Listen. Listen but do not listen too hard. Dragon boat, sound of the siren. Push, paddle. Wade into silence. Alarms down. Signal interrupt. Now only the wet wind is speaking. A million voices stunned into clean, rapt silence. Into awe.
Hear snap. See building collapse. See wood flood the harbor. See mud slide, mountain coming down. See roads and bridges cease. An emerald from the sea they had called you, as if culled from the secret dreams of thousands, and it sings in a voice as private as your own. Like a chant, the wind drums across the island. There had been a summoning and now something vast has answered. Do not pretend that it does not work this way. A jewel they had called you and in this they were half-right. But what they had named you is not what you are.
Listen. This is not a song of death. Things will die, but this is not a song of death.
Do not fight against it. Validate it within you and keep moving. What else is there to do? Earlier, down by the shore, you had walked down to meet it, to stare into the long maw of it one more time before it was not safe to do so. They had warned you to clear the streets, but it’s not like this was a thing that could be readily enforced. It was after all your funeral. It was whatever you had wanted it to be. Do not fight it. It is everything that you had imagined. Earlier you had walked down to the shore one last time to feel the wind whip back you hair, to stare out into the abyss of it, the long wall approaching. The rain stung your cheek and had soaked your dress. This wild wind speaking, talking, moving. Something uttered in cold precise action. Not laughing, not taunting, no anything but this, the wind, the rain, the shake. This is about anything but vengeance. And this is not a song of death.
Sky. The absence of clouds. Only this great one that had enveloped, that had swallowed the island in its eye. As if the very notion of regular clouds were just an example, merely a way of thinking of what a cloud could be. Sky. Sky as bow, trees as golden arrows, branches piercing. And land. Land in motion, a rushing of land, of mud. Land in transit, no solid ground upon which to find footing. No roads, streets as rivers. As if a dry street were just a test, a signpost, a symbol of what a street could really mean. Did you know that water could travel that fast, sluicing down canyons and corridors? You had thought maybe. You had seen the representations of this, of this movement, you had seen the pictures, the video, but never did you imagine what it might look like in person. How it might smell, the mixture. Mud, concrete, gasoline, wood, some earthy concoction of raw and natural bleach. So let it come now. Let it come and wash it all away, let it wipe clean, let it do what it was designed to and do not attempt to stand in its way. This is something larger than had been expected and something certainly larger than even us. Let the scythe meet the stalk then. Let the sky meet land. Let it do what it has come for. Let tomorrow be.
What is it that had made you feel so alive though, there on the beach? What is it that had made your jaw hum, your fingers tremble, your lungs open? What was that taste of sugar cane on your lips? The drip of aluminum in your throat? Was this just a physiological reaction to fear or was it something deeper? Here comes the flood. Here comes the ocean deep. Here comes what we had chosen not to listen to. You had said that you were ready for it and so now here it is. The great ocean. The ancient song. The hum. The inner flame. Where the foot had met sand you had felt vibration. Where the sand had seized the heel, pulling you back with it, you had felt resolution. Where the seaweed had grabbed the ankle, you had felt surrender. Speak to it now. Call it by name. Morakot. Mighty Emerald. I meditate now unto you. I surrender to you my strength. Take this prayer please. Take with you now my worshipful heart. These teeth, melt them if you wish, I cast them out of my mouth if it pleases you. Dissolve this flesh. Make me light. Call me also by my name.
But how had they not gotten out of the mountains quickly enough? Was this the fault of bad leaders or of stubborn people or of shoddy infrastructure or was it a combination of all three? Or was it something far less sinister? Was this in some way perhaps a people smart enough to understand on some level the true nature of sacrifice, of what the word meant? Four million chickens and counting, all in one day. Eighty five thousand pigs. All of this now unto you angel Morakot. There is perhaps a better name for sacrifice, but we are not willing yet to think about what that might be. We are not yet that brave. But if this destruction were to breed creation, if this cleansing were to bring renewal, by what name would we then address it? Not Morakot. Not the child. Take this roof then. Take this bridge. All of it belongs to you anyway. We are only renters here, only squatters in your eternal fury and glory, only tiny witnesses to abundance and not the makers of abundance ourselves. Not like this god. Not like these gods and their wet and lashing representative, these gods so often accused of destruction and destruction only, of not showing mercy in the face of our fragile humanity. But look closer. That motorcycle sliding out from underneath that passenger could just as easily have killed him if so inclined. That wheelchair, empty, wrecked and tangled against the shattered storefront. It could have easily been worse with someone in it. This building unoccupied because you had warned us, this building still left standing. The dysentery, the blood and the mud, this waste filled water that will miraculously not kill us all.
Look. Step closer. Walk into the waves. Let it come and surpass you. Let it come and let it go. Let it be automatic. Do not even think about it. True surrender is the absence of thought. The smell of gasoline in the air. The water running down your back. Surrender now unto it. What other choice do you have against this, any of you? Step outside and let it come. Let the water soak your head and enter between the legs. You are wet and you are a part of things, now and forever. Take what you need then, little Morakot. Take this road and take this bridge. Take it and let it satisfy. Take of what’s been offered to you here and then go. But do not forget to come back again, do not forget to return as you always do under new names and guises. Do not forget to remind us of what weather systems like this really are. A yawn. A scratch. A small shifting of weight. It is not foolish for us to pretend that you are anything greater, it is foolish for us to pretend that we are. Submit now to something larger than yourself, something larger than you had imagined, let it enter and begin its work upon you, submit now to the greatest show on earth. Admit one here. Admit now all of you. Admit true.
Our mother. Our mother who art. We build now unto you the pyre. We pile it and set ablaze. We set on fire the memory of this occasion to honor our dead and to honor you in turn. We set adrift your flowers into the sea. Please take and let it satisfy. And if it pleases, next time you can take us all. As for you, walking, there on the beach, perhaps it is time to admit what it is you know; what in some small way you know you have become. What is a beacon but a vessel? What is the darkness that came but another chapter in the continued story? What is the storm but the light of the world? As for you, you were completely ready for it. As for you, you stood calm and you had exhaled and you had looked it in the eye. You had stood arms crossed and you had hummed quietly to yourself and you had waited. You had feared not this storm, only the promise of the stronger one to come. Oh. Oh my loves, oh all that I have known here, I pray sometimes that I am not right in this though I know that I am. But I pray also that I am not wrong. I know only that it is coming and that it needs to, that it has come, that what we have waited for has begun to arrive. Oh my loves, how I know there is only one answer to this, how I know that it cannot be stopped, and to stop and acknowledge it is to be blessed by it and then it is simply a thing to be endured. How I know that this is happening. How I know that this is Her. How I know that this is about us and us only and our relationship to things and how none of it is ever personal at all. Ever.
As for you, you had answered back to it, hadn’t you? You had looked it in the eye and you had whispered please. Please and thank you. Please, this gentle scolding. It is all that we are ready for. For to you, it had felt like reclamation. It had looked and it had felt like a sort of strange redemption. It had felt fair and it had felt honest and the simple justice residing there within it had been for you like welcoming heaven. Yes heaven. Yes surrender. For you, it had felt like nothing so much as the return of an absent parent. It had felt like mother here. It had felt like the breast. It had felt like teacher and then it had felt like sleeping. It had felt like going home.
