seeing – Made by Marion

Two cats, both black and white but not brothers, emerge. Know them by their fears: sleek young one fears the other, his dash, his sudden flash of teeth, barbarity. The other fears me. Yellow eyes askance, we face one another. Black fur grey, an undercoat of dirt. He moves not. Half a cat facing, half hidden in the vert.

The sleek young one rolls on his back on the grass, ecstatic. The other glances, dismisses, retires.

Apples blossom.

The luxury of time to stand before a bloom for as long as is right, for as long as it takes to make the marks I need on my page and the state of my mind. To stand and slowly study light. Luxury, to breath in the wood in a season most alive, to care more for the light and the air than for when I will arrive. Luxury, to have hands that have learned to mark, eyes that have learned to see. To have this capacity.

Gratitude to past me. Only, there is no past. There is no “was”.

What if I am the only one that is? If there is only now, if was is only memory and memory is nothing but imagined sense, if reality exists only in perception, I am indeed alone.

At that thought: lonely?

A little.

Why?

No one is in the mirror.

Why need a mirror?

If reality exists only in perception, to be seen is to be made real. To see is to make real. I am made real by that one’s witnessing, yet even as (s)he witnesses (s)he is not real except in my seeing. Witnessing reciprocal, and therefore circular: therein its downfall.

A yellow smell: sun, new grass and dandelions. Cooler, greener under the maple trees.

Blue light before dawn. Wishing to be out in it. Cooler air, a chorus: birds waking as the world wakes.

Days of needing more sleep: eight hours, nine, eleven. Days of needing seven, six, of needing five. The way my body feels, this early.

No to the yellow light, no to the flickering electric light. Hold to the blue, and the crackle of the birds’ song. Hold to the shimmer of a candle, a light which does not presume to cancel the dim blue light of the dawn.

Desire for a friend which is not desire for sex, but to witness. Desire to be with, and not need to express or impress. Self less keenly urgent brought to fore, less demanding. Hanging, and content to hang, for the grip is secure. Let hang. Look elsewhere. Desire to witness another as I witness the dawn.

Dim, early light, the light of a candle. The day dandles, barely born.

To see a human in such grace.

I yearn to erase consciousness, and not to be erased.

Dawn can see a candle; candle, dawn. Each light humble. Each light on its own, but mingled. Each light, not to overrun a light, but to be one.