The Sunshine in June

The sunshine in June. Life-giving, welcoming, capable of indiscriminate wholesale annihilation.

On a bright day at the threshold of summer, I pedaled out of town and set up at a sacred, shaded location and pledged to heal the wound. Or at least examine it to see if it might ever be healed. It had been festering for years, and countless previous efforts had done little to replace lost growth. Infection had seized a foothold, and with an angry redness ballooning dramatically around the site, the heat of its disease was threatening to spread.

Miles from the eyes of any humans, between the hushed prayers of a running river and the solemn applause of a bamboo forest, I opened the wound, performed an ancient ritual, and watched as it drained into the dust below. Left behind was an abscess, a gaping hole throbbing with a phantom pain. Nearby butterflies spasmed with disgust.

I wrapped the wound with sterile bandages and held it with my imagination, squeezing my eyes tight against the imminent fear of mortal isolation and the incessant countdown thumping readily in my chest.

When one sense is disconnected, others can be amplified. And at once, my ears received signals. The buzzing of bees; the rustling of leaves. Soothing. But the most powerful salve was noticeably absent. 

Although I longed for it, there was no call from the neighborhood owl. The carrier of deep etheric wisdom, he only appeared when I myself was silent and still, sometimes taking more than an hour to appear - if he did at all. Occasionally his calls would be answered by another, but most times he was alone. I could never be sure whether he lived in my mind or was true to reality, but either way, I loved that owl.

The throb of the abscess reached the mind. Pain carved out a vast emptiness within my psyche. Every thought was a seismic force, churning tall waves that gathered momentum as they carried on, unimpeded, through a body of water that quickly graduated from puddle to pond to lake to ocean. Any noise inside would simply ring outward forever, unheard by anyone but itself for the full brevity of life.

Sure enough, noises appeared, and they took the shape of the same maddening questions as in every other quake. Questions touched by the infection of the wound, pink and proto-crimson: Is there something wrong with me, to RESIST anger and violence and addiction to drugs? How is being good not good enough? Why am I cursed to ALWAYS be alone?

These questions - these tectonic plates - had ground together hundreds of times. But today’s movement triggered a different kind of wave. Maybe it was the closed eyes amplifying some long forgotten sense. Maybe it was a subliminal suggestion from the bees’ hum. Regardless, for once, while the current of questions raged off into the infinite horizon, their denouement revealed an unusual calmness.

Long ago, I had experienced the sun.

And in the present I knew that the overwhelmingly influential meeting from the past had cured me of restlessness, giving me the new gift of satisfied stability. It had made it possible to, at long last, slow down and breathe with purpose instead of from panic. A garden stays in one place and grows gradually; such an investment had never been appealing before. However, after witnessing the power above and within, it was, from that point on, an obligation.

Meanwhile, the same experience of the sun had stimulated her.

It had sparked the opposite effect, exciting her toward new destinations and paths to get there, illuminating previously shadowed landscapes and exposing their hidden artifacts and translating their ancient foreign language and lighting a fire in her soul, elemental and profound, and from here on she would thirst for exploration and discovery. The pulling back on my end was of equal strength to the push forward on hers.

No one’s fault, nature alive as both wild and safe, each of us committed with evenly impressive trust in our own curved path, its fair truth finally settled upon me with a sigh.

Something was suddenly different. An owl hooted.

I opened my eyes. A surprising expanse of time had meandered by, and despite the broad trek of the sun, I was still bathed in shade. An unsung guardian remained above, canopying my body and mind protectively from what might otherwise be a galactic instrument of searing injury. 

The sunshine in June - to look directly at it is critically unsafe; to touch it is impossible. Yet its presence perseveres, its evidence alive all around. While we bend ourselves out of shape reaching for it like babes clawing for a mother, chasing her passage until we break, the sun’s journey isn’t our own. She is the one looking at - and touching - us. Her impermanent existence a reminder of every miracle of which we are capable.

Then, something else touched the vast expanse - this time from the inside, and it dared to shine dimly across that dark and endless ocean like a glimmer of some glowing, guiding celestial figure.

It wasn’t that I was being forced into isolation by a curse. An unknowable magickian was involved, yes, but powered by opposite intent, and part of a larger privilege. A canopy had been living above me all along, protecting me from the burn of others, and the value of his purpose was hidden beneath the massiveness of his subtlety. A barrier between the infectious waves of violent rageaholic drug drama and a sincere and sincerely loving soul, preserving its immaculate qualities with a sterile bandage.

And suddenly I would never be alone again. Green life surrounded me, a joyful embrace in a sacred place. Miles, thank god/dess, from the eyes of any humans. More than that, there were many more of my kin than any human would ever know of theirs. Free to grow their own way, a massive shared community fed by an endless river.

Heightened ears accompanied sharpened vision, and I could hear countless other voices carrying the deep etheric wisdom. I could feel their conviction, each standing in pledged kyrie to a unique instinct, a thunderous ancient language of its own, recognizable only by a select special few who sit beside them and ask the questions enough times with the mind while listening with the spirit, letting the bees chant and the butterflies dance a secret, special ritual, between prayers and applause, at the threshold of infinite inner exploration and discovery. Throbbing. Thump by incessant, stimulated, miraculous thump.

I could never be sure which of them lived in my mind and which in reality, but either way, I wished both of them the safest and most triumphant of journeys across the skies and the seasons. The sweet salve of my perfect love would be forever with them. More than they could ever know.

The sunshine and June. Past the horizon, a light on the other side of the planet. And an invincible element within my heart, giving life to a garden where there was once a wound, as I fertilize it with the composted ashes of an annihilated loneliness.