Tethered
The dervish called. It was out of the blue; more like out of the silvery grey of a rainy autumn Highveld morning when she called.
Unnaturally, I turned the volume down to silent and let the call ring off. It must be important I thought, as I snuggled deeper into the sweet warmth of the sleeping bag. Visions of the dream state I had been living a minute before quickly returned.
A child, tethered to an adult sitting beside a clear stream, meandering its way through meadows. A copse of willows shading a patch of the sweet grass they are sitting on. In the distance, the peaks of mountains rise dramatically against a sky so blue, it could be the sea. There’s a conversation happening between the child and the adult and I strain to hear as much as I peer to see more clearly but none of that helps. I am rooted to the hillock some distance upstream from the child and adult and while I can take in the tableau playing out before me, I am unable to pierce the veil that separates me from the dream state.
I relent and settle into my observer status; after all, if I find myself here, then surely this is where I’m meant to be. In a bit, the child looks up and turns directly towards my position on the rise and stares. Even from this distance, I can see the familiar slate grey eyes boring into my very being.
The dream state dissolves abruptly as the phone buzzes urgently on the nightstand. This time I don’t look at the screen, instead I fumble slide, get it wrong and eventually answer the immediately following call.
We exchange verbal adabs and catch up on the admin of life happenings of our respective journeys. I’m sitting up in bed by now, with the woolly cerulean throw pulled up to my neck, ‘feeling like a bear mistakenly woken from hibernation’, I say.
A rainbow filled laugh bursts forth from the dervish. I float in the rich tonality of this joy.
‘It was exactly the sense I had of you that first time we met physically, on that road those years ago, a bear in human form,’ she says
You won’t be the first to use those words, though you’re likely the first to actually see what you have uttered’
Bear, she says like she’s trying out the feel of the words in her mouth and mind. Bear, she says again and then adds; I feel the resonances deeply, although I’ll avoid that cliched use of Baloo or even Nanook, because you know well, how I am about facile commercialisation in general, so Bear it will be for now, if silently because I trust the true titles of address between us are yet to be revealed to us. I suspect we still have a bit of shared journeying.
The rain has stopped although with the current billet being set in a grove means a gentle patter of drops still fall, each time a gentle breeze passes.
Do you know why I called?, she suddenly asks.
I’m silent for a bit and I can hear the faintest whisper of her breath and I imagine then I can even hear the excitement bubbling out of her in rhythm to her heart. In a breath, I see again the eyes of the child tethered to the adult from the dream state earlier and I smile to myself. I offer a silent prayer of gratitude and reply to the dervish.
‘Mubarak”; I say.
I can imagine her face as I hear the richness of the honey in her voice; I’m glad you’re starting to see and hear beyond this material veil. Visit us again soon; you now know the path.
We utter the words of gratitude together and ring off. I stare into the by now still forest outside the window. Barely a leaf stirs and I offer a prayer of gratitude for the eyes to see, ears to hear, and a beating heart to love.
Tethered is a testament to the connections between and amongst beings as they unfurl towards the light.
© Oppi Stoep 2023
