Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Terry Wolverton
In the afternoon, we are led out onto the mountaintop. In
lines of ten, we join hands and close our eyes and chant aloud
the ancient syllables. Voluntarily blind, we walk dusty paths,
guided by only our grip on the stranger’s hand we clasp and
the sound current rising from our parched throats. Blind, we
are each completely alone and yet utterly inseparable from
this organism, these one thousand white-clad yogis, chanting
and making our way over unfamiliar terrain. Blind, we feel
ourselves to be nothing and at the same time limitless. Blind,
we do not see the clouds roll in, and are surprised to feel the
cool baptism of raindrops on our skin. How can emptiness
contain so much sensation?
Zero is powerful because it is infinity’s twin.
Today is the day before the last day of this gathering, when
each of us will climb into cars or board airplanes to return
to our other, separate worlds. We will remember some of
what we knew here—the siskin’s song, the sun, the splash
of rain on unsuspecting skin; we will forget most of it. We
will quit our jobs or find new love affairs or embark on a new
practice of meditation. These things will mean nothing and
everything in the scheme of our lives. We will feel full, or
we will feel empty, and much of the time we will forget that
these states are indistinguishable.
God is found within the void and the infinite.
Crab Orchard Review ◆ 217