Discussing The Undiscussable

Mystical experience, the experience of the mystic, what it is that mystics experience -- that stuff is, almost by definition, idiomatic. It cannot be translated into any standard language, although it is possible that the language of exceptional music, exceptional art, exceptional poetry (over prose), may come close.

My deepest mystical experience -- and this is odd for a mammal, living in the flesh -- is observing bright, late-afternoon sunshine on leaves, grocking photosynthesis and the symphony inherent therein, being in a forest or a garden. Yesterday, I walked through the Brookside Gardens and sucked, as a hungry child suckles a breast, upon the amazing sight of sunlight filtered though deep forest shade. I see Fairies there, but I mean the word "fairie" in a scary and Earth-centered sense. I reminded myself that I can go on living.

On my way out, I sat by a bed of unknown blue flowers with scented leaves that was covered by a lacy and ever-undulating blanket of bees making inter-species love to the flowers. I wish that I knew what those flowers were.

I came home and, this morning, woke up to deep purple morning glories being penetrated, over and over, seriatum, by a fat buzzing bee. And, upon exiting from every flower, backing up, legs over legs, the bee left a scattering of golden pollen. I watched and watched and watched.

I don't know how to describe this. It's idiomatic. The poet Mary Oliver may have come close when she wrote, speaking of a different, native American plant:

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.

I watched the bee, about whose people I have been so worried, make love over and over to one deep purple morning glory after another, and all that I could feel, here on the edge of Autumn and the season of hunger and cold, was:

Let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in late summer,
the bee spread golden pollen
from one flower
all over the deep purple petal
of another.

I find myself content.



May it be so for you.


Photo found here.