Running through sand

Part two of Zen and the monk

When the world leaked out, a little bit went this way and a little bit went that way. Nothing could be found any place where it should be. Time was what you could make it, and if you could make it, it just ran out between your fingers like sand.

You couldn’t get anywhere, for there was nowhere to stand, upside down was out, and in was over there squeezing to push on somewhere else between a colour and an indisposition that was slipping and sliding round and round. Light was cracking like ice. Black was like tar then dissolving into tyre tracks that led nowhere. All looked like something, but was only an illusion, a swirling mist metamorphosing to sound in and out of the static.

I ran for it on the ice cricking and cracking under me; sped round a corner that was there, then, just when I wanted a straight line flight plan. I bumped into a man walking his dog. It was my friend with my dog from another lifetime, coming back from that lifetime on an errand that was long forgotten. The lid was off, nothing was what it seemed.

The sky was huge and moving, that made me dance on the sand, and then it pulled us up the hill. We forded a stream that hissed beneath us. Came to a reflection, found it was our very own selves, looking back at us; a mirror we shared but couldn’t understand. So we moved on into a very dark place, couldn’t see anything. We turned around, tried to find a way back. Ghostly lights confused us. The dog ran off and couldn’t be found. It all looked the same, images that wavered but had no substance.

A clock was still ticking, but was meaningless in the place we’d come to. The infusion was a timeless moment that could not be caught as both sides of the circle stared at each other forever. We walked through the sentinels on tiptoe, so careful not to disturb them, and made it to another situation that suddenly came at us, an apparition that gave us both a shock. It just suddenly popped up right in front of us, some gargoyle visage of frightening proportions.

We ran from that one too down a long road that was dusty and hot and dead empty. Behind us we knew there was something we didn’t want to be around so we kept on running. For days we ran and wore out our shoes and our clothes were in rags. We came to the next town but there were no buses and the train didn’t stop there anymore. We hung about the graveyard for a few hours to acclimatise ourselves to all that was going down about us. We got restless after the fifteenth body was lowered below so we decided to carry on.

Monk: “Where was this place? Tell me so I can avoid it!
Zen: “It is a place hardly remembered a dream; past the withered fields; the mud flats are criss-crossed and deep, with fissures and you’ll wobble around on them as you walk along, wondering how far you’d sink if you fell through. Further on, you come to the first heap of old junk, as If left there by party goers from the Titanic; lost stuff from lost people forgotten, not even hungry anymore.

It is all like some crazy garden made by people who don’t care and had no use for it from the start, abandoned, even as they made it. It feels like a place no-one should go to. There is little or no love there; and if you scatter your thoughts about and drop a layer of tears the dried mud will absorb it all and give back nothing. I’m sure that if anything were to sprout there, it would be the most withered weed that no amount of sun could help.
It is the bone dry place I passed through to get here. A place that has no sign-posts, just used dusty thoughts to stumble over that others have discarded before me on their way through the desert.

Monk: “Thank you for telling me about this place. Can it be avoided do you think?”
Zen: “I would have avoided it if I had found another way. It was my way, the one I took to get here. Others have taken this way, but I think there are other ways. There are three deserts; one is the desert of the mind but your heart’s compass can take you through that one. One desert is of the heart and no-one but yourself can get you through that one. The other desert is the physical one and you need a guide for that one as the way is long and it is easy to become lost and perish in the sands.”

Monk: “Please carry on with your tale.”
Zen: “. My journey through that desert, the physical one was long and arduous but my companion was my guide and saw me through to a beautiful ocean where we found a magnificent old hotel beside the ocean and further on was a crazy looking city.
In a garden of song by a statue of a naked young lady was a maze. At the entrance to the maze sat a circular poet who told me the way to go. He said, soon I will become drowsy and lay down to sleep, and a dream would come to me and show me the next step of the journey. I thanked him and went to find a place to rest.
We stopped for dinner near the beautiful abandoned hotel that had many rooms, but my companion left me and went off to pick daisies from the grass beside the ocean. As I pulled out a sandwich, a drunk on the ocean that was at the front of the hotel almost fell off his boat. He looked around to see if anyone had seen him. I looked down at my food as he went off in a huff puffing his cigarette. Left his bottle behind. In the hot sun I began to get tired so I sat under a tree for a while. Felt a spectacular abandon I became lost to.

I dreamed of a room full of lonely prisoners, all strangers who couldn’t find a way out? In a quiet spot a warrior sat by himself waiting with patience, observing, not believing the despair, ready to do what is needed; and when the time comes to escape acts with no doubt and goes straight for the exit. Nothing is lost in the capture; all is gained in the freedom. Patience is a warrior’s friend. Wisdom comes from that experience.
I awoke from this dream to find my companion tying a garland of flowers around my neck. I laughed and pulled her into my arms. We decided to move into the abandoned hotel for a while and rest from our long journey. I tried to make sense of the dream, but felt a note of resistance to what it meant for me.
We camped out in one of the rooms. I didn’t see my companion much during the day as she would be off exploring the other rooms and would come back with tales of a room’s past. One day, a week into our stay there she came into our room wearing an expression of deep thought.

“I have to tell you,” she began. “The gravity of ships is so sad. There is a room here at the end of the hall that used to be a room made of dreams that once saw ships off to sea, where people used to look out of gabled windows as the century turned and watch life passing by, those same windows now rotting and falling out. It’s the most beautiful room with its quiet and sad magic, still proud, raising towers and spires of stories from the dust of its legend.”
“You sound like a poet,” I said. She just laughed and walked off somewhere taking with her the sound of a lonely old room giving off one last sigh.
There was a phone in one of the rooms I didn’t use much, and whenever I passed the door, it would ring. The only other time it would ring was when I was in the bath, but I never answered it from there. It was always someone out there who was lost, calling me up. I’d tell them how to get there. Sometimes I would see a flare far off, and then the phone would ring and I would say: ‘keep going.’ Then they would arrive tired and thirsty and I would show them to one of the rooms.
When one crawled out of the desert just about dead, their tongue like a dried fig rolled in ashes, they didn’t know they’d come to an oasis at first. But after a cool drink was poured down their throat they revived.
Monk: “This seems to be a long tale you are telling. It is time for tea. Come and help me in the kitchen to boil some water and chop some vegetables for dinner. You can carry on with your story there.

Zen: It would be my pleasure. As each day went by and their eyes became unstuck they could see more. They found there was far more there than they could have dreamed of, and in fact they discovered treasures that had stood for so long and were untouched and seemed to have been left just for them, and in fact they were, but how this could be I can’t say, but beggars can’t be choosers, especially thirsty ones. One morning a woman traveller unwrapped a present that revealed her secret self, that self she’d travelled across her whole life to find. There were many secrets in that hotel.

Here is part one https://steemit.com/wisdom/@wales/zen-and-the-monk

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