is almost forgotten. Except for the incessant need for it. The lettuces and roses develop a most forlorn look. The ducks take to their wings and fly off to other places as their advantage determines. For without the water of life falling, all become parched and hungry evermore.

The earth releases some of its soil and it becomes dust that rises into the sunny sky. It drifts around and gets into the eyes. Eventually it settles on all things. There in the dust are found the footprints of those who pass and have passed through. All except for those who can fly. They have gone without a trace, leaving only the slightest of memories held by rocks and mountains and people who saw it all as though in a dream.

The footprints passing through the dust create some unease. Lurching from wherever they began to the next destination and the next and the next. A crooked line going from one horizon to the other. Some amongst them veer off at all manner of awkward angles. Why continue this journey south when the east holds so much promise. And so to any other point of the compass or point in the mind. Always the hope that the future will bring some sort of relief, the great golden grail of happiness. Turn that way or this, for it might be over there. Anyway but here really.

There it is there – the dream palace. Just over the horizon. Just over all horizons. Behind the trees, behind the rocks. Just over there and there and there. Maras laughing face. Almost within our reach it would seem. But not quite – always not quite within reach is the promise. Always someplace other than where we are, always diverting us from where we want to go.

Such is the allure of Maras kind offer. All will be perfect, for in the realm of the imagination nothing need ever go wrong. Or indeed, absolutely everything will go wrong. Depending on which way the imagination might choose to look. Those who choose to imagine the worst usually find that everything goes exactly as imagined. But usually the smooth running dream is the plan, and all is good until something happens that is not in accord with it. Until there is a choice – realise that the ideal is flawed, or that something is wrong with the universe. And so the universe shall be punished. The world collapses and the heart is broken. Every day it happens – life hits a crook in the path and heads off in another direction. For just over the horizon the next great promise reveals itself.

There are those who follow this path again and again until they fail and falter, and tire of strenuously walking to approximately where they are already. Sweating and straining to maintain the facade of being alive, the facade of being human. Walking about in random patterns, eventually falling off the horizons edge. Forgotten as though one never was.

Those who see the futility of it all arm themselves with compassion, garner all of the wisdom that they may, and a good measure of courage. They put aside a bit of good humour, which will serve them well in the hour of their greatest need. Last of all a fearless eye, which will shirkh at nothing. Armed with these , they will brace themselves with endless softness and jump right into the middle of it all. Right into the centre of existance as it appears before us. There at the very heart of it all is maras factory. Based in the middle of the imagination it produces batches of identical situations. Provides all of the scenarios and all of the faces that fit them.

In there amongst it all one might sit as if a mighty rock, and let time pass by until it becomes empty and disappears. Empty, the patterns have nothing to hold onto. Like trying to grasp the sky and clouds and smoke and bubbles. Moment to moment they disappear and the fullsome life is revealed. Moment by moment they reappear in new forms at the ends of our very noses.

Going down to meet them as each one springs up. Sit with me and know me well. Walk with me, swim with me and then fly fly fly. Fly with the ducks as they survey their world. Surveying the world inside, surveying the world outside untils its sharp teeth have become blunt or fallen out. Then walking through the sky, flying through the ocean and swimming in the earth. Each as the moment moves one so.