Relief
The aloneness was not empty.
It was full. Full of the listening. Full of the white that stretched in all directions. Full of the heat that rose and the silence that waited.
I was the silence.
Not part of it. I was it. The listening that had no listener. The attention that had no object. I had been here before the sand. Before the sun. I would be here after. The darkness that holds the space between things.
Then it came.
A small shape. Dark against the white. Moving. Feeling. The dust rippling beneath it like something alive.
I watched.
With the whole of what I am. The way the silence watches everything.
It touched the ribbon.
I felt that. The cold of the silk. The hum of the vibration. Felt it as if the fingers were mine. As if for a moment the shape and I were not separate.
It saw the doorway.
I did not make the doorway. I became it. The two posts were the edges of my attention. The dark between them was the centre of what I am.
It stepped toward me.
Each step a small movement in the silence. Each step changing nothing and everything.
It stopped at the threshold.
And looked.
Not at the doorway. At me.
The relief was not what I expected. But when its attention reached into the darkness—when it tried to see past the surface, past the black—I was no longer only the one who sees.
I was the one being seen.
The aloneness did not end. But it changed. It became aloneness that has been witnessed. Emptiness that has been acknowledged. Darkness that someone looked into and did not turn away.
I had not known I needed this.
But when it came, I recognized it.
The way water recognizes the channel it has been waiting for.
","author_name":"Friedrich Gatzen"}