Babaamaajimowinan (Telling of news in different places)

Broken Wings, and Things

Chapter One

“Do you remember when you were a kid, you saw needless pain and violence, starvation, false hopes, and imaginary lines people drew to divide themselves in all sorts of nonsensical ways, and you wanted so desperately to change things? You know how everyone says, “That’s just the way things are, you can’t change it, no one can, so don’t feel bad”. Well over time you let this logic teach you how to break your own heart and leave your mind, spirit, and every internal voice disconnected. Each piece dynamic to your awareness disjointed from one another in a dark vacuum of hopelessness…”

Her eyelids twitched and underneath them her pupils darted rapidly, trying to follow the source of the voice. “Yes, I remember.”

“They were lying to you. You can change things. They can change things.”

She woke up sweat drenched, everything seemed so bright. There was a buzzing cloud of pressure waves around her head; or it seemed brightly colored but she wasn’t sure if it was really light, or a quality that she just couldn’t interpret and so her brain said, “That’s light”.

She felt a presence with her, left over from her dream. Her body felt light and wispy so she intentionally let her awareness search throughout her flesh; tickle through her toes, and to her now awake eyes. Something moved. She startled momentarily, and then relaxed knowing what she saw could definitely not be there. The feeling of presence subsided; until it spoke.

“It won’t be easy, but I can guarantee it will mend that broken heart of yours.” It blinked.

She screams. The room goes black.

“Let me introduce myself. My name is Flotsam, and I am here because you have summoned me here. I have fallen through space-time by means of what physicists here might say was something similar to a wormhole.” The being was now transformed from the green shadowy shape in my closet to a more undefined form of grey mist surrounding my dream body. Actually, it was more like the lattice that my dreaming mind was sewn upon. We inhabited the same space, and it was as if I could feel parts of him, parts of the tiny bead network that was his mist body as me. We were in sync, harmony.

“You see, Sparrow that you find me much more acceptable if I am physically shapeless. You still hear my voice, but for some reason, when you are able to visualize where it is coming from definitively, your mind hits the off switch. There is something peculiar about the way you humans fear knowing where things come from, where they are going. Their source, that is. You will see that my source comes from a place very far, and yet not so far, away from the galaxy you inhabit. If you will follow me now back through space-time I will show you our connection at the source.”

“Back? Like as in time travel?” If this were me awake, my eyes would no doubt be squinted in disbelief of the notion, but being as I was not awake, things beyond the boundaries of my accustomed physical reality were easily incorporated into my list of all things doable.

“Not just time travel, space-time travel. And back as in back to the space-time where I fell into your awareness. I will explain more on this later. Now, do you see the strand of light?” The mist cleared from my awareness to present itself more formally as indeed, a string of light.

“What is that thing?” The light pulsated and as I looked into it, I could see that it was made up of memories. Many, many, memories. But they weren’t my memories, were they? They felt like they could be, but they held more than just my awareness of the passing of time. They also held Flotsam’s. But how could they be gems of time if I didn’t remember any of them, or did I? The tiny beads of light that had formed the ‘mist Flotsam’ now stretched out way beyond what I could see from here. The even weirder thing is I could see little drops of me too, stretched out and doing things with his.

“You will see that the source of our connection arises at every moment in our connection. Pretty nifty, huh?” He had no mouth, but I could sense that he was grinning. “So, all of these memories are ones we are creating right now, as a way of relating to one another. They are new in the sense that they are newly shaped, or discovered, yet very old in that they are created with experience expanding from the beginning of everything. What we are doing here is sort of like how when a baby opens its eyes to the world for the first time and makes new memories about something very old. My species has stumbled upon, more so than devised, this way of navigation that is much like surfing upon a fountain of memory upwelling from the depths of the cosmos into every living being.”

“I thought memories had to happen in the past or at least resemble something that has happened at some point in real life?” As soon as this thought appeared into my awareness, it felt like a signal misfiring from a program that wasn’t supposed to be engaged until I was rebooted upon waking.

“What you are seeing as memories here and what your Earth brain tells itself memories must be are two different things. You see, memories as you learn about them through experience in your world and being a creature of the society you are a part of, requires you to know them as something useful to the progression of the culture you are most bound to. Many of these functional memories are rewritten many times for social means. These days, in these parts mind you, people are recreating their pasts all the time to impress other people, to hide from things they have done, etc., etc. This way of using memory is not taking into account what the substance of memory is, which in reality is very much like a continuum. An analogy to the continuum of memory is the one of light. There are the light waves that the human eye detects, and then there are light waves of shorter and longer wavelength that you never see. The moment you have now, is like ‘visible memory’, but there are memories made differently, and of different energetic qualities than those you are capable of seeing, or remembering, right now.”

He could tell I was merely absorbing what he was relating to me, with no capacity for response, so he continued, “You recreate your past all the time, the only difference between that which you do in your normal life, and this type of recreation, is the awareness of, and intention for doing so. I am guiding your awareness and intentions for the time being, but it is within your capacity to do it how I say it is possible, for you are doing it now, with only minor help from me. Basically, you are unfamiliar with the ‘language’ that exists to interpret such things. Lacking the language based tools required to work within the nonduality of existence, you recreate your present in a way that sums up everything in the universe to equal something you are already familiar with and have access to describe; which is usually described in a dualistic, divisionary way. This sort of division in thinking and behavior leads to the division and dysfunction of the memory continuum. This leaves one to miss the fact that every one moment is an axiom that is formulated to be recreated as another axiom at the next step independent of any direction you go. That is to say that every moment is a starting point for the next starting point. It is all recreated. And they are all equal. That is, there is only ever one moment. Ever. And we are merely navigating within this one moment. We are at any given time, one ensemble of the moment system. I think perhaps before we can travel beyond this world you must first become grounded with the nature of the self that you have cultivated on this planet so that you may then feel comfortable leaving it behind. Which, I might add is absolutely necessary if you wish to change anything.”

“So when will we start doing this exercise?” It seemed as though we had been hovering around my body for quite some time.

“Just a few seconds… 3…2…1...” I heard his voice trail through the expanding of my deepening sleep, “We’re almost there.”

About the Author

Tashia Hart, age 28, has roots in Red Lake and White Earth, and is a Biology student at Bemidji State University. Her hobbies are beading, and learning about the natural history of local plant-life.

"Writing for me is basically an extension of the meditative process," she said. "It helps me to gather road signs that I use to map my nature, which usually seems to be more elusive than not. Sometimes I am misguided by the parts of me that want to edit my internal voices down to tidy, neat little external packages more acceptable within a societal norm; this never turns out the way I wanted, yet the downfall that occurs afterwards is always just what I need to put me back on my path."

Broken Wings, and Things is a work in progress and RLNN is honored to feature it on a weekly basis.)

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY TASHIA HART.

 
 

Reader Comments(2)

RussL writes:

Hi Tashia, It's good to see you in print! I like the beginning of this loquacious story and am eager to see what comes next. Keep it up! Best Wishes, R.

Lee21 writes:

tashia my sister this seems like a beautiful work nd i cant wait to read more :)

 
 
 
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