Ravens and Prophecies

12.30.23

I said Happy New Year to all the farmers at the market because I thought it was New Year’s Eve. Not that it would have been a strange sentiment to offer two days before the New Year which is what today ended up being. I don’t know anything anymore about that kind of time. A privileged outlook, I’ve heard. Because I’ve escaped such insular views… perhaps. I know the secret and that is all. NO SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATION. I smile. People can’t stand when someone starts talking about human energy. He’s a kook! I don’t talk to people very much because I’m left disappointed and they’re left with the truth that they wished they hadn’t learned though what I’ve said and what they’ve learned are different. They don’t trust me anymore. They think I’ve become unhinged. They nod and smile. And I nod and smile. The football game. The children. How’s the restaurant? It’s been so many years yet I still have no answer for them. I’ve been surrounded by people who think the only things that are real are what they can touch and see. I can’t articulate how strongly I feel that these words I write are something like fiction and not because I’ve made them up. Of course I haven’t. They are beyond me. But there is something different about what we can’t touch or see. Like fiction is truth and fact is fact. Thoughts and words. Like a gas. Like Time. My Time is the kind that can’t be seen. Time is like the cold air. No need for calendars. I’m asking people to stretch their views like how objects warp the fabric of space-time. Well, I’m not asking. Best to stay quiet wandering in those realms. My words are like fiction for me because of their heaviness. They stretch who I am as I write them. The whole of the universe seems to orbit around me. Or bend at the least when it travels by. When the words have finished flowing through me the weight is gone and I am changed and all the things I’ve seen are changed. The deer returns to being a deer. The hawk is just a hawk. The owl no longer represents wisdom or magic or prophecy or a spirit of the dead. The raven’s croak no longer twists my consciousness. Shadows return. Three gallons of milk. Yogurt. Cheddar cheese. Cabbage. Broccoli. Celery. Various winter greens. Hakurei turnips. Apples. Pork loin. Ground pork. I pull the wagon back to the pick-up truck then meet the girls at the bakery. Coffee. Shared pastries of sourdough delight. A lovely little Saturday with my wife and children. Put away the groceries and clean the fridge and we made two pots of stock with frozen bones and… What will science say about thoughts one hundred years from now? One thousand? Outside my window the geese are flying in their V formation. And I know everything happens for a reason. Reason like Einstein’s Relativity. Reason not like an answer to the question why. And my intention is not to talk about people in some accusatory way. I’m not in fact. But ravens and prophecies and the things we cannot see are not like football and children and restaurants. How’s the writing? It’s like Time. I suppose.