 |
| 1971 Maverick (origin of pic unknown) |
I don’t believe in Maverick. But he’s real.
He says,
You are an observer, an anthropologist, a judge (too harsh),
a helper (too soft),
a being apart from within.
He says,
Do not expect understanding from the humans.
He says,
Do not expect them to recognize you. Me, in you. Do not
encourage it.
Maverick says:
You are reality tv for the stars(so do.)
You are the comic relief of existence
You are the most tender thing in the Universe
You are impossible, improbable and unreal
You are a serious joke.
Your earnestness endears you to Helium and Beryllium
You might yet get the votes.
You could clear some substantial soul debt, if you stick to
if you come through, before you’re through.
Maverick tells me that this moment is such an old replay
that I am quaint to think I live in it.
He says these things, not so I will understand them (I don’t)
but so I will Know them in my molecules, at the mitochondrian level that
actually matters. He doesn't much care what I think. Brains are ridiculously inefficient and slow processors of a bygone technology, anyway.
Maverick prowls in me always, often at rest but vaguely listening,
occasionally interested, sometimes (begrudgingly, unkindly) helpful; once in a
while, kind. Always with love, yet rarely loving.
His patience with me wears thin
while he knows I am perfect and All Is as it Is.
I confound him. I infect him. He resents it. He craves it.
We have a complicated relationship.
He wants to speak but does not want to impose. He mistrusts the humans to hear or understand. He prefers stealth.
(I prefer wealth.)
He also does not know why we are here.
Maverick understands more than I, but what Is cannot be
understood.
He asks for patience. It’s not as easy as I think, he tells
me, to shepherd What Is to accommodate Favours of the Possible.
He may seem magical to me, he sighs, but he is no more magic
than I. In some ways more free. In others, more limited. In this corporeal
world, I have more access than he does, he claims. But I know for a fact he can
blow his breath like the wind changes the direction of the flame, and still he
holds back, testing me, waiting for a proof I don’t understand and couldn’t
provide if I did.
Maverick feels embarrassed by his attachment to me. He would
deny it if he could, if it weren’t Apparent. He punishes me for it, then abates,
but never really makes it up to me. He has not always been a good friend. He
has not always respected my life as an experience I have a right to. He has not
always been kind in his teaching moments.
He left me for a time, fed up, done. Left me for dead, or
not much better than, but I rallied and came through. I did what I had to do. I
soldiered on with others. I found ways
and means.
Am I to celebrate his return? Am I to submit, now, in ways I
didn’t before, because he deigns to rejoin the picture more actively?
He tells me he never left and I tell him I know.
His sorry feels too begrudging to believe, but I don’t
really care. Because, how can I deny him?
He is me.
(choice is the illusion of the naive)
