Unseemly

It seems that I have seen the hot dancing summer sun. He danced shamelessly behind shimmering rainbow veils, one after another lifting only to tease into sight the next veil. No woman has ever danced more lasciviously, not Salome, not the succubi. Neither has any man, not David in front of the ark of the covenant, nor Bruno flickering on cinematic screens, nor any he/she tribal shaman in jungles or on the stages of strip clubs.

And as I watched, transfixed and powerless, he burned me, branded me, bandied me, sealing me with an impression of his mystery as afterimage, retinal memory. Would I ever see anything again? Did the caveat echo in my mind's ear too late? "Do not look directly at the sun." How stupid am I? Even children know this.

Only the ordinary peripheral visual images remained, dwarfed by a central vacuole of infinitely receding light. Do birds see like this, with their eyes on the sides of their heads, right and left worlds as unimpressive dichotomy flanking the centrally compelling possible?

A memory emerges: I am child again, in an urban back street unpaved alley. There are lilac bushes growing nearby. I only smell them, for my eyes can only look down. In front of me is a rain puddle, the site of my first ship's sailings. Infinitely deep is she, this ocean newly created by the afternoon summer rain. She is calm at her surface and simultaneously turbulent in her depths. Into her ever-swallowing blackness he comes: the Sun. I cannot look away. How can he be so black and yet so bright? How can he be so strong, with the ripple of muscles cut deep, incised, yet dance weightlessly on the less than single celled thickness of the water's surface?

If it is unseemly for a child to know this, it is less seemly for an adult.

For we both worried, this little one and the I that is some sort of extension in time of this little one. We worried that we would never see again. At least not what others saw. We would have to pretend. We would have to shift our heads the way birds do when they confront the pragmatic needs of food and defense.

There would be infinite space between ourselves and our mothers, an unnegotiably broken seam. We would eventually stop trying to translate our experiences into the lingua franca. But before that, we would cry oceans to fill holes so we could sail across. And in the crossing, over and over, there would be a looking perfectly at the profound perfection of wisdom, a looking perfectly at the emptiness of inherent existence.

And this vision would not belong to anyone. Not even the risen sun.

I know now that it only seems that this perfection of vision rises out of the sun. My me-child saw only that sun exploding into worlds, farming out energy that seemed to become shaped in various fleeting forms.

And the sun was credited with the accomplishment of this spectacular spectacle, with the dancing that is dancing into existence.

But as Daedalus mourned for Icarus, as David mourned his son Absalom, wishing for his own death if only his son could live again, as Father must mourn for Son, whether perfect or prodigal, I, too, mourn.

In my mind's eye, the sun has now imploded, the site of creation has shifted. The final rainbow veil is in my hand. The existential imperative, the only real decision, calls out in an unseemly stridency of passion.

The Sun asks me if I am ready yet.

Are you serious about our rendezvous? Are you ready for our docking mission? Or will you flee again into the anesthetized ostensible safety of the peripheral? Only you can pull away the last veil. Only you can allow me to create. You, yourself, are the space into which I pour myself. You are the void, the emptiness, into which I emerge.

It is unseemly for me to refuse. It is unseemly for me to accept. I can only hold the veil, sailing across tear oceans brightened by the brightness which is destroyed retina, loving it all, dichotomous periphery and ecstatic vision, poised yet already gone.

— Rx is the FloridaW eekly muse who hopes to inspire profound mutiny in all those who care to read. Our Rx ma y be wearing a pir ate cloak of in visibility, but emanating fr om within this shado w is hope that readers will feel free to respond. Who kno ws: You may e ven inspir e the muse. Make contact if you dare.