There's Not A Thing You Can Say That's True

There's not a thing you can say that's true. Words do not touch. Poetry is the closest we get. But it's a good gift, a gift that allows the silence to almost speak, perhaps long enough for us to pay attention.

Everything with words is proximity. Can you get close? Ok, good.

So everything said is a half-truth, it speaks one aspect of an unfathomably complex, yet distinctly specific, reality.

I'm walking outside. The moon is still full, or near so. Full enough to seem full. I'm walking. The path meets my tread, my bounce is in the rhythm of the street itself. Like enchantment the row of trees calls me down the street, and I walk, entranced. Coyote. I see coyote. Coyote watches me. Who is this black leather-clad walker in the night? Silence. The coyote pitter-patters across the street. It speaks no words. This is its time. It knows the silence, it breathes it in like a prayer, like an invisible ocean of subtle nectar. The substance of the night in its quiet is its mead, and its pitter-patter feet drink up to the full. Who am I, this wanderer in the night? Never mind, good friend, O coyote, tonight Odin is using these legs to walk through the world. It's the Old Man. It just so happens to be my body. I get the gift of him seeing through my eyes, feeling him looking through me.

Yes, of course I'm speaking poetically. There's not a thing you can say that's true. You cannot say Odin exists. You cannot say Odin does not exist. You especially cannot say he does not exist. Well, of course you can say it. But it's not true. It's not true, either, that he does exist. But that is how he exists. Do you see?

If it seems crazy, keep in mind the root of his name means "mad". He's insane. It's his special kind of sanity. It's his way. He cannot be confined within small minds, small concepts, small categories. The more he is denied, the more he exists. The Christians never got that about him. They thought two thousand years of denial --- no. Deny him to your heart's delight. When you deny him, he is even closer.

He's not there at all, you say. Well, yes, that is true, but it isn't. He isn't there, but he is. This is one place where such patent nonsense makes absolute, perfect sense.

I'm walking. The road calls me. I just let the road move my feet. I do none of it. The road and my feet are having a conversation. I just let it be. The wind is blowing.

I'm walking down the street. It is dark. Dark on this street, the trees shading out the mystic moonlight. A skunk walks but five or seven feet form me, in its rippling-rolling skunk shuffle, sniffing the ground, minding its business, never giving me a mind at all. Am I just part of the landscape? Ah, the Old Man is walking through. It just happens to be my body. So I think, at least.

I hop up onto a big stony platform beneath a tree. I suppose it's someone's fancy suburban mailbox. Flatstones piled and cemented high. I'm sitting, letting my feet dangle, the heels of my shoes hitting the stones in a a drum-like rhythm, contemplating the madness of my life, the unbelievable magic and craze of my history. I feel and hear the tree behind and above me. It's like I'm hanging from the tree. It's always happening, that moment. It can be very good.

I'm returning home, this long journey, full of feeling, full of magic, full of tears. It's been an emotional night. It's been a fantastic journey. Reality has shamanically been in the air. Everything has been crystal clear. Each palm frond has been so palm frond, absolutely itself, fabulous. I'm happy and proud to say none of this comes from any drug state. It's being real and authentic, allowing to be emotional, tuning in and letting be.

I'm walking back. I see my car. Naturally, I walk up onto the trunk, onto the roof, down onto the hood. Naturally. I look up at the stars, the canopy of the heavens, the moon. How fabulous that there are protectors. There are protectors who allow all this to be. It may seem they have little concern at times for what goes on down here. Oh, the pettiness, to be sure they have little to do with it. It's your life. Do with it as you will. It's your opportunity. Squabble, squawk, find your passion, do your thing. But they care inasmuch as they keep this world whole, so you may have those experiences. Thank the Gods there are protectors. The protectors are concerned with protecting, concerns far larger than any human could appreciate, jsut to keep this wondrous world alive, to keep it open to possibility, even with all the ill that has entered in. There is still good here to be had. And that good, however little it might be in some times and some places, is still worth preserving. That little good makes the whole effort worthwhile, even with how short it comes of how good it could be, and how good it will be.

There are protectors, and then there are nourishers. Nurturers. Rhythm-binders and rockers. Within the world and about it, keeping it juicy, keeping love's heart pulsing and bounding and beating. Keeping life-force moving and fruitful. The Aesir and Vanir.

There. That's all I wanted to say. I felt it, out on the roof of my car. And it's taken me this many sentences just to say it.