I pulsed the backwards magnets of my hands. The dense feeling was faint at first. The longer I held it, the stronger it became. I tried to see the ball of energy. I saw what looked like the distortion brought on by heat waves, but it might have been my eyes tricking me. But the sensation was real.
“There is tingling,” exhaled Puddle. “There is warmth. I see it with my eyes that open in a lucid dream. I see it with my eyes that match the ears with which I can hear you. It is difficult to stay focused on that particular plane of sensation, just like staying lucid in a dream. My eyes feel like they are trying to peer through the cover of a book to examine a specific page.”
Pine swayed encouragingly, “Yes, you are beginning to See.”
The ball of energy I held between my palms was like warm taffy. It stretched and skewed as I moved my hands. My eyes didn’t see it so much as my hands felt it. My mind questioned what my eyes questioned, so I told myself to just go with the sensation in my hands. I felt I was at the edge of understanding a world that was happening alongside all other worlds simultaneously.
I wondered what I would leave behind if I chose to enter this world further. The energy was real. I flashed on school. I would leave behind the option of connecting with a lot of people. Who would accept me as a person who sits among trees, exploring energetic sensations in my palms? Well. I had already left that world, and wasn’t sure I could get back. Even if I could get back physically, I wasn’t sure I could return metaphysically.
Pine said, “You can make this ball of energy strong and bright. However, it can be too strong to check whether the flow of energy in your body is smooth or impeded. If it is too strong, it will overpower what you’re looking for.”
I let the sensation between my palms grow dim.
Pine continued, “Place this sphere of energy you’ve gathered in one hand. Hold it like a baby bird. Bounce it in your palm. Toss it into the air, and catch it. Notice how it may leave something of a trail behind, though that trail catches up.”
I turned one palm skyward and lifted the other away. It felt like invisible taffy stretching, then globbing into an orb again, once my retreating palm was far enough away.
Pine continued, “Take both hands away. Let the orb disconnect from your palm and become a shape. Use your orb to scan yourself from your canopy to your roots. Use intention to move it around. Concentrate on any area where your energy ball pauses. Let it tell you what it finds. Let it be a lens into your body. Let it heal you.”
The orb wouldn’t disconnect from my palm. I lowered my hand a bit and closed my fingers. That helped. The orb of energy hovered in front of my face.
I felt it waiting. More accurately, I felt it existing. It was a piece of something too old to wait. Waiting wasn’t even a concept to it anymore. This energy had outgrown waiting so long ago that universes were born and died in its wake. It existed, and let me hold it. The respect it gave was the kind that validated all things everywhere, because all things came from somewhere. Everything had its story. It took the big picture of eternity into account. It was a little playful, too.
My orb became a turtle, though I could not exactly see it. It had the slow, shelled, sturdy essence of a turtle. It sniffed around my skull, and brought my awareness to muscles I didn’t know were tensed as it began to sink. I relaxed.
The orb turtle stared into my eyes, and nodded in a way that said everything was going to be okay. Let free your worries. Love being alive. Bask in the light that life creates, because why not. Sure difficulties abound, but you get to be alive for this little instant in timelessness. Bask in your body. Let free your worries, and feel your feelings because they tell you secrets about your insides.
My energy turtle sunk lower, and breathed on my throat. I felt a lightness, and wanted to sing. It breathed on my heart, and I felt love radiating. It paused. My heart hurt, but not in a physical way. It breathed into old pains, and loved them away. My eyes filled with the kind of tears that heal.
The turtle continued to drop.
It breathed on my stomach, and I felt a wellspring of energy release. My whole body wanted to dance. It breathed a breath of creativity that orbited my being with potent potential. My turtle breathed once more, and ended its journey as it reached the ground. I felt connected to everything near and far. All was kin and kith. The soil was more solid than it had ever been, and I felt its consciousness. I felt how it gave strength to all it held. I felt its age, and wisdom. And even though I felt the solid ground, I felt its empty space. I felt the space between its atoms and electrons, and felt the Mystery of all the forces known and unknown.
An invisible rainbow from below the ground grew skyward as my energy turtle spread out and sunk deeper, like rainwater. The universe felt full of color. I loved how color was the perception my eyes gave to certain wavelengths of light. There was nothing objective about color being colorful, but wavelengths were wavelengths. Those wavelengths had tangible consequences, like photosynthesis. The rainbow that sprung from my turtle concentrated around my body.
Red, the color of a ripe sunset, smoldered low, as roots reaching to the center of the planet. Higher up, a belt of orange twinkled in calendula glory. Yellow celestial stars circled my center, and radiated energy up to my emerald lotus heart. The green flowed out toward my fingertips. Continuing upwards, the deep blue of an empty autumn sky enveloped the wind paths of my throat. A violet triforce extended from my forehead, and a white honeysuckle arched from my mind to kiss the last rays of the setting sun that reached through the forest.
I looked toward Puddle. His face was peaceful. He was busy feeling things and experimenting with what the trees had told us. For a moment I wondered what exactly he was experiencing, then turned back to reflect on what I had felt. I thought about what people at school would say if I told them about this experience.
Nervousness rose up my spine, and filled me with doubt. I would be ridiculed. I began to feel heavy and cringed inwardly, while shutting out this new understanding. I shook my head, and became present in my body once more. I had left that world. I was glad I was far from all the mindless taunts. The nervousness that snuck in my spine dissipated on the early evening breeze. For now I was here. Here I was to learn, without the boundaries of others’ expectations and limitations.
I wanted to learn more. The trees had much to teach. I knew I would have to be patient with myself. There was no rushing eternal energy. I felt like we were experimenting with what I already knew well before birth, and would know fully again after I died. Somehow, in this middle land of living life, I had forgotten.
Was what I was feeling my own energy? Was I borrowing it? Was I, myself, the part that looked like matter, merely a pinch of concentrated energy from the whole spectrum? Was I the universe experiencing itself, or expressing itself? Or both?
Puddle and I looked at each other. He had finished scanning himself, too. He looked more at peace than I had seen him yet, and he always looked at peace.
Pine said, “Now scoot closer, saplings. Hold your hands toward each other, and place your palms together a pinecone's width away. Feel the circuit of your energies together. Can you feel which hand the energy enters, and which one it leaves? Try reversing it. Play. Rejoice in this healing power. You’re awakening what you’ve always had. Practice and feel your connection with the universes.”
Puddle and I sat face to face, knee to knee. I gazed into his eyes. He gazed back into mine. We did not squirm or smile. Our atmosphere was neither serious nor whimsical. We created a bubble of serenity, of sincerity, with our minds, hearts, facial, and body positions. Time evaporated from our bubble.
We faced our palms toward each other. Our hands were gears. When one moved, the other was compelled to action as well. We looked like we were going to play a clapping game, like the ones I loved in grade school. Yet, our motions were slow. We moved our palms from vertical to horizontal. We paused with our left palms facing the sky, and our rights facing the ground.
I’m not sur
e when I first felt the river of energy flow through us. It started as a quiet creek. We were a circuit. The energy flowed into my left palm and out of my right. My eyes had been watching our hands, and I returned them to Puddle’s gaze just as he returned his eyes to mine. He made a twisty nod that I took to mean, let’s reverse this now. I nodded.
It was as if the knowledge had always been there. Puddle and I practiced remembering.
Our flow stopped, and seemed to get a little messy. It took a moment for our intentions and the flow of energy to match up again, which resulted in what felt like tiny swirls, like eddies in the ocean. Eddies in the ocean caused nutrients from the deep cold water to rise. I wondered if our energy eddies stirred up ideas or emotions. Maybe they stirred inspiration. Inspiration was nutritious for the soul.
The gears of our hands moved again, and they faced each other vertically. We pulsed our palms together and apart. The air between our hands felt dense.
Our palms touched. A spark of tiny lightening, like the kind that happens after petting a cat on a fuzzy rug during a dry day and then get too close to its ear tips, reverberated through our hands. It was too much. My head swirled with ocean eddies. I had to break the contact and regroup myself.
I put my palms together, and bowed my head to Puddle to thank him for this experience. He did the same. We sat in our serene bubble for a moment to let our bodies infuse with this new knowledge. A shift happened. We needed a quiet moment to adjust.
*~*
The cat lolled on the windowsill in the confidently content way only felines can accomplish. With his expression, he artfully convinced the couple that he was really bored, though he listened to everything with the intensity of a dragon slumbering on its pile of pilfered gratuities. Nothing moved unnoticed, and no word was uttered that went unheard. His ears danced to the drum of the tip of his tail, as it silently counted time to the bird chirps outside the window.
“We should go to Veorda, dear,” said one in an elegant it’s- your- choice- though- I’ve- already- made- up- my- mind voice. “The children will want to socialize. We have been lax in attending Festival for far too long.”
“Yes, but we have worries here,” the other replied in a steady you’re- right- and- I- could- sure- go- for- a- vacation- anyway voice.
“Enta always has issues that could use our attention, but nothing that will miss us beyond the point of desperation. They will take care of themselves while we are away,” the first replied, correct, while shaking its white, papery branches so all the leaves fell into place. Trees had fairly straightforward ways to deal with their hair.
The esteemed pair understood their fellow citizens. They endeavored toward mutualistic relationships in their society, wherein everyone that they oversaw benefitted. Results in their groves supported their work. They worked beside the other inhabitants, and listened to their needs, cares, fears, and joys. Their position was that their subjects would align their actions if they were shown trust and respect. They encouraged sincerity of the heart, supported by the fact that their community had very few rules. They saw rules as ideas with inherent loopholes.
Naturally, there were ones for whom rules were made. Those ones sought to benefit at another’s expense. They would find the loopholes regardless. They had reasons for their parasitic attitudes, though. They had unmet needs, or specific fears. Those roots were examined, rather than rules. They were healed, rather than punished.
Their society had priorities.
They valued both similarities and differences, and supported a root system of interdependence. Each creature had beautiful abilities to contribute, and they found their abilities by following their curiosities. Some displayed their skills during planting or harvest, and some during the more tranquil periods.
They lived at the mercy of a merciful cycle. Time went about as visibly as the turning seasons. That was time’s habit. Their main focus was to listen to the flow of time, of which they had plenty. And, if they ran out of time, it would simply come back around in its annual cycle.
Like many planets, Enta cycled between periods of rest and periods of action. They enjoyed a time of rest, reflection, and planning between harvest and planting. They enjoyed a time of rest, reflection, and maintenance between planting and harvest. And they enjoyed the action-packed periods of planting and harvest.
The reluctant speaker relented, “You are correct. Enta will be okay if we leave now. And Hawthorn’s invitation sounded like they need as much insight as possible. Our people know what they are doing.”
“We will return with gifts of inspiration,” said the willing one. “The saturated atmosphere created during Festival lingers all the way home, and longer. We can utilize the residual inspiration for the Feast of the Harvest Moon.”
“My favorite time of year,” reminisced the relented one. “Remember the year when the rains poured so late that we had to postpone the Harvest until they moved on, or our steps would compact the soil too much?”
“Yes,” the other beamed. “The drops were huge and warmed by the season, and were perfect for conducting a late Rain Ball. Then, all of the animals in the kingdom stayed to help harvest because we had to hurry, else the bounty would have become too ripe. What a feast followed!”
“And the performances,” added the other. “Oh their power in the name of that harvest was great. The ducks sang the most intricate song. What vocals! And the squirrels with their acrobatics. They hopped the most dangerous distances. The salamanders even let us watch their fire dancing, a rare sight indeed.”
The cat curled his whiskers in fearsome, benevolent remembrance for the mice he watched with their miniature hula-hoops and juggling seeds. He looked upon the busking mice as more than meals or playthings. He had been fascinated at their skill with centripetal force, and their ability to hoop dance to the music of the turtles and snakes, who drummed, strummed, and rattled a wild, then slow, then wild oscillating sonata for the stars.
“Then it is settled,” one voiced the decision. “We will go to Veorda. I’ll go tell our saplings.”
*~*
“Perhaps,” I pondered, as Veorda’s sun and moon played their slow sassy game of switch it up, “perhaps we knew how to work with energy more as children, but forgot because we were told that we were pretending. Sometimes I meant to pretend. But sometimes there were things I could not see, but could feel. Those things liked hidden places. They were scary because I didn’t know what they were. I never felt that they wanted to hurt me, though. I was told it was my imagination. What if they were real?”
Puddle asked, “What if their feelings were hurt by hearing that others thought they were fake?”
“More than just squirrels, birds, and gravity knock twigs and cones from our boughs,” said a Pine with the ominous air of someone who Knew.
We were walking with the Pines to their camp. The Pine clan was staying near the Apple clan upriver because they enjoyed similar soil, but the Pines generally slept higher along the ridge. They had made us promises of apple pasta with pastries to follow.
Puddle hummed at me and formed his memory into words, “I used to astral project myself before I knew what it meant or that it existed. I was so young. I thought I got some sort of fever right before falling asleep every night, and hallucinated somersaulting in circles near the ceiling. I thought it was normal, so I told no one until I forgot how.”
“It is too difficult to remember the skills we were born with once we let them atrophy. It’s nothing like riding a bike,” I sighed a theatrical sigh.
“Riding a bike is strange to us,” said Pine, “but we can relate to your plight. We know forgetting. We experienced a mass extinction when the sun was younger, the moon was closer, and the spin of our world was faster. The land felt fire and anger, and destroyed itself. Our oldest roots burned away. Ancient knowledge was lost like scattered raindrops on a hot day. The rocks remember best, though even they have morphed into different rocks throughout the eons. Rowan tells that tale best.”
>
The Pine’s words made me think of all that had been lost from my planet, if I could still call Earth my planet. How many artifacts were destroyed from fire and anger, or neglect? Each artifact told us about our human condition at a certain time, or at least the person’s condition who created the artifact. Each held a story. What were the stories that compelled the person to make that thing, or think that idea? Did the stories often die with their creators, or could the creator bring the story to the next world? Did the story itself create the creator because the story wanted to be told, and needed a teller?
My quixotic facet was sad for the beauty destroyed. Most artifacts went into the void of careless oblivion. Someone’s effort and energy, forgotten and rotting in the swamps of time. Part of me was sad about the lost artifacts because they were like moments of eternity that broke. They were reminders of the constant cycle of birth and death, creation and destruction. Sometimes too many memories crowded each other out, and some needed to go the way of oblivion. Some needed to be composted.
Somberness walked over and sat on top of the joy I felt earlier. I did not mind. Both emotions were life, and both had their places. I made room for all the emotions in the guest house of my existence, and thanked Rumi for his artifacts of poetry.
Pine spoke, “Here, we come upon the Cedar camp. They live by and large in silence, listening to the air that was here before life, and to the water. They listen for lost stories in the elements. The land remembers, but many memories have been buried. Weather wears memories away, and erosion deposits layers of contemplation. Much excavation is needed to resurface some memories. Fire itself has little memory, and is more concerned with moving on. The wind and rain remember, though trying to hear all of their stories takes ages. Each breath, each drop carries a tale. Ahoy, Cedar!”
“Hello, friends,” spoke the serenity of the Cedar grove. Their voice was smooth, clear, and quiet as dew on a yarrow flower. “How fares your festivities?”
Puddle: A Tale for the Curious Page 8