Enlightenment

I decide to climb down the gorge, past the rice paddies and water buffalos, to the rocky canyon where nothing grows. Beautiful day. Clear skies framed by the mountains on either side of the gorge. 

Children run around the square paths formed by earthen walls surrounding the paddies. They throw stones, trying to knock each other into the flooded paddy fields. As I walk by, a rock strikes me in the back. The children laugh.

Beneath the paddy fields is a steep, grassy incline. A twinge in my knees. It’s been a long time since I have been to the bottom. Ages. 

I visit the river below in my thoughts, though. My morning meditations. Nothing bothers me at the bottom of the gorge. My mental retreat. It’s always cool and damp and shadowy. I make my own sunlight down there. 

I grab a large stone for balance and cut my hand on a prickly nettle. The nettle pokes its spiky head out of a crack in the stone. 

I sit down and rest. Not far to go.

I’m bleeding. My back and my knee hurt. I’m out of breath. 

I stand too quickly. Dizzy. The sky is on the ground. I fall. A short fall. I think I broke a toe. 

I get up and consider turning back. I can hear the children laughing. I can hear the rushing river below. I bend down to check on my toe and fall over, hitting my head on a rock. I think it’s shale by the color. The wind and water erode everything to its essence here in the gorge. 

Close now, but dizzy and hurt. Bleeding from the nettle. 

I do a body scan. Minor injuries. I breathe. I notice the breath. Notice the rattle in the breath. I think I swallowed something. A beetle or a pebble. My chest feels congested. Am I climbing or falling?

Strange how you can live in a place and yet rarely visit the bottom of its gorge. People are so comfortable these days.

Three careful steps down toward the river. All rocks now and no grass. 

I have dislocated my knee. This happened to me once on a school bus and the driver, a refugee named Gunther, popped it back in for me. Didn’t even bother to tell my parents about it. I guess it wasn’t a big deal. Not back then.

My kneecap travels around my leg about two inches, straining the ligaments. The knee area begins to swell. I’m afraid of bone fragments in the blood. Clotting. I don’t think I can pop it back in myself.

I fall again, about ten feet, off a small cliff. I splash in about two inches of icy-cold water. The water feels good for a minute, but I soon become cold. My clothes are soaked. I can’t stand. I try to roll toward the shore. 

It’s dark here. The sun and sky of midday feel as far away as the night-time stars. 

Soon, I’m shivering. Soon comes moderate hypothermia. Soon comes the flourishing of foreboding thoughts, like flecks of shale hewn from the consciousness.  

I can’t think straight but that’s OK. 

Whenever I try to think straight, it comes out crooked. 

That’s what everyone says.

They say they can’t understand me.

I am crooked and confusing. 

I am communicating from the bottom of a gorge and I am in pain. Of course you don’t understand me. 

I’ve been here my whole life.

I appear on the surface, but really, I’m here. 

I finally greet my original self after having wandered as a shade above the gorge for a time.  

I believe the kids have started a small rockslide with their childish shenanigans. 

I never had children myself. Too much trouble.

A rock the size of a bitter melon—I’m thinking granite striped with quartz—wrecks my other leg. I can see my fibula straight as a prayer flag. 

The water seems to be rising.

Perhaps I am sliding into the river.

Focus on the breath. Imagine the light in the body. 

The breath and the water and the sky and the rock are all the same. It is all one. Isn’t that religion? 

I’m cold.

I like how my blood curlicues in the shallow water. Looks like clouds. 

If I keep sinking, I’ll find the sky.