by Jack
Motivations come and go like waves, washing me lifeless and breathless over the rocks; over and back again. In the deepest recess of memory I have an inkling of light. A suggestion, or a hint, of love. Little else. Once, when I was riding across New Mexico, I had an illumination: Satori. And I’d had them before, great ones and small. But this one was different, because this one, it seemed clear to me, came of itself and not as the sublime result of some other contingent phenomenon. Here, in the midst of the vast alkaline waste, chanced an arrival. Like all the friends you ever loved and lost come walking in the front door with smiles on their faces and music in their voices. And it’s just like you’re home for the holidays. Home from the awful wars. And telling fabulous stories that have no basis in fact, but thrilling the hearts of all those assembled. Of sharing that blissful moment on the porch in the dark with all the crickets chirping. Of peace on earth.
Consider, here, a moment, how truly sacred such states of ecstasy are. Think, for a moment, how privileged we are as animals, to enjoy such happiness, if just for a moment’s time. To feel one’s senses opening up: fears and defenses exploding like a fiery ball out to light the firmament, while all sanguine atoms bombard your very fiber. And for a moment, issues of life or death, of profit or loss, die completely away and you see a glistening kernel of objective truth. And even the rocks are vibrating; everything—you, the terrain, the sun, the sky—everything is flashing, or blazing or gleaming; babbling harmonious noise. Truth, at such times, shows itself as a little girl, laughing and rolling in new-mown summer grass.
This, on the occasion of finding a thistle, wedged last October into the pleats of one’s wool slacks. And holding it up to the light, to examine it, seeing two thousand individually barbed seed cases, clumped perfectly together. Nature’s thistle, sharp missile of genetic pioneers. Hard-shelled shuttles across time and space, starships from one generation to the next. I turned to Neal and I said:
“Plant a seed and save the future.”
He took the thistle and crushed it to powder between thumb and knuckle. “Ain’t gonna be no future, pard’,” he said grinning. “Just one long commercial.”