Along the Checky Shore

Along the Checky Shore L. Edgar Otto 27 Aug. 2010

Olney came to the banks of a peaceful river on a peaceful and cool summer's day. There in the lotus position he saw his friend Bonpa under a mulberry tree and walked by quietly so as not to disturb him.

Two Huckleberry's, shadows of his and Bonpa's inner child from perhaps another time and place, fished by the river with bamboo cain poles and limax worms. Olney asked them how was the fishing and recalled with fondness how he used to eat and enjoy the fishheads on a stick as the local children of the fisher folk were want to do- what a treat for those in blissful poverty far from the city of Far Rock'a'bye.

Olney still had much of the young Darwin or Aristotle interested in the teeming life along the beach. In his days of scientific inoscence of observation - not that he would pull the wings off flies or focus the sun's rays on the ants- even then he had an almost religious admiration for all living things- but he did recall how difficult it was to remove the slippery fish eyes from the fish heads before he would use them as bait for the crawdads. He did not mind the discection of the little machines of wasps and butterflies and ticks and accepted the struggle between such creatures as the background and necessity for their lives- but when he tried to remove the heart of a falling sparrow he grew sick of the view into how things worked even making incisions for cold blood with his obsidian pocket knife.

"Namaste, Oln" Bonpa finished his meditation and greeted him. "Anything new in your universe?"

"Sorry to disturb you man. Same old, same old. Do you see us by the river fishing? Time has become such a strange thing to me in our balding old age of wisdom."

"Yes, I think we are on the same spectral color wave length. But who knows if the memories are true, even back then? You know, time has a trait or so of only being at some moment of the flow of the river and the current is fast and the flood is high. Not long ago for a swim or baptism, and to make my garments fresh, I got caught under the fallen cottonwood tree held against it. Only my lack of panic and lack of fear to reach out for the whirlpool malestrom so to swim against it did I get free. Thus we sometimes get stuck in the river of time as if a frozen moment of our dreams, and of the state of doledrums of our soul."

"Well, I hoped I might find you today. Sooner or later our paths meet again wether you seek me or wait. Yes, all things decay and only in the moment can we say if from the past and into the future there was more or less order in the world. Time flows in one, and two, and the many directions from out shared point of departure of a shared fate."

"You know, Dreamikins is wearing me down lately- she says she is worried about me and gives me books that show my faith the source of evil."

"That is what I wanted to talk about. You are so sensitive to these struggles of people with their passions and compassions. I read one of the books against all other faiths and philosophies she gave you. You know, from what I can tell it is full of errors of fact and legends without but a peppering of sacred scripture. I think as long as they do not acknowledge the sincerity and strenth of the other faiths or faithlessness theirs is a closed mind that will not evolve to become even a monkey. I think two things- the words are not deep but are powerful, the bigger the like the more easily believed and the droning chant repeated over and over again- some dream for them. It is all just politics really and the thing is they are not so good at it any more than the illogical idea of the one worlders, I mean One Culture, One People of Many, One Anti-Christ!. It is hard for the human heart to serve two conflicting tyrranies- there is unity not in diversity but great and profound diversity in the unity of things and people thinking for themselves with the minds God gave them with which to think. You in your sensitivity and outreach to the multiplicity of time and self pay the price of such insight with feeling.

"Yet I find it clear that the other thing is that she really wants you in the life path and flesh- I do not think she is that worried for you soul. Maybe tell her that just as her Jesus is the head of the church the spouse and lover is the head of his bride- I think she wants to submit."