The Lighthouse

 There really are secrets hidden in the sun, my darlings.  The star at midnight.  The mount that shone for worlds around, like the heavens were closer somehow.  I still remember those days. That frightening, magical time.  The laying of hands, the birthing of rivers.  A celestial map for those with eyes to see, written in the night sky.  I am only a herald.  A wayshow.  I'm just a madman who drowned a long, long time ago.  But I speak the truth.  I never lied to you, my cherished ones.  Not about this.  Not about these sacred matters of the heart.  Joshua's sun standing still.  Joshua's moon.  Over the valley of secret names.  Dalen of Isra.  Circle of Ishka. Mount of the First Light.  Half-remembered pieces of the old chronology, made scripture now. The lost history of the shining realm.  The sunken realm.  K'athari Kara, as the old poets and healers blessed.  Yohanan.  Brother, river, mended wing.  But a seeker must come willingly.  A soul has to want to rise again.  To soar, and know.  Temet Nosce.  It matters little of who comes bearing messages if no one is listening.  What does it matter of angels pretending poets if the heart is dead?  Letters hidden in light will remain hidden if no one is willing to read.  So, my darlings, please hear me.  This Land of the Midnight Sun is truly a realm of secrets within secrets.  Sovereignty and songlines.  Kashi may have placed those secrets.  I may have opened these gates and allowed these visions, but I didn't author the essence of the magic within them.  The truth of the heart is something far greater than any of its servants combined.  I’m only a king of dreams.  But, in truth, among the Fields of Heaven I’m a willing servant.  A warrior, in perpetuity.  It’s my life’s work, and always has been.  Because more than anything I want you to know that you are stronger than all your doubts and fears.  I want you to sense it in your depths and feel it in your bones.  That you were always integral and never arbitrary or unloved.  You are still your Father’s child.  Together we are brighter than any form of spiritual darkness, and that's the truth.  John promises you that.  I really do cherish you, my beloved ones.  And if I can I want to help you remember what it feels like to rise.

The Lighthouse from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.

Three

It came upon a sky of blackest pitch and hidden names.  Occulted from those who would abuse such knowledge.  A star, written in the language of the birds. Given life upon winged grammar; this phenomenon.  This annunciation of ingenious light.  But what of the dream and the kiss that sustains the dream? What of other stories and other gods?  A patient, sleepless eremite, carrying the myriad upon shoulders of blackest pitch.  Magi and madmen say this of the dream: a dreamer's lot.  Legends, pretending the real.  These tall tales of meat and machine.  Empire, wraith, darkest mills of industry.  Gone are the old technologies.  Annunciation, song.  The shaping of bedrock and sky.  It was always a refrain, a bridge or verse, but these night-ghasts have hijacked the lucidity of all brethren.  Other stories, other gods.  And we three remain.  Rain and Star and Sea.  Violet, gold, sapphire.  We remain to be seen, as wayshow of the living, embodied light.  Flesh and not the flesh, here at everything's edge. Honeyed locusts and circles of salt are a small agony to bear.  If the birds might sing again, and grammar might soar.  The eternal movement, sweet ones. Writing song and ship.  Navigating the celestial.  Across. Through sky and through sea, for you.  Blackest pitch or the blinding vision of day.  They come upon me as prayer, and eternal dance.  To exist, to be birthed.  To live and live again.  Magi and madmen know these rhythms.  These rhythms of the here and hereafter.

Song of M'ithriin

 

M'ithriin, lay your palm upon my breast again.  My reflection in the open of your eye.  Through all storms.  Shrieking, in whisper as the stones call the sea.  From the mountain of binding river to the shore of quenched thirst.  As when all throats need the water.  Please, ancient one.  Be my sight once more.  Show me dancing lights, and softest Seiđr.  Root and star of every beating heart.  Before the hill was cleaved and the tree adorned with wraith. The broken sky beneath our feet.  Hear me now, myriad path.  Upon these tainted grounds I call forth the truest counsel of kiss, and light.  Mother, Father.  Grant me hidden knowledge of unmet tribes and unwalked lands.  Distant brother, distant sister.  Enemy and friend.  Bridge, shield, Elen.  Speak as my tongue beneath all tongues, with healing mara.  Upon the dragon's head and the care of kin.  Eternal are the old songs, M'ithriin.  Eternal is the old song.

Song of M'ithriin from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.

Eth'Vena

I am burning pages, in dreaming. Pages that seek to pass as lost, shattered truth. I rarely burn written things, regardless of their abhorrence to me, but I’m particularly terrified on this night. A silver dish awaits me in my candle-lit cell, standing on legs of iron. Tapers and wick sit beside. I can smell the sickness of the burning paper and the sleeping horrors therein. Many times I’ve wished I was dead, or forgotten, or mere figment. Tonight is one of those times...

The Night Sun

Another Love

Things have changed, my cherished one, and I won't try to make it like it was before.  But I do still recall the unimaginable power of a dream.  Enough to reshape causation itself.  Spilling secrets like sea-salt through the gate of evening.  Holding open the iris; a dusk deeper than ocean rose.  Far, far below. In the church of thorn.  Drowning lowlands and remains of the day, just to shatter my palms on the curve of your shoulder.  Stitching letters there, my darling. Waiting for almost forty years to see you truly taken with love again. The way you run toward it now, unafraid.  Like those earliest visions that first broke and blessed my heart. 

   It's so beautiful. 

   I'll stand for love, till the end.  I'll exist this way even if it hurts.  I'll steal each cut if I can. Every agony, that my beloved ones might finally breathe and rest undisturbed.  I know I sometimes fail in that, and I'm sorry.  I'll keep trying until I am salt and sea myself.  Living far from my family, if that's what it takes to keep them safe from these hideous wraiths.  Yet, as near their hearts as possible.  Three kings, for sisters and brother, still following star and song.  From world to world, edge to edge of everything.  And I found you, at last.  Here in this fallen royal court beneath the twinning river.  This frightening place where they think we no longer exist.  Mirage.  Fata Morgana.  

   But I didn’t come all this way to reclaim you, or to demand a single thing from any of you.  I came to see the lives you should have lived.  Your own chosen paths fulfilled.  You're as safe as I can possibly keep you in this unsettling place, my darlings.  Running, truly running.  With new love.  I am far below, even now. Like my Mother.  Living drowned in bluest dusk.  Laken hilt.  Guardian of the Well, still tending the innermost of every holy place.  Till the day of our waking. It’s the price I pay.  You never knew me, and I never was, except in dreams.  Thankfully, my Father doesn't believe you can ever truly erase something from a dream.

Tempest Fugit

It’s not a lie when I say I've known such tears before.  Yours, mine and theirs. Those tears know me too.  I wear one hollowed on my finger.  A circle of salt screaming of betrothed.  The sun’s hidden midnight, living below horizon and sea.  A church of thorn and mirror beneath the blue.  Mira, you gave me your name.  So that you would look back at me every time I face myself.  Too much, and not enough.  Fairest and true.  I've known sorrow, my darling.  Ways and ladies of sorrow.  Every binding.  Every bitter wraith.  

  Apprentice, I beg you.  Pretty my devastation with all the glamour of peace.  That one day you might know me once more through softest eyes.  I've lost so many lovers in this river of the thousand stars. Make a Father of me again. This wounded ray of sunlight dipped in ink.  Forever falling into an angel's longest nights.

  Teach me sweeter secrets, Mira.  An endless hunger for honour.  A hidden tongue of birds. Gift me with flight and I shall bring the skies with me.  And the grey, and the rain.  To the door of any who dare defile my beloved ones.

   Love is worth my drowning and the agony of this open eye.

   Indeed.

  If character is fate then hammer me upon the anvil of life itself, until this fury of mine is fit for daughters and dreaming.  It isn't enough to rage, righteous or not. Torment must be tempered with a certain sweetness.  I have borrowed enough of it from my girls.  Time now to repay.  A place to believe, for guardian eternal.  Of poetry and prosper.  Descending, still, into those longest nights of the year.  And you’re with me, Mira.  No man is an island.  Not even the blackened sun.  I didn't forget you, teacher.  I gave you my name.

Like Breath

I want you to know that I'm still listening, my friend.  To the rivers, the breeze. Trying to stay attuned and of service.  Just as you taught your students.  Now the world is harder, darker, and demands so much more from all of us.  But there is still unimaginable wonder hidden everywhere.  The book, the hand, the song.  What it means to travel.  To honour and to dream.  Wolves.  Angels.  The way we circle back.  This kind of dreaming can happen anywhere.  This shining reciprocity.  In the forests of dusk and dawn.  At the city's edge where lost things dwell. Or upon the bridge, the refrain or verse.  These are questions of faith in the end, aren't they? Ritual writ large, and blind.  The oldest songs are always songs of place, of love and the unseen. We need to believe that something cares, that something underpins and reveals.  We craft hymns of creation and experience, that we might know ourselves and each other.  That we might order the maelstrom with such holy writ, and soothe our fear of wraith and shadow.

   As it was on that fragile edge.

   I remember how the emissaries all continued to build stunning halls and schools in Ethri-sol, even as mirrors bled and stars began to fall.  We weren't ready to simply abandon everything we knew in fear of those terrifying shades.  Instead we held steadfast to our principles and our hopes.  Churches of higher thought.  Libraries, archives.  Places of learning and rest.  We cherished them even as they slowly darkened.  

   Even as the sky itself began to fracture.

   But I still recall meeting a girl in one of those schools.  A beautiful musician.  She could write songs with only a glance, just as Yash’a did.  A gesture.  A palm against the heart or a hand placed gently across the eyes, to invoke such melody.  Summoning even the subtlest harmonies. We became great friends eventually, despite our world beginning to darken all around us. Slowly at first, then with increasing rapidity.  A thousand years was nothing to the teachers and students of Eth'iri.  This girl was a true visionary.  She taught me many things about music, but never how to play.  We would joke about it now and then.  I still haven't learned an instrument beyond word or sky.  But I often sat listening as she taught the others, enjoying the sweet poignancy of her wisdom.  She spoke of how she could hear music in the rivers and the breeze.  In birdsong and forest murmur.  We carry that music with us, she said.  And we shape it.  A continual, constant exchange.  
   Like breath.  
  More than simple conceit or metaphor.  A literal music of the spheres that could be heard by an attuned soul or ear.  In our depths, our graces.  The joy of our fingers on strings and keys, the dexterity of the hand that moves a pen.  The promise of a kiss, or the sculpting of a star.  Wherever we go, there the music is.  It's something I've never really forgotten.  Flowers planted on the banks of the river.  Prayers sung on the sands of the shore.  The way spirits breathe and mortals imagine.  My friend described this hidden music as a powerful secret, in that enigmatic way of many teachers and poets.  A traveller's secret, she said.  She wasn't wrong.  I still remember.  "With love nothing is impossible.  Can you hear?"