Impermanence - Conclusion

Once the feeling of pure and emptiness immersed into her being, she felt weightlessness. Her body elevated as she flew alongside a majestic egret, its rich white body with its wide wingspan gliding with her, guiding her above into the ether. A fleeting thought crossed Rosa’s mind, a confusion of whether her body or was it her soul that had taken flight. She looked below and saw the white hair woman sitting by the willow alone, her angelic smile pasted upward as she waved toward the sky. With another blink of her eye, the scene below transformed.

Rosa noticed the sun had disappeared as magically as it had appeared while the ground below morphed. She couldn’t quite see below the haze, like steam, moisture seemed to rise up from the ground. She spotted tips of trees and grayness of entrails that seems to project out from them. A slight shift in the wind and an opening revealed the scene below.

Dull water surrounded the terrain, vegetation rising from within and around it, high and low, vibrant green to murky gray. Cypresses stood firmly on solid ground, ancient in their stance, bent low with age toward the water as they dipped their hair in or extended their feet-like roots out for sustenance of that we call life. Alligators climbed up and around the roots to laze before diving back into the shallow depths of the nourishing swamp.

The egret guided her back down, to land at the feet of a primeval Cypress whose gray, leafless hair poured down on all sides. Rosa’s wingless, formless being burrowed against its trunk, her knees pulled up into her chest as she nestled in the web of tree hair. She saw the egret take flight, its regal form traversing the sky. The mighty Cypress bent a little lower, as if to better hear the whispered confusions that escaped Rosa’s lips. A wisp of her hair entangled with a tendril as she felt an unknown force enter her. All consciousness, emotions dissipated as if her Self never existed. Her formless form felt fluid, fused with the force and energy here and there and everywhere, a particle, an atom, many atoms, timeless in motion and still in concert. The unbeing of a being, the unsoul of Self, the unconscious of all that is perceived.

Pitter patter of rain continued its trickle outside the window as Rosa opened her half-closed eyes. Her lotus positioned body faced the white wall, her cheeks sticky and wet. She stood up slowly to face the far side of her room and looked at the picture by her bedside. Her baby, the beautiful black Labrador smiled back with an angelic smile from behind the frame.

 

The End