You are welcome to sit by the fire, its flames dance in the rhythm that aches for freedom inside us, and the rumble of the consuming fuel echoes the debt of time that strikes at us in unrelenting syncopation. You are welcome to sit by the fire, I am telling myself a story. It is not my story. Here it begins.
When you wake up in the morning, you are you, and there is no doubt. When you lay down to sleep at night, you are you, and there is no doubt. The shifts and twists and fabulous contortions that are the trajectories between these two points – namely the domain of the day, that extrapolates the inner loves and fears into manipulation of presence, but also the domain of the night, that refracts all that could be into solipsistic eternities – these go unnoticed. But you think that you notice; what is it that you notice?
I am at the base of the mountain, and the river is an unrelenting stampede. I am at the saddle of the mountain, and the river is an equation graphed between the horizon and the ocean. I am at the peak of the mountain, and I rest upon the clouds that carry this boulder.
One step to the next is an infinitesimal calculus, and the scenery bobs and flickers around its unchanging certainty. Many steps pass, and the forces of memory and analysis collaborate to define novelty. The mind concludes this; something that was once not there, is now there. More steps remain to be passed, and an inspired recursion declares that there is an unknown that is known; just as something that was once not, is, so too something that is not, will be.
But the admission of change is not synonymous with an awareness of the shifting paradigms that form the submersed currents to which it owes the vortexes and vectors of its possibilities.
When you wake up in the morning you may know the ‘you’ that is yourself and the world that is your habitat. When you sleep at night, you may know the ‘you’ that is yourself and the world that is your habitat. You may know these things because they are available to you as points of reference; they will often go unnoticed, overshadowed by the immediacy of the distracting experience and its tautological momentum.
When you are hungry you may know that you are hungry, and you may know that in some places there is food and in some places, there is no food. You may know these things because they are available to you as points of reference against which to measure the shifting topology that is the substrate underlying these fluctuating states of affair. But these things will often go unnoticed, overshadowed by the sensations of desire, and impetus of action, the collision of facts.
When I see both the crashing froth hurrying over opaque waters, and the silent curves and boundaries recessing themselves over obscure landscapes, then I may know that at some times there is a river that is this, and at some times there is a river that is that. I may know these things because they are available to me as points of reference against which to measure the ratios of height and object. But this will often go unnoticed, overshadowed by the sublime aesthetic and the urge to collect (yet not fully collate) appearances. If that is the case, then I will have seen this, and I will have seen this, but I will not have seen the sight that transforms while the river stays still.
You are a dual traveller but you forget the inner path, though you know its landmarks. You are a dual traveller but you forget the outer path, though you know its landmarks.
Let me remind you. Let us step back together.
When we were children we asked each other how long we had been here, noticing fractions of intervals that have long passed the range of calloused sensitivity. “I am 8 and three quarters”, and before that, I was not here, and all these other people have been here longer, they are indigenous to this place, but I have only just arrived, I am not from here. Remember when you were not from here?
We travel an outer world. Once we were not here. Now we are here. Now there are oceans and there are trees and there are rivers that wind their ways past sight, and bring closer an ever distant exhalation and precipitation. To be in this world is to be at an ocean, and now at a tree, and now standing in the midst of ever-changing waters.
You came from a place without these things, and now they are available for your traveller
We travel the paths of an outer world. Once we were in a place to which these paths will never join again, and now they can never depart our feet (except once). Now there are paths on the ocean, and paths that grow trees, and paths that are only a state of metamorphosis.
Did you forget the paths between the places? These are places too, but they are not places too. Can you see them?
We travel in an inner world. Once we were not here. The geography of this landscape struggles against words. Now there are images and feelings, and thoughts that shoot off like fireworks painting chain-reactions and ladders against an invisible sky.
You came from a place without these things, and now they are available to your journey.
We travel the paths of an inner world. These are places too, but they are not places too. Can you see them?
When I wake up I know that I am I. I am the wooden floor and black chair, and a silver screen painted in particles and calculated by them too. I am also the center of a central station, tracks leading off by gossamer threads of possibility ready to be ignored or adopted. Here is a track that leads to the kitchen, it is me too. Here is a track, labyrinthine, that skirts around a business and economy and leads to markets and new wooden floors and new black chairs and new silver screens; this is me too.
The trajectories of time spread across as many axes as its points. Along one scale I am here. Along another I am on this road. These are the medium of a traveller who was not here, but is here now.
When I go to sleep I know that I am I. I am the feeling swimming in my chest, and the sentence appearing and disappearing (unless exposed or remembered), and the identity that knows these things to be innate. I am also the singularity whose wells of gravitation and spooky attraction sing geometries proving possibilities ready to be adopted or ignored. Here is a lens that focuses a memory from childhood, it is me too. Here is another that distorts by strange quanta of displacement, passing by cross-currents of rejection and attraction, to a paradigm that casts its shadow redefining an inspiration; this is me too.
The traveller is the journey, and the journey is a pantheon of paths and milestones, but really both and really neither. The story is over, the fire long burnt, and a new dawn beckons in this present moment. Depart, safe travels. Remember where you came from, and look at where you’re walking.
