SEA OF BREATH

     It was a very intense meditation: I was diving for pearls in a sea of breath, clothed only in my innocence. Seaweed tendrils wet tickling fingers stroked my flesh at a thousand points of moist sensation while I descended. Soon I traversed into depths where schools of curious, skittish brightly colored tropical fish fluttered through a playground of bony coral reef.

In the gentle flow of Now I'd regained my eyes, forgotten my "I", realized that whatever is shown and seen is precisely in a place and at a time where no one else has ever been.

An inviting blissful current drew me to a cave. Above the entrance was clearly engraved "Suspend All Beliefs and Disbeliefs, Ye Who Enter Here." Inside there was no illumination except the sensitivity of my own vision. Sea lichen were clinging to walls and rocks, every cell of their being so aroused by water's touch that they lived their entire lives as orgasming clusters of sentience. Baby crustaceans played games of mock paranoia and genuine bliss. There were countless tunnels disappearing into all directions, one of which distinguished itself to my sight by subtle patterns of shadow and reflections indicating a distant source of light. Swiftly did I swim into that tunnel, sometimes having to duck my head and shrug shoulders to squeeze through its rocky passages.

The labyrinth rotated at sharp angles like elbows and knees. I navigated a section of narrow dimensions through which I scarcely could fit. Around a corner there appeared the glow of a far off area that was mysteriously lit. I swam straight toward it.

Through the maze's twists and turns I went. I was like an infant passing through the birth canal on its way to being born. Eventually I entered a larger cavern that was bathed in the same gentle radiance as a morning sky the moment before dawn. Swimming toward me were half a dozen tiny seahorses with iridescent blue transparent skin. No larger than my fingers, they drifted and hovered in place, gazing at me with round blue eyes that occupied most of their faces. One of them zipped up to my lip and took a nip, a sharp pinch followed by more as the others tasted my cheek, neck, arms and a nipple. While they were biting me again and again, I looked up and saw a swarm of thousands of seahorses more, each rushing to take a needle quick prick of my skin. As they drew near I could see in their dance the numberless variations of painful circumstance. Their scalpel-sharp small teeth did not hurt so much as sting, each bite leaving behind a little trickle of blood. I was covered in seahorses from the bottoms of my feet to the top of my head! All through their furious attack I kept swimming on. I wanted to turn back to a darker area where I imagined they'd leave me alone. But I was drawn like a moth toward the secret of the light.

Still performing as host to countless voracious little lips, I swam out of frazzled anguish into a chamber so enormous and bright that it dazzled my eyes. From this grotto there was a large opening leading to the open sea. The light came from out there, spilling into shadows cast by a sizzling brilliant phosphorescent display, radiating from a source that could not be seen from within the cave.

With one final nip of an eyelid, abruptly all the seahorses swam away from me toward the hole that led to that light. There they converged before my astonished eyes into one great shimmering seahorse more than three times my size! Each of the little ones had become a scale or a cell upon its mother!

It was too much to be seeing! I glanced down for an instant and noticed that because of how much I'd bled, my entire body looked as though I'd been painted red. Was I swimming or leaping or dancing? I could not tell! The giant seahorse stared at me and trumpeted a loud high-pitched squeal.

I feared this shrill alarming sound was an expression of delight at encountering her next meal. I dove and slithered into a small space between some rocks and a wall, where hopefully she could not reach. I couldn't hide but only watch with my eyes open wide as she approached.

She towered above my shelter, reared back and snorted then sneezed an eruption of bubbles out of her nostrils. She swayed from side to side in a state of high agitation. Then she opened her mouth . . . and spoke.

"My name is Meriad," she said, a slight tremor passing like a wave across the finny mane at the top of her head. "I am Guardian of the Light." She almost disappeared in a sudden throbbing burst of brightness. Then she went on to say, "You certainly are a fool to be so stubborn and brave as to face me here in my own cave. I could tear you to pieces before you could twitch one eye. But for some reason or another, I am reluctant to see you die."

She propelled herself backward with a whir of fins that moved like fantastic transparent blue wings. "One of the things I may do," she said with a languid blink, "is to assume any form of which you might think. From various stations in each role you give me, I will let you see why you must go while you still live."

Her scales wriggled a little then danced like a field of grass in a storm. As one removing a costume and mask, she stripped off her seahorseness and transformed into my mother . . . who wore her blue flannel robe, hair up in curlers with cold cream upon her slightly blue cheeks.

"Oh, my God!" my mother cried. "What do you think you're doing? You're going to drown! You can't breathe under water! You can't inhale through the pores of your skin!"

"But, mother, I am!" I couldn't help but reply.

Her face convulsed into weeping and while she bitterly cried, my mother turned her head aside. She glanced back at me over her shoulder and I found myself looking into Meriad's eye. The seahorse yawned and unfurled a long hummingbird tongue. She shook all over till her scales vibrated like sequins or feathers. When her movements subsided she had entered into the person of my father.

He was wearing his blue pinstripe suit, thumbs in the pockets, corners of his mouth turned down in that infamous pout. "Look at what you've done! You've made your mother cry! If you don't leave now, she's convinced you will die."

"But, father, I'm determined to see the source of light."

He clenched his fists and winced his eyes. Blood rushed to his face, expressing the familiar rage through which he inspired fear of physical violence. "When I speak," he demanded, "you will observe the rule of silence! You are so selfish and naïve. I find it hard to believe that you're a son of mine. I've tried to teach you how to obtain wealth and honor among men. Be practical! Forget this adventure! Go out and grab whatever possessions and security you can. And think of your mother. You are the reason for her life."

"But she died when I was a child."

His eyes filled with grief then closed as he sadly replied, "Yes. I know. And not long after, so did I. Seeing us this way is like visiting with ghosts. Now I beg you to leave this cave and return to somewhere you'll be safe."

So saying, he dissolved into a slow motion implosion of rioting colors out of which emerged the face and form of my high school science teacher. Long ago, with his sarcastic grin and cold blue eyes, he'd seemed the most worldly-wise person I'd ever met. "Now you've got yourself in a mess, don't you?" He smiled rhetorically. "I suppose you think you'll discover something new. But it's historically true that everything's the same now as it's ever been. Only science can reveal what's ultimately real. To learn science, you must memorize the words of other men, men who lived long ago and each of them was far greater than you."

"I don't want to be great!" I cried. "I just must follow my fascination with the mystery of the light."

"You're on a fool's errand then," he replied. "And it's one you might not survive."

He faded into some other dimension as another form rose out of swirls and tides and particles to take my breath away. It was Jessica, naked and ready to play. Jessica lying naked on her parents' blue couch. Lying naked first with one finger inside her yoni, then smearing her body's moisture on the pink tips of her jiggling small breasts. "If you want to touch me some day," she said, "then we'll have to be married. You have to buy me a house and my own car and pretty things for our bedroom and a beautiful yard."

"We were fifteen," I answered, "when you told me this before. Then you went with someone else who could buy you so much more. Now you're old as me and your greatest adventures are soap operas, like the ones you watch on TV. Who knows where it might have gone if your happily-ever-afters had not been inscribed in stone."

She lowered her eyes modestly and said, "You'd better get out of here. No woman will have you once you're dead." With those words she shimmered and morphed into the magical seahorse again.

Meriad looked at me out of deep contemplation then asked, "Are you ready to go?"

Without hesitation I answered, "No!"

She inquired, "Have you been so unmoved then by these threats and temptations?"

"Very moved," I responded, "but I haven't come this far on a frivolous whim."

"So I see," she sighed, those tremendous blue eyes so wild and shy. She drifted toward me through the ocean of water and breath and light. Her dragon snout quivered, nostrils flared. Her voice now gentle, she said, "Hold onto my neck and I'll take you there."

Her tail was twitching in a warm current that enveloped us for a moment before dispersing. Her beauty excited me so deeply that I felt as though my heart were bursting. Through her transparent blue skin I saw not organs and bones, but torrents of energy flowing.

I stroked her neck with my hand. She was pure sensation shivering beneath my touch. I put my arms around her neck while her tongue flicked out and licked my cheek. We floated together toward the glowing opening to her cave. Her movements became playful while I earnestly hung onto her slender neck and, out of tenderness, sang a joyful Aum for her to hear. She wore me like a scarf or an intimate garment, my dangling legs brushing across her throat and her chest in an involuntary tactile torment of bliss.

As we passed through her chamber and into seas of intense luminosity, she lowered her head to my ear. The sound of her words was at first like a breeze, but quickly grew into a feminine choir with thousands of aged hags, ovulating women and little girls calling out, "We are now approaching the Mother of Pearls."

The lightbursts into which we moved were so powerful they blew away every thought that had ever entered my brain. I felt as though we were sailing into the winds of a hurricane. The seahorse throat to which I clung trembled and shook as she let out one mighty roar in which I could hear every song that had ever been sung.

The Mother of Pearls' brightness would have burnt out my sight but I held one hand over my eyes. Through the mask of muscles and fingers and blood and bone, I beheld the most beautiful, sacred, terrifying being I have ever known. In shifting patterns of light I see ever-changing features of human faces, such as the old masters attempted to paint. Her windblown radiant hair is flowing in every direction, atoms of each strand made up of galaxies, every flash of a quark the living feeling, hearing and seeing of another passing being. Strobing pandemonium of birth and death and day and night. Birds of light in mercurial flight. She is the feeling within all feelings, the meaning of meaning. Each precious fleeting moment she savors forever. Universes are born and die in the blink of her eye.

She moons me through a telescope, undresses under extreme magnification into networks of nerves and capillaries, textures of cellular tissues, subtlest nuances of the intimacy of perceiving, each particular of the content of experiencing, context of consciousness, mirror dissolving the boundaries between the see-er and the scene. And ever entering her from behind in furious passion is the formless one of whom we never shall speak.

Meriad plunged with me into the heart of that explosion of light. We were streaking through canyons that ran between towering jeweled castles of flame. Storms of sparks or meteors flashed past us. Then a riptide of brightness tore Meriad apart into countless tiny seahorses that fluttered swiftly out of sight. Streams of fragmented images were cascading out of springs erupting from the source of awakening and dreams.

In his final instant, a dying man is lying on his side. He experiences:

sunset over a city with evening breezes whispering hush     young virgin turning away to conceal a sexual blush     lovers disappearing into each other's touch     ancient redwood, roots sipping sweet California rain     high priestess perhaps holy perhaps insane, rolling her eyes in ecstasy and pain     blue flower radiating into blossom     newborns nursing in the pouch of a mother possum     crack baby abandoned in a drawer while mama goes out to get more and then more     lonely saxophone intoning a blues solo     twins in the torment of their first separation     eighteen wheel truck hurtling down the highway of night     blind man somehow miraculously regaining his sight     waterfall     taste of ice cream     first kiss     last breath . . .

Then I open my eyes . . . and you are here.

Reprinted from Now & Again - The Ecstatic Doggerel of Samuel Beast, with permission of The Writers' Collective and Samuel Beast.

(c)2004 Samuel Beast

You may visit his website at www.samuelbeast.com