There is a well behind me. Old. It’s been there before the creation of the world. It’s been there before there were bricks and stones to put around it. It was there before there were any trees out of which wood was extracted and molded to cover it, to protect it, to keep little children from falling off into that darkness; before there was any thirst in the people and before there was any water, dark and silent, that could satiate such thirst.
There is this well.
What did it look like before we had words such as well, water, thirst? Did it look like a swirling of meaning––like the conglomeration of words and thoughts? Or was it a swirling of darkness dancing with a swirling of light, mixing, separating, always together, never ever nullifying one another?
What happened before the division of creation; before the separation of left and right; before the separation of male and female, of joy, and suffering; before life and death were distinct; before the dreaming and the waking became separate worlds?
How did this river, then, move from left to right when there is no left and no right? How did the waters flow? Were they dancing around one another without movement from here to there? Were they just shadows? Was the river and the well then––before the formation of the foundations of the world––one and the same?
And how would one go about crossing this river, I wonder? Would it be enough to sit here, stare at the crossroads, and force my eyes to see beyond the veil of creation; to see everything before me as a thin screen where lights and shadows create the illusion of a world of infinite space and infinite unending manifestation?
Could I at that moment simply see the world for what it is?
A thin membrane of words and hopes…
Seeing all plastered in front of me,
and reaching out not with the vision of the eyes
but the vision of the sensing that exists behind my head.
Reaching beyond the veil.
Seeking for a pathway.
A middle ground.
Seeking the way that you seek your way
in a dark moonless night.
