Angels in the park

The above image is very close in appearance to what I experienced at a beautiful cemetery park several years ago. I’d taken walks there often on the trails between and around the gravestones, enjoying the quiet and relative isolation, away from the hustle and bustle of society. During one of my walks, I heard “someone” following behind me, their footsteps upon the fallen leaves alerting me to their presence.

Wherever and whenever I moved, the footsteps followed me. I was afraid, filled with fear, thinking I was being stalked where nobody could help me, alone in the middle of a big cemetery close to dusk. However, when I finally gathered the courage to turn and look, the most beautiful two deer were standing in front of me, their innocent eyes staring into mine.

They’d been following me, two angelic stalkers waiting for me to turn and look at them. They remained in place for a few minutes, peering deep into what felt like my soul. I smiled with tears of joy, telling them how beautiful they are and thanking them for visiting me, when I most needed it. And then they looked at one another and ran off together, into the trees surrounding the park, as if being called to some other place where someone else needed them.

Those few minutes felt like a special communion I shared with two angels. A moment I will never forget.

Image: “Angels in the park”

Created by: David M. Rubin & Meta AI

Nothingness

“Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?”
~ Emil Cioran, Tears and Saints

The concept of NOTHINGNESS is extremely difficult to imagine or wrap ideas around.

How could there be NOTHING, not even the void of space, since a void could not exist if there were nothingness? What would nothingness be like if we could perceive it through vision, hearing, smell, touch?

Whenever I attempt to imagine nothingness, I think of a darkness that is darker than darkest black I’ve ever seen; no light or sound whatsoever, nowhere to move to or towards, like being buried alive six feet under or death itself. Yet, how could there be colors and darkness if there were nothing or nothingness? How can nothingness be described, explained or written about, if never experienced or observed? Even more imponderable, is the idea that “SOMETHING” could come into existence from this nothingness.

Note: I’m using NOTHING and NOTHINGNESS interchangeably, but there is a subtle difference. NOTHING refers to the absence of specific things, whereas NOTHINGNESS refers to a state of non-existence, non-being; an existential, all-encompassing void.

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Intimate connection

Humans are wired to seek intimacy with something or someone: physically, chemically, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, and/or instinctively. Call it romance, bonding, relationship, sex, spiritual communion, religion, attachment, obsession, lust, addiction, or whatever you prefer; all of us are seeking it on some level or in some form, but often frustrated, depressed or traumatized by its elusive nature.

Disguised divinity

“Spirituality and sexuality are not your qualities, not things you possess and encompass. Rather, they possess and encompass you, since they are powerful daimons, manifestations of the Gods, and hence reach beyond you, existing in themselves.”
~Carl Jung

There is a universal or divine force that animates all things, bringing them to life, in one form or another. Spirituality and sexuality are human manifestations of this force, among many other expressions of it.

As Carl Jung stated, we do not possess or create this force. To a limited degree, we possess our conscious response to it, but this never encompasses its full effect upon and within our lives, much of it remaining unconscious or showing up through experiences that disguise their underlying source—the universal/divine force.

Psychology and religion are an attempt to remove the disguise, to bring us into closer, conscious contact with this sacred energy or, as Jung described it, the daimons and gods that possess us. However, as with everything else, our imperfect humanity and vulnerabilities often add to the disguise.

First hookup

“What we seek constantly in romantic love is not human love or human relationship alone; we also seek a religious experience, a vision of wholeness.”
~Robert A. Johnson

2:13 AM

A puttering engine whines down beach street on a frigid night. The sound of rusted struts and worn wheel bearings bouncing along frost heaves and pot holes. Headlights fluttering. Shadows of leafless winter limbs shifting and merging against the bedroom wall. He watches and listens—passively—without comprehension. Eyes half open, half shut.

An electric blanket covers him to the nostrils. Thermostat set to 60 F. A frugal man of limited means, he found this place at the dead end of Beach street, near the river’s edge, where it takes a sharp left and meets Willow avenue—another dead end and entrance to the old Jewish cemetery. He bought the property for a song. The street itself a hazard, with its heaves and holes, notorious for frozen fogs overflowing the river bank at night.

An anonymous chat, several hours earlier. She’d answered his Reddit post; an anonymous stranger. He’d baited the invitation with homemade hot chocolate on a frigid night, marshmallows too. Sex on the mind, but unstated.

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