iii.

sometimes it is
fog or smoke
or breath
and sometimes
it becomes
a spangling
of dawnlit mist on the
face of the deep
and in that vanishing—

i.

much much later came the de-scribers. they dwelt in the ruins of abbeys and warehouses, in graffitied cloisters clotted with nettles and needles and old broken bottles; they dwelt behind pane-less windows full of sky; they dwelt with the moss in the cracks, and with young ferns.

where once the scribes had netted the stories with letter and line and gilt, the de-scribers set them free.

“de-scribe” as in “demolish.” as in “destroy.”

describe: from the latin de- (‘down’) + scribere (‘write’).

write down, right down back to the center of things.

novices liturgized the death of the digital: they took up the laptops and the tablets and the ancient desktops, kissing them before wiping clean the hard drives and emptying the cloud, a downpour of data returning to the worldsoul like rain to the ocean; information tending back towards knowledge, knowledge watershedding its way to wisdom.

after that immersion in the virtual, it was permitted to get one’s hands dirty. de-scribers at this stage of the renunciation plunged their arms into the chaos of material literacy. they tore out pages, letting text wash over them like tides. they became tidepools. they ripped bindings like the seams of a dress needing to be taken out for a growing child. they put paper in their mouths. they wrapped themselves in newsprint. books and scrolls, trade paperbacks and illuminated manuscripts and stone tablets—all the souvenirs from that long, long journey from breath and song to cage were touched, eaten, embodied, pulverized, spoken to, polished, digested, rebirthed. some fragments were archived in the seed vault underground; others were collaged and cyborged and phoenixed, flash fiction spliced with peer-reviewed scientific journals, epic poetry with YA novels and the oldest shards of myth.

at last, those who had taken the final vows were permitted to choose their favorite, be it poem, best-seller, holy book, or blog post. a renunciate at this stage might put their chosen in their pilgrim’s pack and bring it to a certain creek or river, hill or mountain, desert or jungle. there, the beloved words were read aloud to what remained of the flora and fauna. the nettles heard, and the cedars and the huckleberries and the water hemlocks; the oaks and maples and grains of sand. the blocks of ice that had once been glaciers. the tropical pines and cypress swamps. ducks. beetles. mosquitos. coyotes and crows and viruses and mangy bears. all listened, enchanted.

then it—the favorite—was set free: ink and paper liberated into water and earth and fire and wind.

(the elders, meanwhile, could finally put their feet up and untangle the letters one by one. it was slow, tedious work, but it was soothing and repetitive, like spinning flax or shelling peas or mindlessly whittling. it was work over which one could laugh and gossip, drink tea or watered mead, and look for shapes in the clouds. the A’s became tents again, and arrowheads, and all the trinities; three brushstrokes unhooked and set down like a bundle of sticks by the fire, gathered for kindling.)

the text decayed. it became compost. libraries turned into nurse logs. nurse logs turned into libraries. all the words and words and words and words—they sunk back down to their roots in breath, and drank deeply of the silence there.

it was told like this, around the fire:

and so it came to pass that the de-scribing was at last complete, and the new stories (braided with breath, swaddled in flesh like christ in her manger, made of matter like the soul of the world) could take root, could grow.

ii.

but of course there were those who, having traveled down to the center, hungered for the edges again; they were the ones who left the cloisters, who packed more than one favorite in their pilgrim’s pack and absconded with the riches, who (re)invented ink from blood and berry, who found again what quills could do, and, later, ballpoints and keyboards. they took up the bundles of kindling and made new shapes, and then they filled the shapes with their breath, as did god with the creature god made of clay. they reclaimed the words from centuries of disuse and derision: scribes, they called themselves, and writers.

the pen, it is written, is mightier than the sword—a comparison it is possible to make only because the pen and the sword have comparable functions: they separate. they sever signified from -fier, or self from other, or arm from shoulder. meat from bone. root from stalk. the center is only visible—only possible—from the knife-edge of the margins; it’s not in the womb, but at its edge, at that shoreline of skin and air and milk, that we learn as infants that love is made partly of longing.

and so, after the long slow journey to the labyrinth’s heart, there were those who, craving the medicine of knives and edges, spiral-danced back out. they left notes for their siblings—notes which were tasted, which were wetted with tears, which were massaged with dirt, which were composted with the rest: i’m sorry. i wanted to yearn again.

it isn’t true that death is part of life. rather, death and life are both equal parts of some greater whole, the name for which we don’t yet know. the binaries aren’t real, only compelling; even unity and multiplicity weave together like the countless stars and the single smooth black sky.

the pendulum swings; the balance builds itself of swinging.

there were Others (mystics, shamans, hermits, witches) who lived in caves, or hollow trees, or cottages at the edge of the forest, where they crooned quietly to the hares and the crows, the stones and the nettles and their own blood-beaten hearts:

neither way is correct, neither incorrect.
scribing or de-scribing;
severing or re-membering;
living or dying—
they contradict one another.
they constitute one another.
                there is a veil where they meet,

                said the Others at dusk,

                and sometimes it grows thin.