Rhea
It is the dark month of November. Unseasonable warmth wells up the pale green and weak stems of weeds tangling in my garden. Half life, fruitlessly alive. Inopportune activity bulging the damp soil. A ground of living and rotting. A living coffin, poignant and corrupt.
My dreams are searches for the high and lonely place where the clear wind thrills the grass. The place, like the one that “Frith made, but Fiver found”1 . What is there to search for really? All things and times are always present. Memory makes of the swamp of early life a crystalline tower built of the brick of dreams. The entirety is never absent, the particular is entirely present, the difference is of illusory relevance. When I sleep, the world sleeps, when I dream, when I wake, when I live and die.
This “I” is only a bridge built where none is needed. Sharp, ugly and sore on the soles. Why would river water build a bridge over itself anyway? The entire universe of darkness, warmth, pale-greenness, weeds, gardens, bulging, half life, poignancy, corruption, dreams, clearness, thrilling, memory, places, bricks, towers, of Frith and Fiver, of me and you, is just this Self. This Self like water, flowing; not straight ahead, not backwards, not around, in all directions and none– just flowing.
Her name, among others, is Rhea. Rhea, for just this flows.
Characters from “Watership Down”, by Richard Adams