CRADLE OF THE WORLD
They were young and poor and much in love; and what they lacked in material things, they accounted for in dreams so that, in poverty of possessions, they lived more richly than many who seemed to have it all.
Entering into dreams—traveling as they called it—they walked together the four block crossings and one right turn to city library’s rest, free and waiting escape for any and all who lent their minds in openness to its offerings. In corners easily forgotten and readily lost to others, they sat and sometimes lain on sofas as they turned through pages of old National Geographics and imagined places they’d never known but dreamed to someday to see.
At night, in ground apartment of neighborhood where doors kept locked (even, and especially, when at home) they slept with window drawn so that world and life would not impede upon romance of their dreams. With windows drawn and dream in minds, they could be anywhere and anything. So they believed, and so they were; and at nights, behind drawn and covered windows—in intimacies of spirit and presence—they became in make of romanced dream.
In follow of years, as material prosperity came to match with level of their dreams, travel still called to Katherine, drawing spirit still into dreams and longings for distant lands.
Where Katherine went, his spirit followed.
Together, they traveled and experienced the world less as tourists of sights and more as souls—present and immersed selves—in the essence of lands and life surrounding. No matter the extravagance or distance of travels, they never forgot their beginning: dreams and affections library nooks: manifesting of futures waiting to live.
Katherine thought of their histories then as she stared from veranda looking out upon landscape never before seen but known to her by dream. It was a landscape she’d likely never see again; a land and scene of ancient cultivation that, in spite of man’s presence, sustained in wild and natural wonder.
Sky burned in sunset over the terrace-stepped hillsides, each level bearing paddock of rice, shallow and level flooded, in perfect lay of handmade terrace. Air filled with songs of birds in flight and of others farther off in rest on distant limbs of trees. They were songs and calls, to Katherine, unknown, but sounded still of home, made and known, to those who gave them voice.
Absorbed into place and moment of ephemeral, Katherine walked across veranda in sensed oneness with nature and world—free and true and natural—as she moved towards immersion into bath’s wait at veranda’s edge in oversight to all of land and scene before.
Robe released. Body freed. Bared, skin tempered in tones and match with fire sky, mirror hued in blaze of heaven’s light. Standing, absorbing, existing in; Katherine entered into bath, warming and immersing as body sank into settle and still.
Surround of water soothed inviting mind to driftings of dreams and contemplations as sky kept fire, tempering richer and deeper in flame tone strength before cool and dark of night smothered the of last of flame and opened eyes to vision of Universe and stars.
Katherine held in the immersion, weight of hair drawn softly at roots as spread and floating strands moved to sink in saturation of water’s cradle.
Immersed and at rest, stilled in presence of moment and vision, Katherine wrote story in her mind, one she knew—one day—she’d put to page. She remembered a story of Somerset Maugham of a man who by insinuation of possibility—perhaps—attained enlightenment on birthday dawn as he stared on Asian sky. His was a dawn. Hers an eve, but she wondered then—immersed—if such was the living moment: peace and still and awe of soul and body-rest as she lain in witness to heaven changings.
Some answers cannot be known, only sensed; so it often is with the greatest and most profound, but of a lesser Katherine knew.
Katherine knew that he was near; her lover, one, and matching soul present from hope’s beginning. Without him, the dream would never be complete.
Moment was perfect, wondrous—even as ephemeral. Katherine thought no more on meaning but returned to body in immersion—sense of almost float amongst both water and the sky—absorbing and dissolving then into both nothing and to All of matter and made-existence and to Spirit that transcends.
In night, they lain in open to full of veranda’s view, no window needing drawn, no window at all—alive in immersion of dream; transcendence in cradle of living world before immensity of Universe and light.
