A Journey Kept in Fragments
Here begins the record of a journey kept in fragments, said to be drawn from the memory of one who strayed into the borderlands of creation. These words are not their own, for their tongue faltered, and much of what they saw could not be spoken. Yet their gestures, silences, and the broken utterances left behind were gathered by those who tend the Root Tongue lore, and from them this account has been arranged.
It is to be read as a remembrance of an encounter with the world in its unfinished state. What follows is testimony, set down by those who preserve it, as faithfully as it could be kept, though always with the knowledge that translations into the common vernacular trail behind the living truth like footprints in sand.
Before we knew what was happening, a shroud was removed from our sight, and the ordered sense of the world was broken. Nothing was one way nor the other, but wavering, as though creation itself had not yet chosen its form but lived in a continuous swirling state of becoming. We were shaken, as if woken from a dream by a hand both stern and tender. The uncertainty struck like a painful, rude awakening as all that we had known or thought we knew collapsed. Yet poetry, older than any word, stirred within us, whispering from the hidden chambers of the soul. It was a memory of song uttered before the first dawn, of myths still forming in secret.
We walked then into a realm where shadow and light contend, and we saw how the radiance did not conquer the dark but threaded into it, weaving a secret correspondence. For all things call to their likeness across time, and the dark echo answers. The air pressed about us, sweeping and restless, filled with the same striving that has labored since the earth’s beginnings.
We looked, and the world seemed unfinished, trembling as a work left half-made upon the anvil. The night stretched out into forever, long and heavy, starless and without moon, and we despaired of morning. Yet far to the east a seam of pale fire appeared, no more than a sliver, and our heart stirred, for the smallest glimmer of dawn is enough to summon a wanderer forward.
And then a field of dazzling brilliance opened before us, as if a veil were torn aside. We then went down into deepening waters, each step carrying us farther from what we had known. There the voice of nature rose to meet us, clear and solemn as the world itself speaking. It told us we were not alone nor apart from its making but entwined within it, strand among endless strands.
Together we entered the infinite vastness of the universe, and felt the trembling of the heavens pass through. The hidden stars stirred, the vault above seemed to breathe, and a wonder came upon us sharp as lightning, bright as joy, filled with awe. And we knew then that the world’s tale was not yet complete, nor was ours, for both were threads of a single tapestry still being woven warp by weft.
In that place we learned that gesture precedes the word. Our body moved before thought, and in the movement dwelt a meaning older than speech. A lifted hand, a turning of the head, the measure of a step—all spoke with a depth more complex, layered, and profound than language could bear.
And in returning to such gestures, we found they never ended in themselves. Each one pointed beyond itself, like an arrow that vanishes into the night sky. They summoned us into a field of intentionality, where every motion was gathered into relation. Nothing stood apart: each breath, each shift of weight, each stirring of air was woven together in an inseparable bond.
Yet all was porous, spacious, elusive. Meanings slipped through the mind as swiftly as they formed, a continuous slippage that would not hold still. What was shown to us was irreducible, unreadable, unspeakable, yet no less true for that.
We felt pressed into a journey toward the extreme margins, where language breaks and cannot follow, where forms arise as vapers and dissolve into mists. There the world unfolded in a rhizomatic architecture, sprouting here, collapsing there, without center or crown. Each gesture became a spontaneous act, uncodified, unbidden, as if creation itself were forever beginning again.
The terrain lay between construction and collapse, forever trembling. Ambiguity clothed it like a mantle, heavy and thick yet alive. And as we moved within it, we knew this was no error or confusion: it was the very nature of things. For the world has always been uncontainable, always spilling beyond what words can hold. And its first speech is gesture, pointing always to what lies beyond - unutterable - trailing off like crystalline echoes into the infinite.
Interesting. I was struck by this phrase: "...a field of dazzling brilliance opened before us, as if a veil were torn aside." The concept of "dazzling brilliance opening" popped against the larger exposition. It made my heart speed up in anticipation.
It reminds me of a concept of reincarnation I had years ago, and more recently of changes in general. When contemplating reincarnation it came to me that we are bundles of infinite strands of beads (that is the vision in my mind), each strand was a different color.
When we die, the bundles would unravel losing some of the strands and acquiring new strands from other bundles weaving into our bundle changing aspects of who we become in the next manifested life, whether we had one strand left, or many left, to join and become our new bundle.
This would explain how we are, in a larger context, all parts of each other, constantly re-weaving with new strands, reincarnation or changes, or redefining, it serves the metamorphosis (changing forms), while the infinite form would be a mesh created from us all.
It is comforting to me to see myself as not having to go through the death experience alone, but that it is just changing form within a continuum.