Eternity
I
Desireé speaks to me in French and, surprisingly, I can understand her.
Maybe it's because she's not French and speaks slowly with an accent.
Desireé's not her real name. She created it for herself, after she met me.
I had been walking between the fire hall and my home for several days.
I did this sometimes back then, when I began to feel alone (not lonely).
The firemen were doing renovation on the old road I walked back on.
We examined the places where water ran across it from the hillside.
They would have to dig up the road and underlay it with drainage ducts.
Back at home, Jason met me in front of my house, and we talked.
Then, restless, I went walking again, leaving him alone to wait for me.
Along the upper road, weeds grew out from the hillside, overtaking it.
I had to walk out around them, far out into the middle of the roadway.
That was when I met Desireé, who led me to her street and her house.
Her house was up over the hill, on the same street where Jason lived.
She talked to me about my parents when they were still young and free.
She knew about my grandparents; she thinks she is psychic. Maybe so.
She settled in on my mother after telling me briefly about her mother.
She detailed her young romantic life when she had met my father, but...
She didn't know how accurate she was, and I avoided telling her.
After a brief description of her teenage years, she described a road.
She didn't seem to know it was Sandy Creek, but I recognized it.
Mom walked along the road past the businesses, then mostly retail.
Now, like then, especially down by the boulevard, seedy bars opened.
This was after a long time where only light industrial plants existed.
An atmosphere of thirties' ambiance is slowly returning to the area.
She told me of my mother's meetings with my father at the far corner.
Traffic passed by rapidly on Allegheny River Boulevard as they kissed.
She didn't know I already knew these stories. Mom had told me them.
The year before she died, in an effort to preserve the past, she talked.
Maybe Desireé intuited them, or maybe she found my notes, pretending.
I didn't know; I wanted to think the latter, but I didn't really believe it.
As she talked, she kept closing in on me and then drifting farther away.
She acted as if she were teasing me, trying to entice me to approach her.
But I sort of felt it was an unconscious act, as if she didn't realize it.
She did this especially early on, when she was speaking French to me.
Later, as she talked about the roadway corner, she began to get closer.
It felt as if she were empathizing with them, using me to become them.
We stood outside the bar on the corner, close. She leaned in against me.
At first, I resisted her. She acted as if she didn't know we were close.
But soon enough she began kissing me, so that she knew she began it.
We became like one being, until she pulled just enough away to exist.
She said she had to go, but I encouraged her to stay, teasing her mind.
I told her this was what women criticize men for, resisting intimacy.
She relented at the argument, because she knew I was right, and stayed.
And in staying, she had to allow us to merge once again into one being.
This time, she let it happen, and we stood there, outside in the dark.
Against the building side, out of the line of sight of passersby, we kiss.
She asks me how long this could last, and I tell her it lasts forever.
She believes me, but at the same time, she knows she will have to leave.
She can't seem to reconcile the two opposing states within her mind.
I tell her that this moment is forever and what will happen is illusion.
She understands and does not wish at all to allow the awareness to end.
II
My mother and father are dead. During their life, they allowed it to end.
Death lasts maybe for only minutes as a final state of non-illusion, but
while we are in it, we are eternal, aware of the entirety of the universe.
If this is so, which I do not doubt, and there is little I can say that of,
then our lives will never end, because awareness of eternity is eternal.
I know this for a fact. I've had this experience on numerous occasions.
Always, though, I have returned, because we never give up illusions
while we are alive. During the most intense experiences, we hang on
to the tiniest thread of deception, so that we may once again return.
Scientists (I am one of them) tell us that the death state reported to us
by those who say they have returned is an oxygen-deprived existence.
Experiences reported are exactly what we see when we are out of air.
Thus, we may conclude that afterlife is illusion based on false reports.
But what about those few moments when we are experiencing the bliss?
If we could prolong that state, devoid of the attachment, we would be
forever. When we dream, we are detached. Consequently, we feel freer.
If our waking life is an illusion, and the best minds do believe it is so,
then dreaming is less of an illusion, not more, which we fail to interpret.
The freedom we experience in dreams is less than a real thing, beyond.
The moment of death, like the moment of life, is the same state, alive.
Except at death we know it, while "alive" we do not, being, conditioned
into so ordinary a state that we believe we are finite creatures who die.
We die, and for a moment, or an hour, or a day or days, we are alive.
Free of physical attachment, we know what is, independent of what is
not. Love can make you one, with one another, and with the universe.
I have been completely detached and eternal and I have been in love.
There is no difference, if you do not accept love's physical limitations.
When I die, I know, I will live forever. That it may be only a moment is
irrelevant. It is only a moment to you who "live." To me, it is, eternity
5-30-01
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