 |
|
 |
|
Moon Lake of Enlightenment
For the last eleven years, the most important person in my life has been invisible to me, except once. When she appeared. Much later I named her Moon Lake of Enlightenment.
I began seeking her, unknowing, following the bread crumbs of coincidence through Rome, Istanbul, and into Cambodia.
And then after I did find her, was she too much to bear? She is many people: the guru's doppelgänger, yidam, anima, lover, commander, apparition. The most beautiful woman I have ever met.
I found her in Phnom Penh, with its near lawless streets, prostitution and atmosphere of impunity. Ghost city. Execution ground. City of Rivers.
Someone or something insisted I find her. I left my job, my home, eventually most of my possessions. Reduced to a suitcase I still remained smitten. Seeking her, I drank too much wine.
In a cheap hotel room she appeared and made me promises. That she would be with me until enlightenment. I felt protected and safe. I let her come though my handwriting. I wanted to share her.
Each morning I never stopped praying to the guru and Moon Lake of Enlightenment. I lost all my furniture and accoutrements. Wandered back to Istanbul. I was almost killed by a streetcar.
Along with the streetcar, a seizure left me comatose and a suffering in my lonely stomach caused heat and cold to inverse and I nearly froze to death.
She appeared slowly as I wandered from Bangkok to Sihanoukville and then to Phnom Penh. Each day in meditation she dropped a new clue. Sometimes she told me to get a good meal. And then she began to emerge.
From her intangible birth canal she showed my her parasol, her cat eyes, her braided black hair. The next day she appeared - ineffable, luminous, eternally loving, without an atom of distress, looking at me very close and indescribably present.
Later on, satisfied that she was with me I did get a meal. Hired a motorbike taxi, took a long walk after drinking sugar cane juice, got caught in the rain. Took shelter under the tarp of a Cambodian grandmother, another form of Moon Lake of Enlightenment.
She is a vision, a samaya holder, a seven day-long movie I had the privilege to behold. Poetry taught me love the marginal. Thanks to poetry I found her.
