The Waking Coma

_ You're late.

_ I didn't know. How was I to know?... So this is it? This is being late? I thought it would be more epic; yes, I definitely expected something decidedly epic.

_ What are you talking about?

_ Late... the dead thing. Being late, as it were.

_ I wasn't implying that you were, or are, dead, just late - you're usually here by now.

_ I am? I am. And I am.

_ Speaking of late, did you hear that Donald Trump didn't die?

_ Yes, I heard... Have you taken notice of the absence of plants around here. I'm disturbed by the lack of shade.

_ Absence and lack... Did you know that Sartre's Uncle Charles achieved his greatest renown via his absence; via his not being somewhere? This fantastic occurrence - presence via absence - caused a significant and widespread rippling through the still-forming mind-stuff of one J.P. Sartre.

_ I thought Sartre didn't have a mind... very interesting. Isn't he most famous for pointing out the obvious: that a kiss without a mustache is like an egg without salt... missing something. No?

_ I think that was Sinatra. Either way, they're both late.

_ And getting later. Howsaboy?

_ Unsettled. Someone said something to me yesterday that caused me to stare in unseeing fashion for the better part of evening vespers; it put me in some sort of waking coma.

_ My name's not 'Vespers'.

_ Whatever. Anyway this guy says to me that if I don't forgive I shan't be forgiven.

_ And?

_ And?? You are returning serve with a psychoanalytical 'And?"

_ It's just an expression.

_ Anyway, it threw me: If you don't forgive, you're not forgiven...

_ I understand; and I understand why it might throw you, for you, like most people, take a statement like that to the unverifiable realm of things spiritual - a realm presided over by a long line of profiteers and fear mongers.  To those intent on relinquishing all conditions of existence there is no such realm.

_ I...

_ Mathematics, physics or music. Any one of these disciplines would resolve your being stymied, for these three disciplines all move toward resolution; and until mind resolves, it continues in its unforgiving ways. Forgiveness - absolution - is dependent upon resolution. In mathematics, zero is the never to be seen overseer of all things mathematical; in music, the octave holds sway over musical ventures; in physics, it is the taut musculature of space which sends every thought, word and idea back to its source - silence, infinite and compliant.

_ Vespers are evening prayers.

_ Total silence... If we don't forgive we linger in the realm of phenomena - of subject and object, time and space, this and that, life and death; meanwhile we crave forgiveness, all the while unawares of our role in the process. We have to let go in order to move on freely. Forgiveness is decidedly letting go of the past; it's more than just forgetting. I ask you to sense the vibrant resolve evident in participating fully with circumstance. It's not so easy if we have unresolved pain. We have the capacity to be so fully committed to the living arrangement of the momentous that all else is either fully resolved, or not yet manifest; at rest, as it were. Complete forgiveness, with nothing, and no one, to forgive, and, in turn, no one awaiting forgiveness, is to be truly alive, to truly understand. If you don't fully forgive it is because you hold yourself separate - separate from that which is. If we cling and don't move on we are the same as an unresolved balance sheet, or a musical note left hanging, or a thought without context. In not forgiving you've held an incident, long since gone, in a pattern of consistent return and thus it demands your attention - it insists on action. That action is forgiveness; and if you can't step away from the insistence of holding moments unresolved then you won't have the capacity to be forgiven because you won't truly understand. Let it go, let it all go. Or better yet, just watch, for it goes of its own nature. Forgiveness is the most gracious exit we can make in a world wherein entering into ever-new circumstance, and the subsequent exiting of the same, is ongoing. It is integral in our understanding of forgiveness that we forgive, for without this we cannot understand being forgiven.

_ Wow... wow. Evening vespers shall never be the same.

_ Nor should they be. Is it windy during evening vespers?

_ My name is not 'Vespers'. Chai?

_ Chai.

                                                                      ***********

... What? It's not enough to get a certificate of live birth? You need something else?

... Lacking... Is it possible?

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