From the Rift — Story (2/5) · chapters 8–12

VIII. Golden Wind

This time the encounter had not begun with a question, and did not end in emptiness. Rather the opposite - "Beautiful to see you at sea again." - and moreover, something now rested in my inner right breast pocket. I stood again before the far too beautiful aluminum door of the yellow sea and already missed the hem of her being, cast upon me from her soul. Her soul a violet-tinged pink in the gently dancing shimmer between yellow and red. The hem can only be felt when she lets her dark fog fall - her sheath that lets no light through.

During our silent meal I had noticed how we could tell each other things without speaking.

The visit to the yellow sea echoed deep in my streams of thought, and the many kebabs grilled over quince charcoal, deeply savored, now lay heavy at the bottom of my stomach. I wondered briefly what she might perceive in me - closed my eyes for a moment - and steered my stream of thought toward other shores. Opened my eyes and walked, against the wind, down the street.

I stood two blocks north of the yellow sea at a large intersection in the middle of the mega-metropolis. The pedestrian crossing light had just turned red and I used the time to touch my chest once more and then let my hands slide into the side pockets of my jacket. I felt the fitting outlines - my insurance - the business part of the sea could be relied upon.

I still needed to inspect the objects and familiarize myself with them, but this was surely not the right place for it.

The light would not turn green and my stream of thought gave me no peace, and my stomach too was overfull and announced itself with loud rumbling. I decided on a small wall behind me and sat down, while leaning slightly into the hedge of green-red bushes directly adjacent to the wall.

I watched the chaotic bustle around me, which compared to the last hours seemed like a still mountain lake. The last hours felt like a dream, and for me it had been a beautiful one. I dreamed little in recent years - only with my glittering medicine did I sleep truly peacefully. As a child it was different.

I was never in the military, but my ancestors seem to have carried the war into my dreams.

Their cruel death in the chaos of worlds has woven itself into my life's flow.

I learned early to interpret my dreams
And their depth and magnitude could simply not be overlooked
They were nonetheless simply knit
And their message I have internalized:
Every decision that is not mine
Can - no - will mean death

Whoever wants to live must sacrifice, their family, their friends, their love, but also their hatred, their will, like their desire, and above all their own thoughts, to let their Self dissolve in great beauty in the small soul. But the value of beauty, which is opposed to the sacrifices, must balance itself in the whole against the chaos of the soul.

Suddenly my vision blurred in the chaotic bustle, the traffic at the intersection drove, on the left side of my field of vision, into a black nothingness. My gaze sweeps to the right and a dense yellow-brown veil clouds my sight. Before me the high-rises crumble to gray dust and a strong wind carries it upward. The sky slowly turns gray, the modern metropolis around me transforms into a dirty-gray wasteland. No matter where I look, a landscape as if the city had experienced nothing but destruction of ungraspable magnitude for the last decades.

Rubble and ash.

I let my gaze sweep again from left to right and then, as if from nothing, a golden ray struck me. Looking into the distance - it was not just a ray, it was an entire trail, gold-yellow, it played with the gray of the dust and flowed through the rubble landscape. Gold-gray patterns emerged, into which I truly could have let myself fall, however I did not, I heard steps from the right - many steps, in uniform rhythm.

I remained calmly seated and released my gaze from the trail and turned my head slowly back to the right. About twenty men in old-fashioned military clothing appeared, not too far away, from the yellow-brown veil. The clothing was covered with a gray layer of dust, with weapons in their hands they marched with iron determination after the golden trail, into which I had just wanted to let myself fall.

My focus was entirely on them. One of the soldiers let himself fall back in the group and as time passed, he inconspicuously separated himself toward the rear. Without looking around further, he turned left - in my direction - and walked straight toward me, while the remaining soldiers marched on. I still could not make out his face, but he cut a heroic figure, with the fading golden trail at his back, while the wind majestically lifted his gray dust-covered coat.

When he had come closer, however, something else was written on his face - indifference paired with penetrating determination. Every contour was underscored by deep, broad, small, large, dust-filled wrinkles. The closer he came, the more complex and manifold the wrinkle-landscape became, shaped by his gently shifting features.

But what truly streamed into my soul was his deeply piercing gaze, from eyes that opposed reality itself.

The normally white background, the sclera, was a dark black-brown, as if coal had been roughly mixed with dark earth. The iris a matte gray with shallow lighter and darker streaks in gold-gray tones, as if the trail of the rubble landscape had begun a dance with the gray dust of the air in the depths of his soul. And the pupil glittered silver-white, like fresh-fallen snow in the reflected light of the full moon.

Soldier: You here, in the dried riverbed of my being.

He said with a scratchy voice but gentle undertone.

I: I don't know where exactly I am, but it is somehow beautifully cruel, cruelly beautiful.

I answered honestly.

Soldier: Beautifully said, you must know, our beds are all like this. Chaos has formed them and only my blood can see the traces of dried beauty. To then flood them again with a flowing wave of being. Like water, seeds seep into the bottom of the bed.

I was not aware of what exactly he wanted to convey to me, nevertheless I nodded in agreement and after a short pause I asked what was burning on my tongue.

I: Into which battle are you marching with your comrades, or are you just coming from one? And where will this golden trail lead you?

Soldier: We fought a battle on the bottom of the sea, where our sacrifices to reality lie.

I: What sacrifices do you speak of?

Soldier: Let me elaborate. We sacrificed our being up there...

He pointed to the ground before he continued.

Soldier: ...sunk our potential in the infinity of the whole, so that a seed in the light of our past darkness can bloom anew in the future.

My gaze met his and the reflecting white light from his pupil would not let me go and drew my stream of thought into emptiness, while he continued speaking.

Soldier: We went together into the frozen night, my comrades and I, believing we could give it light and find meaning. In the end we all perished together in the chaos of our time. For a long while everything was dark and the fight, like the search, hopeless. But we know nothing else - it has become habit. Then a few days ago we broke through the front. At first there was only black darkness. A black that made dark coal look white. But instead of being swallowed by this darkness, we paused. After an eternity, a tiny crack opened in the black emptiness where we stood, and a small creature crawled forth - or rather, only its shadow. It spread its wings and pulled a tiny golden trail from the depth of the crack behind it. Since that moment we have been marching - without pause.

I: I hope the shadow leads you out of the darkness. I wonder why you are telling me all this. Do not misunderstand - I am glad to listen. But you seem to know me. What do I have to do with any of this?

He took his right finger, pointed to his ear, led the finger to the middle of his face until it was at the level of his nose tip, and from there made a smooth arc downward toward his heart. Arriving there, he drilled the finger into his chest and led it in a swirling movement upward until it pointed straight up above his head. Then he spoke.

Soldier: You are neither light nor shadow, you reflect deeply sown balance. You are my future, I your past, we lie in the same bed. You have rekindled the fire of your source, given me some hope with just a drop of water, and brought us the golden flood.

I: The effect of your words within me shows how great your sacrifices were. I will take your spoken words seriously and weave them into my being. May the flood swell between drop and sea.

Gift this world balance
Death swims in frozen chaos
On the sea of emptiness
Into which you have managed to sink

Soldier: I must catch up to my comrades. You don't want us to be late.

He turned around and walked in march step, without turning around again, toward the fading trail once more. I stared in his direction and spoke quietly to myself.

I will do it for you. You are my...

IX. Red Crossing

In the gray dust, a red light suddenly appeared.

And a moment later I was staring at the traffic light at the pedestrian crossing again. Still red. A thought formed as I recalled the encounter in the yellow sea, especially the moment when she said - "The believed-dead have always stood in life's storm. Like stones on the table, four blocks from here, where the light goes out late."

The light... perhaps it refers to the exposing red light that glows in the darkness, no matter in which city.

They were, no matter where in the world, peculiarly human places. Four blocks from the yellow sea - I took it literally, I pulled out my phone, opened the map and drew a circle with my finger around the position of the yellow sea, so that it stretched at least four blocks in all four cardinal directions - the search radius. However, it seemed to me, in this metropolitan jungle, very unlikely, if not impossible, to find the building by chance.

I needed at least a direction.

I still stood at the traffic light, as if rooted, when suddenly words echoed in my ears. Next to me stood a couple of Western origin, she wanted to cross at the light, he presumably back to the office. He said something to her that took on a life of its own within me.

"Please do not forget!"

In my imagination, a room constructed itself.

A few seconds later I stood in the middle of an empty courtroom. I looked around - not a soul to be seen. But after a moment, a voice echoed through the hall, sounding serious, as if a judge were pronouncing his verdict:

Judge: Please do not forget. Only when no call for revenge resounds in the region of darkness will peace flourish in your world of light.

I nodded, turned around and left the hall through curved double doors and stood again at the red traffic light.

Finally the light turned green and I could cross the street in the stream of hundreds of people. I simply let myself be carried along by the stream, I was still internally processing the message from the courtroom.

It seemed to me as if I had heard the words before. Not just heard, they were preached to me.

Then the memory returned - the masterpiece my mother read to me at bedtime. After the Tang Emperor in the underworld had left behind the eighteen-fold hell beyond the Mountain of Perpetual Shadow and had arrived with Judge Cui at the six-fold wheel of soul transmigration, it was time for the Tang Emperor to stride upon the path of nobility, the path of aristocracy.

Judge Cui expressed it in his counsel
For the Tang Emperor
Who was about to ascend again into the world of light
Only when no call for revenge resounds in the region of darkness
Will peace flourish in your world of light

I knew it was time to celebrate a mass for chaos and beauty, to redeem the wretched, homeless souls.

Where this mass could take place was not yet clear to me, but I knew - at the latest after my visit to the yellow sea - that I was on the high seas, and it was now time to find chaos.

I had arrived on the other side of the street, opened my map on the phone, realized I was heading north, turned instinctively to the right and walked down the street without further burden of thought.

X. No Hunger

It was getting dark and the last two hours of my search had been unsuccessful. One building scraping the clouds looked like the next to me. Every other one I could not even enter without access authorization. I had just arrived at the next intersection and looked down the street to the left - dozens of grocery stores and restaurants invited me to stroll and feast, yet I still had no hunger.

The first shop that caught my interest had countless varieties of nuts and dried fruits, I looked through the window for a long while and wondered where all the nuts might come from.

I found no answers within myself and walked on.

The second shop that attracted my attention was a small ramen stall. Perhaps twenty square meters, simple, transparent plastic curtains at the entrance, three tiny tables in front of the kitchen counter at the end of the room. The menu was written with chalk on a black board and in the kitchen was a giant steel pot in which the fragrant broth simmered with huge bones swimming in it. From the street one could already see how the cook behind the counter was transforming noodle dough into ramen with smooth hand movements and extraordinary dexterity.

I had found my place for dinner, but the hunger had not yet arrived, so I left the ramen fragrance behind, stomach heavy.

I pulled my cap deeper into my face and walked further down the street. Past a fish shop, two enormous stores that sold nothing but fruits and vegetables, these had all types and cultivations one could imagine and more, a leather manufactory, a porcelain and jade dealer, as well as a shop specialized in cooking knives.

Something pulled me past these shops, my attention did not stick to them, as if I were sitting in the passenger seat of a fast car, from where I can see the landscape but not enjoy it.

Shortly before the next major intersection, a small alley opened up to my right and my gaze caught on a round sign. I walked a few steps into the alley. The sign looked as if a serpent were stretching its head out of it and not only cunningly observing the people passing beneath from above, but also hissing at them with a forked tongue.

The longer I stared at the sign, the more the serpent's head moved in my direction and its red glowing eyes emerged.

I felt how my right hand became heavier and weight fell from my heart.

The serpent hissed in my direction, I raised my right hand and a pitch-black object was in my hand and my vision darkened. The shape and form of the staff could not be recognized, no light could penetrate through to it. The waves of red light emanating from the serpent's eyes were broken by the darkness of the staff and then swallowed.

Just before the last light of the surroundings disappeared into the darkness, I managed to wrench my hand free and let the object glide back into the inner pocket of my jacket. The little light there was returned to the alley and the sign revealed itself as a stylishly curved teapot.

I touched my chest discreetly, felt the same shape as before, a smile flitted across my face and a wave of fulfillment washed through my body.

My soul spoke to my Self -

No matter what happens
We descend together into this depth
For a new time
Born in the chaos of this world

I looked around briefly to see if I had attracted attention, saw nothing conspicuous and strode with empty determination toward the door, above which hung the seductively smooth teapot.

XI. Clay Vases

I set my first foot into the room behind the door and could feel I had landed in a special place. The four walls of the room were virtually invisible, on all four were shelves to the ceiling filled with clay vessels of various sizes and colors, from white, gray, yellow, brown through red to a greenish clay vase standing centrally in the room filled with seven bright white roses.

The most beautiful flowers I had ever seen.

Shopkeeper: Hundred-year-old peonies, be assured no evil spirit will overcome you here.

Came from the left in passable English from the shopkeeper who was just placing a gray clay vessel with a flower-decorated lid back on the shelf behind him. I turned to him and answered with a slightly puzzled face:

I: Beautiful blossoms, what besides keeping evil spirits away is attributed to these plants?

Shopkeeper: To effectively ward off evil spirits, the roses must be deeply rooted, at least fifty years of growth upward and downward, otherwise you might as well just trust your superstition. But those I have over there in the lower corner of the shelf, in the white vessel with the black circle on the front, they are not very old, but effective in pain relief, nourishing the blood and regenerating your cool and calm energy, your Yin. You know... in balance with the heat of Yang. Also used much by women to prevent menstrual discomfort or relieve muscle cramps. With your tension, though, I would rather advise acupuncture.

I: If I had a lady by my side, I would buy some from you. And yes, the tension in the body is high when one has set one's sails into the wind. You must have good knowledge of human nature to read the tension from me so quickly.

Shopkeeper: Set one's sails into the wind. Do I have a little poet before me?

I: No, sometimes my soul speaks and not my self.

Shopkeeper: I'm glad you stumbled into my shop, sit on that stool over there and I'll prepare you a tea that gives you the necessary calm in the great storm.

I sat on the small stool next to the small table, made of dark wood, decorated with green jade, with the greenish vase in the center, from which the seven peonies flooded the room with harmony through their beauty.

I would have expected differently, had I not laid aside all expectations, as one must do on the hunt. Perhaps the same applies to life.

I looked up and down the walls, trying to catch a sense of what might be stored in all the vessels. Meanwhile, the shopkeeper fetched a small wooden stepladder from the corner and gathered one container after another from various shelves.

He placed them in the front left corner of the room, where there was a round hole in the wooden floor, diameter a bit more than a meter, twenty maybe thirty centimeters deep, and in the center stood on black earth a small metal frame with four legs, beneath which was already some wood, neatly arranged in cone form, so that air could draw into the structure from below.

I sat on my small stool and absorbed the energy of the room, letting my gaze wander again and again and watching the shopkeeper as he carried an iron teapot to the circle in the floor. He placed the teapot on the frame in the center of the circle, sat on the edge and opened the containers one by one and began filling the pot with dried leaves and herbs. What was conjured from the last container puzzled me somewhat, he had fished it out of the vessel by one of its legs, an elongated, black, dark-looking, dried locust. Tenderly he threw it into the pot and directed his gaze at me.

Shopkeeper: To come from six to seven, on the path of eight, you must still pluck for me a rose petal from the hundred-year-old peonies.

I nodded to him, looked at the harmony of the seven roses in the green clay vase directly before me and decisively reached for the first, white radiant petal that had drawn my attention. I let it glide from my fingertips into the pot. Now he nodded to me with a satisfied look, reached for a glass carafe and poured water into the pot, ignited the wooden cone under the pot and we both looked into the blazing flames, as if our souls were merging there with each other.

The crackling of the flames hung in the air and wove itself into the harmony of the room. Beneath swelled an intangible scent that streamed from the pot in gentle waves. An indescribable feeling permeated my being, a full emptiness, a superposition of all emotional states of my experience, all were there but no feeling truly present.

My stream of thought dried up and I felt like an intangible form in the shape of light gray, rearing clouds.

He looked physically weak as he sat by the fire, in his simple dark green shirt, black cloth trousers and open dark brown leather shoes. His black-gray hair combed to the side, round glasses with black frames on his nose. The wrinkles of his skin spoke of life's experiences. But as soon as I looked into his eyes, everything shifted - his dark, deep brown eyes drew my attention with tremendous strength into their black center.

There unfolded a bright space full of emptiness, and so began our conversation over a pot of wondrous tea.

Shopkeeper: Be so kind and fetch us two cups, they're over there on the shelf, behind the bright yellow clay vessel.

I walked over, took two of the tiny porcelain cups and went with them to the circle.

I: A barely describable scent lies in the air, what fragrant tea have you brewed together for us here?

He took the first cup from my hand, placed it on the floor beside him, and heaved the heavy iron pot from the fire.

Shopkeeper: A seven-tea for your eighth path. An immaculate lotus flower from the black mud of reality. A yellow chrysanthemum that radiates against dark desire. The locust for clarifying connection to the underworld. Some saffron for a protective shield around the mosaic of your heart. A piece of ginseng for a calm spirit in the storm of your thoughts. Some leaves of green tea, Longjing, for the fullness of your attention. And the peony petal for beauty in your doing. Thus you will be able to gather your own being in the present moment, to let it flow back into the stream of reality.

I absorbed the information, like the rising scent of tea from my cup, with every breath. When he had finished speaking, I simply lifted my cup slightly, he did the same, and we both drank the first sip.

I drank three more large sips and then...

A feeling rises from below into me
It permeates my fibers and my spirit
It does not settle and does not rest, but swells
I feel the connection into a filled abyss
That stretches into the expanses

I begin to feel like a ship
Half underwater, half at sea
Every wave lifts and lowers my being
The waves that carry me come from the depths of the sea
And lead me straight into the storm of my being
That towers on the horizon

I directed my attention fully outward and sat again with tea in hand on my stool. My stomach cramped slightly - I should probably go to the bathroom.

I did not need to say a word. The shop owner looked up briefly and pointed to a passage in the corner of the room from which he had fetched the stepladder.

I placed the cup on the floor and staggered, slightly cramped, into the corner of the room, until I could see around the corner where the stepladder must have stood.

XII. Fine Grain

A large solid wood panel was set into the wall, not just any piece of wood, the wood, the wood with the pattern from my dreams, dreams of once more walking through the library door with Ma by the hand.

The wood before me was decorated with wave-like patterns just like the medieval door of my childhood library. The waves flowed from the edges into their divided center, where two whirlpools emerged, parallel lines melted and ran into forms becoming patterns.

It must have been crafted from a single trunk, for upon closer inspection I realized that the waves were the grain of the wood.

I stared at the grain, the pattern that had already burned itself into me as a child.

My Ma's sentence came back up:

Ma (Memory): Except at the end and beginning of reality, it's always about balance.

I continued staring at the grain and followed the flowing waves into the swirling forms and out again, only to be drawn back in. I spent a small eternity doing this. And lost my attention again and again at the same point.

It seemed to me like a game, the pattern of the grain invited me to play. In playing, I was concerned with one thing - to break it.

Too often I had watched my Ma as she went to mental war against strangers in the park, with black pieces, while I was on the playground or soccer field. On a rainy day I ran to her from the soccer field, the boys had gone inside because of the weather and I wanted to go home. Ma was just about to let the last moves glide across the board and checkmate the man in the black coat who had a black umbrella in his left hand. This was not necessary, the man said calmly:

Man in Black: Your playing style is terrible, it grinds down, takes my space although I have it, it destroys thoughts and forces emptiness upon me. My position freezes and your pieces use the gaps as if they were water in a sieve.

Then he took his king and laid it sideways on the board to signal his resignation. Ma just nodded and said:

Ma: Where they no longer see patterns flow, you break their game.

The gentleman in black looked slightly puzzled, thought briefly, and then nodded with a slight smile. Ma turned to me:

Ma: Had enough soccer already?! It's just rain, not a thunderstorm.

I shrugged. Ma looked into my eyes, took her bag and we walked heads held high, side by side, through the rain to the car.

I let my finger continue to flow gently and smoothly over the fine grain of the wood, when my finger faltered in its movement once more. I was at the lower right edge of the pattern, slightly above knee height, where the waves outside the central whirlpools flowed further apart.

A thought bit into my consciousness directly - he had said: "...my position freezes and your pieces used the gaps as if they were water..." Had I stumbled upon a gap in the fluidly grown grain of the wood?

I bent slightly at the knees, took my phone from my pocket, activated the flashlight function with a quick double press on the lower side of the volume control, and directed my full attention to the illuminated spot in the door. I took my index finger again and slowly traced the grain until I faltered again. Four times from one side, four times from the other side. Nothing happened, and somehow I wasn't getting any wiser from it.

I stood in the corner of the shop and didn't quite know how to continue, until I felt something deep within me, a swelling, as if the empty mudflats of my soul were being flooded, as if a round glass were being filled with water from the bottom. Before the flood reached my round hill, in which my consciousness unfolded fully while swimming, I placed my finger again on the grain of the wood and closed my eyes.

The flood within me continued to swell and reached my chest. I listened to my heart as it pounded within me with deep resonance in rhythm - one..two..three..four - the deep resonance became muffled and the energy-laden feeling of the dark flood flowed over my shoulders down my arms.

Simultaneously the level rose from the shoulders up the neck. In the same moment that the first surge overstimulated my countless nerve endings in my fingertips, the flood lifted my consciousness onto its rising sea. I slipped into an unimaginable tunnel, first incredibly dark and black, then a floor and laterally rising walls could be seen, which gave an impression as if someone had frozen the open ocean in a strong breeze and given it a brownish shimmer. But somehow I never really saw the contours of the waves clearly and the more I looked into the distance, the more everything seemed to be in motion. I could see far, the half-open tunnel went slightly downhill and the sky was glaring white, so that one was blinded when looking up.

I had just tried one last time to look into the sky and shook myself slightly when I wanted to refocus my downhill gaze. The entire ocean landscape seemed to sway. I felt the flood within myself again, it lowered repeatedly toward my chest only to rise again over my neck. I began to tilt my head right and left, taking my hips and legs with me.

The flood within me, as well as the ocean before my eyes, everything followed me without delay, we rocked a dreamlike synchronous dance.

The tunnel became a stormily surging weave of wave patterns that repeatedly towered up only to fall back upon themselves. The flood within continued to sink and I felt pressure building, but strangely it didn't weigh on me but on the interaction between me and the flow of waves around me. The pressure developed its own dynamic over time and drove me further and further to the left and the tunnel wall began slowly to tower above me.

I had underestimated this dynamic, it had quickly gained momentum and had torn control of the flow of movement from me.

It went up and down, smoothly through wildly curved patterns with an insatiable urge, like frictionless gliding on mirror-smooth ice - beautiful until the loss of control - we were heading directly toward a seemingly insurmountable wall on which we would shatter. Beside me were now patterns of spatial planes that my mind, with its view from below, could no longer grasp by far. With full momentum we glided along under a spatial wave of uncrossable depth and slid along the abyss directly under the arch of the wave. The level of my flood had sunk far below my chest, at the all too near fall into a never-ending abyss full of emptiness.

The emptiness that simultaneously towered the waves up and let them crash back to the ground.

Narrowly escaping the abyss, we shot with leftward spin into a gigantic pattern of waves flowing into each other, growing like a tree from trunk into crown in the sky - we had crashed into the wall.

We flowed between the wave-like fibers of the trunk and it felt as if a current of movement was pushing from behind. Pushed up into the crown, there the distances between the wave patterns widened and small whirlpools formed everywhere beside them.

I was completely sunken in the flow while we were pulled along by a mighty fiber of multiple interwoven wave patterns into the depths of the crown. There opened a giant whirlpool of downward-flowing waves, of which we were already a part before I could even realize it.

I enjoyed the exceedingly tragic flow of my being, through a landscape in which my self had no control - it was tragically beautiful.

Beautiful waves
In the descending flow
Into the bearing emptiness
Beneath the whole of my being

It went downward with spiral momentum, ready to plunge into the empty abyss at the end of the eternal spiral. The waves, however, slowly became gentler and every pattern lost itself in a strangely uniform smoothness, over which I glided with dampened momentum.

Then suddenly an enormous pressure on my interior, as if a huge pressure wave had swept at breakneck speed over the smooth landscape, and I tore my eyes open.

I stared at the grain in the wood, I stared at my finger, I stared at a tiny depression in a barely visible hollow a small piece beside the flow-breaking gap of the grain.