From nine years ago when beginning my wandering: at the old Chatooga River(Tsatugi; he has crossed the stream) in Georgia. I miss my years on/in the waters:
And so here it is, Time: the flow of these old, old rivers and their songs which are their names – – –Tuckasegee(daksiyi;Turtle Place), Toccoa(Tagwahi: beautiful), Chattahoochee(cvto hocce: rocks marked), Chatooga, Nanthahala(nun-daye-li: the sun between them) Hiawasee(Ayuhwasi: grassy place)— these old Cherokee story-names that conveyed the essence of a living relationship to the river as a Being, puts me in the flow of time and it’s chameleon nature. So many present moments all layered together, becoming an eternal waveform. And also concurrently, moving so swiftly, faster and faster as they flow ever closer to the great waterfall at the end of this earth life. Today these waters close over my body with such ease that I am always reluctant to come back to dry land. I love the fluidity of movement, the sense of being so completely held, body and soul, the water’s silky touch, its shifting colors and clarities, its sonic rhythms and densities; how safe and welcome my own fluidity of feelings become in this element. How it conforms to my shifting shape with either gentle or aggressive grace, how alike we are; sometimes gentle and just humming along, other times turbulent, blindly flooding the banks; always with more below remaining unseen and unknown. We are kin. To know this, in my body, is to be alive.
And time keeps flowing… in all directions… Remembering two times of almost dying, because one was here on this Chatooga years ago; whitewater canoeing and a standing wave knocking the misaligned canoe out from underneath at a critical sluice, throwing me into a sucking whirlpool which did not want to spit me out. Time slowed to a stop as I shifted into a living dream, such calm ringing beauty of shining, shining light through green water that though my body was obviously being spun further down, all I was aware of was wonder, awe and no need or desire to do anything but be rapt. And then coming to in air, battered, with strange hands pressing water from my lungs far downstream on a rocky shore
And years later, at knife point, when again the fluidity of time and it’s changing essence became one with me and the knife unexpectedly stalled over my belly as time stretched itself out to align with destiny: changing that sharp steel danger to a fascinating mirage of shimmering liquid flowing shapes, and lasting long enough, and who knows what that was, for a soul conversation between me and knife wielder. And then, once our covenant was agreed to. time snapping back with a crack, That feeling again, near death, of calm peace, knowing, and such familiar spaciousness and sensing no separation of intent or desire between me and anything else. These are inexplicable wonders to me and here by this coursing water I feel my inner and outer waters flowing with the varied nature of time and I’m nourished by the beauty of it all. And thankful for this dragonfly here, right this moment, thankfully lacking all interest in my reflections and simply being true to its nature. Me too.
Time and the Waters