…I and you in the gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things – must not all of us have been here before? –And return and run in that other lane, outward, before us, in this long, eerie lane – must we not return eternally? – Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

For MK.

*s(u)wen-, *sunno, sunne, sonne, sun – that which lights everything, that which shines, that which sustains, the cosmic feminine.

The sun has always been feminine. In the shade of the ash trees, the people of the garden reflect on the shadows as emanations of starlight, the love of the sunne. The frogs bribbit good morning in the helicopter ponds, echoing time through vine and bark, Embla and Askr emerging wyrd from the before. The sun comforts and welcomes the earth-souls into the pining present.

There is no measure. All there is is incommensurate quality, being in its hereness. No one is anyone else, no doing is another. I breathe, you breathe, we kiss, we kiss. Each moment is the emerging of a world from the is. Each is incomparable – again and again and again, waking up next to you is falling in love for the first time. Time. Time appears in the dance of being-together: “being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.” (Borges) I am here-, now-, with-you. The now-and-then is the choreography of presence, the holy longing of togethering. Every presence is anew a future-appearing, utopia-becoming. The present is the present of presence.

Measurement obscures time. This-and-that becomes this-or-that; the here becomes a 1, a 2, a 3… Quality is sliced into quantity, the sublimity of being catalogued, the wholeness of time split-apart. There is no presence in quantity, only absence. The quantity of a thing is the absence of what it is not – being is occluded in the nothing, the cave. Shadows take the place of forms and the people of the garden forget that it is the sunshine that makes the shadows dance. Anamnesis is remembering the sunlight, that being-here is already holy, that we are presence, not absence. Measure makes us forget the gift of the present, suspended anxiously between past and future… But the sun is always shining.

Measure creates self-denial, self-negation. It crystallizes pain through marking our being as that which we have lost, or that which are not. But there is nothing in us which is not, which is absence. You are you are you are. Here here here. Now now now. We are histories ever-present in every moment, whole worlds walking whole worlds. You are my world and I am yours. We are worlds making worlds, you and I. You and I. You and I. You and I. The holiness of You is immeasurable, incomparable, infinite – you-as-you-as-you. You-as-you-are, you-as-you-were, you-as-you-will-be. You.

Nietzsche invites us into the eternal return, the affirming of every moment as a moment we live infinitely, happily, excitedly, over-and-over-and-over-again. The eternal return escapes from measure, from quantity, through making every moment, every doing, every being, every life, eternal. The eternal gifts to us the present again. The present is You. We are presents, gifts, Christmases of loving-becoming, the infinitely valuable gift of Us. We present the present of our present presence and unfold together as blankets of starlight, every point a wold, every moment a universe. Even if all I had was one moment with you, I would have everything. Every moment with you is a moment I would return to again eternally. Again and again and again, just to be-with-you, to be-with-Katie. I refuse Nirvana to reincarnate again with you, to experience with you again. I will traverse samsara just to hold your hand again.

The sun has always been feminine. In the shade of the past, I warm myself in your light, every moment a timeless now in your presence. Leaving the cave, I kick away the ladder and feel the heat of love freckle my arms, future worlds dotting my skin like constellations. The grasshoppers sing recognition in the morninglight as joy dews like sweat on our lips. Embla and Askr, earth-souls wyrded by the gods, we soul-onward into eternal return, the ship of being arriving again-and-again. There is no part of you, no moment with you, that I would not return to – because I return, I return, I return to you. I wyrd the mystery of existence with you, two autos in allos, a together togethering a home. Summer breathes the infinite together; the sun holies my heart. You are my sunshine.

I love you.

Every situation, every moment — is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity. – Johann Goethe, quoted in Conversations with Goethe by Johann Eckermann

Image: In Bed, the Kiss by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1892)