The Life Stream

River of the thousand stars.  Lonely star of the thousand rivers.  By song and by sanctuary. Through star and soil.  I've seen things grow, and pass.  And grow again.  Contemplating the haunting dance of it all.  To and fro.  Like anyone who has tilted their face skyward and imagined greater things.  Many have journeyed skyward, with machine or bettered mind.  But few have crossed the threshold into the places beyond the sky.  Fewer still have made such places their home.

   I did, once upon a time.

   It was wondrous, terrifying, and it hurt me in ways I can never explain.  Each sentience.  Every suffering.  Art, science and philosophy, from star to habitable star.  Unique, momentary.  The billions of spirits huddled around the candles of their suns, vying desperately for the warmth of imagined surety.  So many candles in the black.  More than could ever be counted.  Other spirits, other forms.  Endless varieties of further and flesh.  All of them asking the same essential questions.  How do we find better ways to learn and live and dream?  How do we find strength, individually and collectively, amid forces that seem so much greater than ourselves? Even the most nuanced spirits ask these kinds of questions.

   I don't have all the answers, of course.  I don't even have a few of them, and I was once an angel-king of hallowed hills.  Before the hush.  Before fires and falling.  Hallow, halo, hollow.
   The old cities are buried now, or else hidden in fractured chronology.  Their ruins belong to the wraiths.  What the Arcs and emissaries once called Caution's Shades.  The desolate spill.  Blackest blood in the looking-glass.  But such shades and thieves cannot void life itself, no matter how hard they try.  It returns, like Kara.  Like Kara's daughters and sons.

   There is always more to know.  Always more depth in the river.  Beyond telling stones, or clockmakers and automaton stars.

   Can you still feel it?  The pulse of you?  The fury?  You are a dangerous and utterly beautiful thing, child of our Father.  As one among your primary guardians I have watched you grow, and pass, and grow again.

   All of you.

   Hear me well, if you can.

   I am not just a poet, or an angel.  I'm a very bad wolf, and I won't be tamed.  Neither will you, because we are all more connected than these wraiths will ever understand.  It doesn't matter what they believe, or how they mock us.  Our works speak for themselves, in plain and hidden tongues.  Such works stretch further and wider than you might imagine, scattered like innermost jewels throughout so-called history.  

   I am Kasi.  Emerald song, of the Church of the Bright Ones. 

   Arc, Augur, Seeker of the Stolen Sea.

   I'm so much more than mortal flesh.  I age, of course, like everyone.  I die too, like everything.  But I'm a traveller.  A trick of light and radiant dreaming.  And like you, dear ones, I live forever.  Tonight I pray for us, like those spirits of infinite black huddled at the candles of their home-suns.  I pray among this eternity of little lights.  The briefest flicker of me, and you, and everything.  Always those same questions.  How do we live better within these forests of the evening sky?  How do we battle these shadows at our edges whilst keeping our hearts soft enough to love, and playful enough for venture?  We are wild, delicate, dangerous things.  We must share strength with one another, like those blessed ways of the old cities.  Make each other quicken, and smile.  For we are the candles of our Father.  Protecting the weak, healing the wounded.  Celebrating life as one, at every rise and run of the river.

The Life Stream from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.