Nothing Ever Has Happened

Like wind that has no power, like a wave without sound, void of temperature or sensation, rolling past a body without shape or skin…the thought came over me. More than the thought, the moment of clear understanding, like the bell I ring every few minutes, sending its deep resonating power through my ears, penetrating the still air and layers of consciousness. I felt the moment come through me, roll through me, like an understanding that has traveled with a comet, past stars, though many outer levels, into this labyrinth. “I cannot be born” Oh. A tear stings. “Die.” Oh. “Exist.” Ouch. “Or change.”
The candle flickers in front of me. I take a deep breath. The body does. The body is born, the body dies, it changes…but the thing that moves through it, that thing inside this breathing flesh, it does not. There is no beginning, no end. It is. The thing with no shape, no characteristics, no form. I see.
Thank you. Thank you for the cosmic look into the blackness. Nothing ever has happened. The question I asked so long ago finally means something, the question is itself the answer. Depending on who does the asking.
Nothing happens to the unnamable. Nothing happens to the void, the void in which I am part of. Things happen to the body, or at least they seem to. The body can grow old and die and still, nothing ever will happen.
Two things happen simultaneously. One of flesh and nature, the other an eternal cosmic stillness that resides inside the movement of the body and light.
I sit in the garage, while the cold summer wind tries to make its way through a fleece blanket. This does not have to be learned in a cave deep in the Himalayas. It can be understood in a basement, with only a flickering flame and the sound of typing and sporadic coughs in the background. It can happen to a girl who talks slower, as deliberately as she can as other thoughts vie for space in her brain. And as thoughts seep in like oil into the bay, as they move like tendrils of smoke from the incense that burns a couple of steps away, a soft wave of knowledge rolls over the shores of consciousness.
Oh, and the tears.
The picture morphs like heat waves, taking on a manly harshness, becoming gentle, becoming a monster of blue and yellow and then a vague Mona Lisa smile. This woman from the corner house, twenty minutes from a place I call home. She is a part of me now, as much as she ever was, as much as I was blind to understand it. As I am one and there is no other. The body I never knew, but we are One. My mouth will move tonight, and while nothing has happened, it will. And I will watch and you will show and I will talk.
You were never born, I will never die.