Within the Ashes

There was the beginning, and there was the first life. I was born even then from the ashes, inside the smoke-filled pit they called a cave. Those were the days when men were animals and had not lost that sense of the greater astral, the beyond. I do not remember my first life; I do not remember my first body. I only recall the silver-plumed bird that appeared before me like a hazy spectral being, the god that consumed me in fire and gave me a piece of its soul.

The second life. The third life. Fourth life. Fifth. Sixth seventh eighthninthtenth --

I was born; I died, often of my own hand until the cycle gradualized and formed in front of me like a physical track. Then I realized life, and for the first time, I exhilarated in it. I conquered and I reigned. I sapped the world of is paltry knowledge, easily outstripping the weak man with whom I had once shared much. I marked my posterity in history; I ruled both Egypt and the Ganga; I was Xerxes and Han WuDi. When I tired of it all, I let everything burn in delicious flames. I let the unreal cities topple into fragments of rubble. Whole empires and thousands of lives accompanied me to my burial tomb, my fragrant nest of frankincense and blood, myrrh and tears.

How many lives? How many pleasures? How many deaths? I lost count, and the formidable cycles echoed like reminders. I followed the whispers; I concentrated my efforts into remembering the first life, my conversion into immortality. I returned to the land of lotus and sunk into meditation. For the first time, I experienced natural death and old age. I accreted wisdom and unlocked the secrets of consciousness. And within the confines of my being, I discovered the essence of benu, senmurv, fenghuang -- phoenix.

I felt Enlightenment. The fragrance of eternity crystallized over my form and I had a vision of the bird that filled my being with its transcendental voice and shattered my soul. It was the ultimate gift and the ultimate curse. I held reincarnation within my palms and wept, for the path had no beginning or end: I was walking along the Möbius.

That was millenia ago -- hundreds of lives ago. My lives weigh like a sea of pebbles within my heart, and I am heavy and ready to die. Perhaps you have seen me as I stumble through the vast and endless canyon, utterly alone. I am the rude woman at the grocery store. I am the President of the United States. I am an Indonesian child. I am lost.

And yet out of each life time I forge hope. I hear the murmurs of the potential of immortality. I search for them and I find them. I have watched the alchemists and their potions; I have watched the scientists wrestle with the confines of the genome. They are blind. They do not understand that they seek infinite death, without hope of nirvana. And yet it is possible that the blind may lead the seeing, that the fool can teach the wise. Within the scope of eternity, perhaps one of them will unearth the key to life and to death.

I am patient.

I can wait.

Word Count: 574