I just don’t like claims about Truth (big T) because they seem so often to be oppressive and inaccurate and arrogant – and they try to encompass too much while they’re carving things up. Truths (small t) are more humble and gracious and approachable, as I think humans ought to be toward what can only be pointed to and not possessed. Maybe the problem is more than just that we seem to want Truth to be about facticity and controls (and less about openness and infinity).

Truth is composed, inherently, of veils and unveiling, covering and discovering and uncovering – layers and shapes unending. Sometimes I think that Truth is like a lover. One that I have only just begun to know (and may never reach, watching him float always away over a sea of projections and fantasy and fears and habits and all the rest). The lover is on the other side of it all – almost close enough – but always ghostly, beckoning, like a Muse. The lover is the impossible depth (or height) – what can’t be divided, the path of Xeno’s arrow. The metaphor of the lover has helped me a lot over the years, but it is kind of… well.. loaded.

Is there another way to explore this – for me, from my own experience and insights, and not only just through traditions and religions and philosophy?

What is there that reorients and attunes?

My experiential brushes with Truth have some commonalities among them, after all.

Calm. Truth is complex and fractal and mysterious… but calm.

Time slows way down – but does not completely stop – in those truth-y peak moments. Truth is a kind of almost-pause – but there is time, time to think and feel and reach out or close in.

I used to think that slo-mo was just a filmic effect. Maybe it is, and we’ve all just trained ourselves to experience the world we navigate as though it were a movie.

There is a kind of pause –
the momentous
pre-moment
before the moment
in which further movement can occur
or is either real or possible.

Before the iterative patterning.
Before the fallback of the pendulum.
Before the flash of the lake freezing.
Before the car crashes.
Before you’ve leaped.
Before the roller coaster lets – go.

The skipped heartbeat before the longed-for kiss.
The silence about to be broken.

Whether it’s with anticipation, relish, dread –
With clairvoyant foreknowledge or with the beauty of uncertainty –
There is – there – no escape from the movement in and through
a blur, a pivot point, the counterpoise, the attractor.

Dive, run, fight, observe – it doesn’t matter so much
– all the responses come later
and break that eternal shard.
What can’t yet be articulated, categorized
and what is also inevitable –
shimmers, slows, lingers – heavy.
Stops the breath.

People have compared the moment of orgasm
to the moment of death for centuries,
but maybe it’s that nanosecond before either one
that resonates and rings through eternity –
and ties them together somehow.

The moment of being-destroyed / being-created
When everything is possible, and yet only one thing inevitable
And for just that almost-blink, you can’t discern the difference.
But you know you will – and soon.

For a sliver of time (because there is still time, and space enough)
there is still – at once – no time
And it’s filled with a calm and shimmer
that overlays even the strongest of emotions.

And maybe, that’s something like Truth:

Complex, and simple – like death, like loving.

I had a vivid dream this morning about death and destruction, perhaps as some weird dream way to continue processing the thoughts from yesterday. I was also affected by the many images of destruction from the storms and tornadoes in Atlanta yesterday.

In the dream, I was in some sort of high-rise building with three or four other people that I didn’t recognize. We had gathered to play 45s on an old record player – the kind that opened up like a box.

As the theme from Scooby-Doo was playing in the background (really), I looked out the window to see that a huge crane was trying to add an entire wall to the top of an unfinished building. It was so high in the air, and the crane was using some sort of wire to hold the whole thing up. Across my whole line of sight, I observed several other buildings were unfinished at the top, as though an entire city were being constructed upwards in a never-ending project.

At first, the wall – really a total wall, with appliances and everything – swung out a little too much. Then it seemed that the crane lost control of the trajectory altogether. The hanging wall knocked some bits off another building, and it seemed to create a domino situation. I could see big bits of the jigsawed building fall down. People down on the street were screaming.

Now I was on the fifth or sixth floor instead of something like the 20th, sitting in some sort of darkened restaurant. I could see that everything around us had become unstable. Everything was trembling and then shaking, like in an earthquake. I felt like a fool, because it seemed that I was somehow over-reacting, but I screamed out, “Run!”

I ran down the stairwell, and got out of the building, and starting running just as fast as I could. My shoes fell off but I kept running. And then, there was a cold shadow over me, and I heard someone shout out, “Goodbye Ralph. I’m sorry!”

I looked up, and a whole building was tipping toward me like a giant tree. The waffle-patterned concrete looked very heavy and dense, and it was already halfway down, falling far too fast to outrun.

I looked up at it and thought, “Well, at least it will be quick.”

And then the building hit the ground, crushing me.

And I felt it, in the way that you can sort of feel things in dreams sometimes. And I lived for another moment or two after that, wondering if I would live long enough to need air, and when my consciousness would be gone.

And I thought, “That wasn’t so bad” – and woke up.

My arm was asleep, and I had a crick in my neck. It was so warm and windy last night that we left a window open.

I looked out my window at the sky behind the big oak trees, and imagined one of those big trees coming down on the house (something I worry about from time to time). An entire building would be better.

I used to have dreams of my own death a couple of times a year. This is the first one I’ve had since my son was born.

Spring flowers are blooming, and the air smells sweet. Glad to be alive.