Tag: Immortality

Mr. Shiny Buttons

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

At a recent retreat, I was doing some tracking along the fenceline of my awareness when a starling flew from my right eye. Her captivity may have been my fault, but I also take credit for the energy and gracefulness of her escape. I bid her farewell, envious of her sleek black directionality. If only I could fly.

I often provide loosely defined shelter for such beings but it’s hard to tell if they are benevolent, benign, or malignant.  Do they know this about themselves or are they too hungry to think? A voracious appetite is difficult to manage.

We’re all malicious on occasion, so we snipe at each other, hoping that grousing and prickliness will alleviate our guilt. Some of us are unbroken geodes, but mostly, we’re ordinary stones rolling along, disappointed in what we’ve not become.

“On the other hand,” Mr. Shiny Buttons appears, ready to argue. “There are gongs, massages, herbal tea, and fluffy robes. So many ways to be pampered and deceived. Take heart, you molting pigeon. Take mine, in fact.”

“Your heart?”

“You bet. I have so many. Most are bleeding, but never you mind. Pick one and I’ll patch it up. It’ll be good as new.”

“I can’t”

“You can.”

Mr. Shiny Buttons sweetens his offer. “If properly cared for, repaired hearts will see you past senility.”

“OH!” I gasp as fantasy crashes into reality. “Oh, I know you.”

Mr. Shiny Buttons takes my face in his hands and gazes into my eyes. My Coauthor dashes in and flashes warning hand signals. I dim the light behind my retinas and reflect back nothing. Mr. Shiny Buttons flies into a rage. The scent of artificial lavender issues from his flaring nostrils. I faint.

My Coauthor breaks my fall and slaps me back to consciousness. “Don’t mind old Shiny Buttons. He’s a lonely charlatan. A wimp in royal spandex. He’s made millions peddling longevity. It’s a handy temptation.”

“I hate editing,” I say.

“Belligerence becomes you,” my Coauthor laughs. “But you’re going bald anyway.”

When a Cholla cactus dies, the soft tissue decays, and the lingering bones are riddled with holes. I thought I was done collecting twisted sticks, but as I slipped free from the grip of the labyrinth, I grabbed an intriguing specimen and hurried to the car.  

The skeletal remains are now hidden behind the driver’s seat and I’m planning to leave before anyone discovers what I’ve done.

Planned Obsolescence

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

Did you know that if you push a straight edge up the outside of your apparently empty tube of toothpaste, at least a week’s worth will squish to the top? And if you cut the tube open and flay it, you’ll find even more of the goo clinging to the inside.

Labeling and packaging practices are fraught with waste, lack of imagination, and greed, often making it difficult to use up the entire contents of whatever it is you’ve purchased. And don’t get me started on single-use plastics, false recycling guarantees, and planned obsolescence.

Even well-intended containment is tricky. For instance, my own packaging has become increasingly prone to leaking, bruising, and breaking. My container has been taped up, repainted, and artificially preserved for a while now. Clearly, it’s not going to last until everything I have to offer is entirely used up.

As I struggle with this unpleasant reality, a primal protest grips me.

“Hey, Universe!” I yell. “When we age out, do our unused talents and potentialities end up in the Great Landfill of the Afterlife? Do you reabsorb our unwritten masterpieces? Our unsung songs? Hard-earned but unheeded advice? Unturned stones and dormant acts of kindness? How about the promises we meant to keep? Do you even have a plan for this obsolescence?”

God’s enormous head lifts from its heavenly repose in the sky beyond sky, and the Gaze comes to rest on the tiny speck that is our planet, that is my naked eye, that is a bioluminescent Whisper in the amniotic fluids covering the earth.

“You are not the sum of your talents, failures, passions, or fears,” the Whisper murmurs as the tide rolls in. “You’re the question, not the answer. You’re the journey, not the miles. You’re evolution’s hitchhiker, the plot of my favorite fantasy, and a transitory fraction in the equation you call eternity.”

This ethereal, evasive answer infuriates me. I want my untapped potential to guarantee longevity if not immortality. Like the spiritual toddler that I am, I throw my temporary container to the ground and beat my knobby fists against the pain of consciousness, empathy, imperfection, erosion, imagined glories, and old dogs.

The earth receives my rage and offers joy. Its undulating tenderness envelops me.

I roll onto my back and stare at the sky gathering itself into another night. The massive head of God explodes into trillions of stars, galaxies expanding, defying entropy and all attempts to limit or restrain.

Every boundary eventually gives way. Every horizon is a curvature forward. And we are all, together and forever, the trajectory of a certain hope and the substance of things not seen.

The Long Gray Bird

Rita Sommers-Flanagan7 Comments

The long gray bird is back with her disconnected head and graceful wing. She defines space that would otherwise be undefined, and she does so without much deliberation. She could have easily been compost or firewood which would have been fine. But for now, she’s an expression of God and grace, small nails, and a blank wall.

Last night on the news, I saw a soldier in combat fatigues: helmet, rifle, boots. He was sitting vacant-faced on the steps of a bombed-out building, the dark child beside him barely clad. Neither of them will ever find their way to my easy world. In fact, they may not even make it home.

I sleep, and in my dream, I welcome them. They are God. To the Soldier I say, “God, darling. You are beautiful and deadly. I wish you were obsolete.” To the Child I say, “Get up and run. It’s not safe here.” The Soldier looks me in the eye and hands me his rifle. “You cannot define the space around me,” he says. “I have to do that myself.” He lifts the Child into his arms with a certain finality and cushions her head safe against his chest.

I don’t know where they’re going or if they’ll return. I wave and try my best to smile, but the departure leaves me bereft, without purpose or direction.

“God,” I whisper, awake and facing morning, “You know I’d like to extend my reach; do things that make me feel important and complete. I’d like to turn the tide of hate into an ocean of love. I’d like to make the fear go away.”

The God of early morning is often soft, responsive to my naïve and narcissistic longings. She is patient. Unafraid. She knows that in any given moment, I could pull her off the wall, snap her neck, and put her in the woodstove, thus ending the torment of hope. She laughs like smoke. She is the residue of a well-lived life, the stubble in the field. She is sapling and ash, beginning and end, warrior and rose.

“I know,” the God of early morning whispers back. I hear the murmur of wings as the gray bird takes flight. “I am of your doing, and you of mine.” I nod, and again I wave and smile. But this time, no grief. I’m at peace with the leavings. Joyful, even. There is little doubt that in my next dream, I will learn to fly.