January 9, 2005

• Spirit in Time

  The silver staff strikes upon the black empty, with each strike light
  leaps up into the air in a circular radius, like sparks flying from a
  fire. The bearer of the staff walks along side where his feet fall the
  shadows remain undisturbed and the light falling from the staff falls
  flow around him.

  The staff forges the path, and with each strike months falls away,
  years rescind, and the present gets left behind.  The past looms
  before him, all the empty nothing of times that will never come again.

  When the staff judges that the distance is far enough, he stops. The
  staff is raised and a brilliant light spreads forth large and bright in
  one big burst. For a split second there is no darkness at all, the land
  is all molten glowing silver, but then the staff recalls its light.
  Sucked back within the plain silver wood, the staff is once against
  just a staff, barely visible in the overwhelming darkness.

  Barely visible? Before the darkness was so deep that nothing could be
  seen within it, but no longer. Now we see small glowing lights. The
  light of souls in motion swarming about. These are the shadows that
  remain, the afterimages of times gone past. They are like pyreflies
  darting out here and there oblivious to the fact that they are no more.

  The staff bearer reaches out one hand and calls out a word in a tongue
  long forgotten. A true name he speaks. One its owner does not even
  know. Out of the darkness one of the light flies rushes to the hand and
  is cradeled there. The bearer closes his eyes for a moment and senses
  its substance. He does this for a few moments then let’s go and calls
  forth another. For many long hours he does this, calling each light by
  name so that he might learn of their nature.

  Finally he finishes, exhausted but far from done. He stops for a moment to rest and contemplate all that he has learned.

  This, he judged was the time of striving. Here there were dreams and
  wishes, wants and needs. So much confidence and not a small amount of
  false bravado too. There was haunting uncertainties too, disturbing
  thoughts and distressed fears. What am I? Who am I? What can I be? What
  should I be? All things were possible for these lights, suicide and
  success equally likely to stand just beyond the next horizon. There is
  so much joy. The laughter is wild and reckless with a tinge of madness.
  Projects are attacked with passion and determination, the greatness of
  the goals driving the seekers to surpass their potential.  There
  was a beauty in all this, a chaotic light of hope that one might want
  to see spread and grow forever and always. But like all fires, it can
  only last for as long as their is enough fuel to burn.

  But there was so much more to see. He smiles sadly and strikes his
  silver staff yet again upon the ground.  In an instance his
  perspective changes. Now the lights are all around him swarming
  randomly fully oblivious to his presence. He walks and the lights stay
  with him now moving through time with him as he walks back a little
  further.

  Suddenly the lights scatter, the staff roots itself in the ground. Here
  is the barrier.  The staff bearer reaches out with a hand and
  feels a wall of darkness impassable. The lights that had traveled with
  him now form a kind of screen before the barrier unmoving like they are
  frozen in an instant of time.

  The staff reacts again, light flashes and projects over the small
  lights flowing through them and then images begin to appear on the
  black screen, images of times further back. Eras that defined these
  souls before they came unto themselves. 

  The staff wielder examines the sites but can make no sense of them. For
  some there are beautiful pictures, images of happy times that tell of
  beautiful tails. For others there are dark pictures of dreary days.
  Deep stories are told in these images but there are patches of
  blackness where the souls dare not look. For many others there are
  darkness and lights, complex stories of good and ill that define how
  the present beings burn and glow.

  Still for the vast majority the images drawn are not so clear. There
  are blurry spreads of light and colors showing nothing but base
  emotions, fears, joys, and uncertainties. Here are stories never told
  and never fully realized. Here are pasts half forgotten and half
  ignored and mostly just seen as nothing special by those forged by them.

  For a few, a very small few there  is nothing but darkness
  projected from. A black barrier through which they dare not look. The
  past is for them unfaceable. The darkness is too great. They block it
  and ignore it. Only light outlines can be seen in those shadows, the
  stuff that nightmares are made of.

  The silver staff’s ligh recedes. He sighs. The deep past holds no more
  revelations than ever before. The chaos born from a distorted
  unity-less tradition-less reality  cannot be easily mended. 
  He turns.

  Once again the lights swarm about him and he walks forward. This time,
  the days and months come forth gathering about his feet carrying
  forward toward the present.

  As time passes ever onward the lights stay with him. Then they scatter
  spreading about a few months latter they gather again. Months beyond
  another scattering. Then another gathering. A third time and the wizard
  walks on.

  Finally the lights scatter one last time, and this time they keep
  scattering spreading through the dark world growing brighter as they go
  coming closer to their true selves. 

  The staff takes him forward ever closer to the present. Finally it
  stops him, at the very edge of reality, the moment before the 
  perceived moment.  Now he stands within a small pool of darkness
  with a pulsing silver light in the center where the staff’s energy
  preserves the artificial stasis.  Around the dark pool lies the
  images of the real world, in black and white, still not quite real.

  Yet again the bearer calls forth one name at a time and this time the
  small spirit lights pop into the darkness like pushing their way into a
  bubble of unreality. They are again cradeled in the hand of the
  sorcerer who speaks soft words over them and senses their spirit and
  then lets them go back out to rejoin the present.

  When it is done the wizard falls to a sitting position the staff still
  stands beside him unheld maintaining the circle of timelessness. The
  bearer is tired now yes, but more overwhelmed by all that he has seen.
  He cups his face in his hands and catches his breathe letting his
  thoughts order themselves.

  After a time things began clear. This was the era of reason he observed
  but any who think that reason is a simple and stable thing do not know
  reason. The lights were in some ways deeper now. Greater now. Their
  lights now hid complexities that cannot be understood in any simple
  terms.  All that was there before was there before but now it is
  controlled. Now the mind is triumphant over the passions. The spirit…
  no not suppressed… more like transcended the recklessness of youth.
  It still pulsed, it was still bright, but it no longer burned. Now they
  were burning coals not raging infernos their wants and needs carefully
  controlled. Their paths for deterministically set. Their hearts better
  known to them and their choices clearer.  Decisions that might
  have been put off in the past were now made. Challenges that seemed
  like they could be put off were now saught immediately.  These
  were people forging a future as best they could, realities having made
  it now clear to them that mindless wandering is not rational and does
  not lead to any contentment.

  But it isn’t that simple either. These people were not drawn to this
  life by such realization. They do not abandon their past. They surpass
  it. The truth realized through growth and thought.

  There is great saddness and regret in many of them. Some yearn for the
  glory years. But there is great joy here in them too. In many ways it
  is a more real joy born of a deeper wisdom.  There is the peaceful
  certainty that the world is neither so bad nor so good as it once
  seemed. There is just a rightness to simply living. Being. Knowing.

  But it is NOT right.  The staff bearer climbs to his feet and
  grasps his staff once again, determination now sets into his
  features.  He calls forth the staffs power yet again this time
  blazing a path to pierce the veil into the unknown future to perceive
  whether his suspicions are correct. 

  And they are here there is the glowing plain of light spreading forth
  through all possibilities from the present. Each light is constantly
  happy upwards sloping and growing. But the growth is linear. The angle
  not so steep. There were a few dips here and there were dark times were
  come, eras of renewed uncertainties, eras of fear for others, disasters
  unbidden, but the constant growth of happiness was steady for the most
  part.

  Constant. Linear. It wasn’t quite right. The growth was all wrong. What
  seemed stable was actually as fragile as glass. If your growth is so
  small, any real disturbance that shatters your world view would cast
  you so far back into darkness that you might not be able to crawl out
  again. But even if you could and even if you would be better for it,
  the world would still not be quite right. Something was lost, a talent
  from the past abandoned in the present. Has the soul forgotten its true
  potential?

  The staff and staff bearer began to grow, his spirit spreading out
  larger his sight spreading until soon  he could perceive all the
  times in one view. There he saw the lights now as glowing silver lines
  extended from the dark bearier all the way into the future. 

  He began the follow these lines, threading the strands of fate through
  his fingers probing them feeling how the paths flowed forming a
  constant story of life.

  As his hands felt along them in many he found the cause of his despair.
  There were places you see, where the lights threads were thined, or
  broken. Moments of times past where parts of the soul’s wisdom were
  abandoned. Lost. Here a decision not to strive for this. Here a choice
  that that was not worth seeking. Somewhere else a choice that this
  would be good enough or that that other thing just doesn’t matter at
  all. Absolute decisions. Decisions to bind the soul with ribbons of
  steal.  And thus the fires of the time of striving were let to die
  down without realizing their true potential in order to create an
  environment where reason could take root.

  And then the true reason became clear. During the time of stirivng
  there was a  glow of unity. That kind of connection that can only
  be wrought forth when many of like mind are brought together under a
  similar vision of the world.  That unity was shattered in an
  instant but the pieces of it carried onward being brought into the
  whole of the present but not intact.  And thus reason found itself
  restricted unable to perceive all possible paths because it could not
  draw from a collective community of souls.

  The staff bearer could not fix it. He could not build back light into
  the souls of the present. He could not mend wounds and build bridges.
  He could not change people in the present to whom they would be had
  they brought forth all of their past with them and bring to them in
  this way an even greater joy. One that can grow exponentially
  throughout all eternity.

  But  he could do something.  He picked forth one light at a
  time and started creating lassos of golden light. He forged these out
  of magic and memory. He added love and hope and threw in a little bit
  of fear and pain for nothing of substance can be born without these.

  These lassos he connected to the lights and tossed forth from them back
  through the eras to encircle the collections of light of the time of
  striving. A thousand such lassos he created. Lifelines to the past.
  Strings of memories that could grasp the good of the past and bring it
  into the present to create a greater good.

  Finally complete the wizard spoke a word. The staff transported him
  back to his isolated thrown beyond the ends of time. There he sat
  heavily, the staff fell into his lap. His job was done. He could do no
  more. 

  Would this that he had done enable the spirits of these worlds to bring
  themselves to a greater reason? Or would they not notice? Would they
  accept good enough and forget about demanding the greater still? Would
  they always be filled with regret of the days long gone?

  The lasso’s would not work on their own. There was only one way to
  bring back good that is gone. You cannot wish it to be. You cannot
  hope. You cannot wait for it to come. There is only one way. Through
  force of will.

  It won’t be the same. It shouldn’t be either though they might not
  realize it. They may abandon it for fear of the unfamiliarity. This
  will be something new. Greater and better. Building the past into the
  future, not a mere shadow of things begone. But they must will for it.
  They must pull forth on the lassos and yank the past forward into the
  present. Pull it against its will to a time where it seems out of place
  where it is lost and seems almost wrong as a result. And then it must
  be changed and incorporated, made to fit with the reason of the present
  to serve as fuel for the glory of the future. They must will this. They
  must seek it. Or the past will be lost, and though great good can come,
  it will ever be limited in scale by the shadows of the past.

  Will they have the will, the sorcerer wondered? “I never did”, he
  thought. But they are different. Already they see beyond the substance
  of their being. Already they embrace reason. All they need to do is
  open their minds… just a little bit more.  

  He could not help them, but he could sit and watch them grow and hope for them the best that they can have.  

  • 4:43 pm
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