In the beginning of which I speak, there was only the sea and the movement of the sea; this movement was the sea itself.
There were no boundaries to this sea, and so, there was no deep or shallow, no up or down, no here or there. No one knows how long this beginning lasted. Maybe this beginning was also an end.
In this beginning was flow but no rhythm, nothing to mark time, only the sea and the movement of the sea.
No light fell upon this sea and no darkness lived there. If anything lived there, there was no one to say. When light came, it changed everything.
Who among us later people can speak of the sea? We who are far even from our roots in the earth? We who have forgotten sunlight falling on the leaves of the tree we climb in, looking for safety and food? We who have forgotten swimming in the warm ocean, diving for pearls and coming up with joy?
There are none remaining who could speak of how the light came, or when.
When light came to this sea, it made darkness. It separated deep currents from the surface waves and separated each thing from every other. Where there was no life, no death, the light brought life–and death. Where there was no music, the light brought music.
Many beings followed on the tail of the light. These original beings did not see the light, they could not feel the light, but they could feel the music. Without their coming, there would be no music.
They knew nothing of light and dark; they lived in the music and the music lived in them.
The sea cared nothing of light and dark, but the sea loved to dance. Even before music, the sea danced. But when light came into the sea, when each thing was separated from every other, the dance of the sea had purpose. With purpose and music and light, the sea began to sing. The song was about purpose, and the song is why the light came.
The light came to sing in the waters, and the waters danced. Beings followed to revel in the music.
The song of the sea wove all of these together. With the light, the sea found its voice, and with the new darkness, its rhythm.
Before darkness, before rhythm, there was no silence. Before the sea found its voice, there was no singing, no noise, no silence. Even the song of the sea cannot express what was before there was silence. No words can go so far back. Not even rhythm existed then.
The original beings who danced on the light and lived in the music changed when they felt rhythm. When rhythm came to the flow of the sea, the flow became time. When rhythm came to the streaming of light, the light was scattered. The elders agree it could not have been otherwise.
But when the light was scattered, the beings were scattered as well. Some followed each strand of light. Some stayed near the surface, and others strayed into the depths. Never before knowing separation or aloneness, never needing to remember before time began, they did not know to remember, and so the beings forgot about each other. Never having danceed alone, and not knowing life without dancing, many beings died.
Falling into the water and mixing with darkness for the first time, those who survived forgot who they were. Forgetting who they were, they changed. They slowed.
The beings who died fell into the sea and were moved wherever the sea moved them. They changed so greatly, they slowed so much, we say they died. If there is life in them, it is so slow we cannot see it. But perhaps we should just say that they sleep. We do not know. Our stories do not have the power to call them.
Those who survived still dance. The music is in them and will be in them beyond the end of time. But they are different, scattered. They no longer dance as one.
Because they are no longer as they were, we cannot say what they are. Because they are older than words, we cannot say. Because their music allowed the rhythm in our words, we cannot say what they are as if they are separate from us. But we know that they are.
We hear their singing in our stories and we feel them draw close when we dance. We see them in the colors of the rainbows, in the lines of the earth, in the colors of the oceans. They move in us as tears and as laughter. Young and old, across the planet, sometimes fly with them in our dreams. What we do together–grow food, tell stories, make war, lie, dance–is what remains of their dreams of oneness.
We are reflections of the original dance.
Those who forgot the oneness yet remembered some part of themselves took on the nature of what touched them, of where they lived.
They were not completely moved by what surrounded them, but remembered the feeling of music within.
Copyright 2007 Todd Mertz