The Old Path

The Old Path

It was dawn on a spring morning. The sun came through the trees with an appropriate glamor, and the grass, bathed in its red light, did little to distract me from the inevitable. I began to walk, slowly at first, towards the rising sun. My bones were not as able as they once had been, so I found it difficult to keep pace. I quickened my step soon enough, however, as the pull towards an expansion beyond this withered body attracted me greatly. It was a bitter-sweet farewell, as I loved this world, but a necessary one.
         Before long, I was walking once more along the Old Path, several of my companions beside me. They had found their own way here, but we were all together in this final hour. Candles had been laid out previously to help guide us through, and keep track of the path itself. We knew we would grow old, and had this set up for ourselves when our first plans were laid out. That was so long ago… ages, in fact. A distant half-memory, when I had before seen those around me. Still, though, there was no denying their familiarity, and mine to them. We nodded at one another knowingly, chuckling softly at our ages. We walked together in silence, up the Step and further, until we began to glimpse a place of rising.
         Though weakened in enthusiasm by my decaying self, I could not hold long to a distended listlessness. The exuberance at once more being exposed to my kin granted me a fleeting, but strong, desire for knowledge and Remembrance. As we approached the high, flat ground, I turned to the one nearest to me – one I remembered had been called Nerim – and asked, “Have you accomplished what you have come here for, old one?”
         Nerim, his face obscured by the hood of a dull gray cloak, kept his head towards the ground, though he shook it slightly. “I have not, my friend. Those searching still search. But I have not found.” His voice was sad, and profoundly so.
         The sadness, at once, became my own. “My brother, why have you not found? Surely by now you have Remembered!”
         At this, the man slowly raised his head to look at me. His eyes were old, blue, and full of a misplaced longing. “It has taken me too long to Remember. I am still lost, brother.”
         I was shocked at his words. Could not even this, a perfect world in our minds to discover, not be ideal to some? What we had gone through to achieve… did it mean nothing? Were some still dissatisfied? I reached out and rested a thin, bony hand on his shoulder. “We are here now, Nerim. You will be lost no longer, and I am sure you will be forgiven. Rejoice; this is the life you truly have been living. Don’t you Remember me?” and then I added, more quietly, “You should finish.”
         “No.” the vehemence and fervor with which he said this shook me, and at once I knew he was not ready.
         “Nerim, you are not finished. You have said so, here, to me. What have you left to do? For you must do it; your soul will not be complete, otherwise. Surely you are old enough to know this.” I made my words as calm as possible, for Nerim was evidently still influenced by an outward emotional body.
         Nerim sat, allowing others to pass around him. “Sit with me, friend; I have always known you. I wish you would Remind me.”
And so, much of my last hour on Earth was discoursed to revive an old friend. It was a worthwhile and beautiful hour. We sat together, speaking of such things as the sun and the birds, and of course, the Mystery. That absurd demon to follow us to the ends of our existence, that providential question plaguing the most, by all other senses, affluent minds. Nerim and I both, needless to say, had been so plagued. 
         We discussed infinity, inevitability, love, transcendence. We wondered at the stars, though they had not been present. We pined for a higher world, yet reveled in the pleasures of this one. We questioned all questions, and were satisfied by receiving no answer. When at last we had completed our shared Remembrance, he carefully rose, and offered me a withering hand in assistance.

         As we stepped to rejoin the procession, a small cloaked figure moved swiftly across the ground in our direction. An intense surge of love and memory flooded me. Catai. When she drew close, she pulled down her hood, and shifted her penetrating yet compassionate green-eyed gaze between Nerim and I.
         “All is well?” Her words were quick and simply spoken, but they were the first I’d heard her say in this life. The significance of that astounded me. How I had missed her, all these years…
         “Yes, Catai.” The mention of her name so immediately struck her that she fiercely threw her eyes upon my own, as if in interrogation. Her glare was merciless.
         Then, something clicked. It was subtle, but I watched it happen. It was something around the edges of her irises, and it just shifted ever-so-slightly in the right direction. She Remembered me. We shared a gaze, then, for a few seconds, before she broke it by looking back at Nerim.
         “Very good.” Catai bowed to Nerim and I, then scurried off to attend to whoever else was in need. She didn’t leave, however, before stealing me a small sideward glance, as if to memorize every detail of my Self for future reference.
         “So, they have Catai helping out, then? No wonder she looks so young…” The tone of Nerim’s voice troubled me slightly. At his words, I recalled the lives in which we had been rivals for such a woman’s love. So she had been his lover, as well, though she did not recognize him.
         It didn’t matter. We were so old now, and so world-weary, that the troubles of our respective pasts seemed a concern easy to forgive. I smiled at Nerim, and watched as he Remembered his own pain in witness to all Catai and I had shared. I sensed a motion of fear in him, but he too recognized this to be a time above times, and above troubles. I gently grabbed a hold of his arm, and lead him up towards the place of rising.
         Here, I realized, we were truly between worlds. It must have been mid-morning down in the lower land, where the tenuous bonds between people and the earth were tied and split as easily as reeds in strong wind. What a simple, yet mysteriously complicated experience. I breathed in the cool spring air, so full of natural life, and exhaled, releasing with it the last of my attachment to this world.
         I am free. With that magnificent catalyst arrived what would, by all interpretation, be phantom wings. Crystal wings I remembered having, but which I had long since amputated to subject myself to the trials of the lower land. And, at last, they were with me once again. My bones suddenly did not ache so heavily, and my weariness lifted itself higher than I could reach without an effort that would contradict its own purpose. I was as alive as I had ever been, though I knew myself no longer to be amongst the living.
         And. I. Am. Free. The thought sprung me into the spirit’s sky, and before any measurable second I was soaring, ever higher, to what I’d always been moving towards. And Icarus be damned, I would make it. I closed my eyes and let the warmth wrap itself around me, consume me. Home.
         
Home. I opened my eyes, and was stunned to see the energy in it’s full wonder surrounding me. My rest was treasured, but I was still alive in soul and spirit. I looked about myself, taking in every aspect of my new world. It is truly a beautiful world. My companions and I spend our days reminiscing, or Helping. But where we are, and what it means … my friend, that is a story for another time.


“…and our heads approach a density reminiscent of the infinite connectivity of the center of the sun” – The Books, 'Smells Like Content'