Slow Wheel, Fleeting Wheel

My Love,

The wheels of human history turn slowly, while our lives spin all too briefly. My turn is now ending, my love, another snowflake turned to rain in the freefall, again to soak the Earth on a warm spring day.

We thought we were making history, in those days of our youth. I cannot say we did, I cannot say we did not. Perhaps you still are.

I have to remember that to those of us who lived through the Dark Ages, it seemed reality eternal, to those of us who lived through the invasions of the Huns, that life would never return to goodness and light. Eternities of unrelenting oppression in our firefly lives.

It is worthy to note, those eras passed too and progress inched along in fits and starts completely generated by, and with no regard for, the grain of sand lives that passed beneath the behemoth wheels of our histories.

Lives such as ours.

We thought ourselves wise, then, able to discern the actions of the present like so many other visionaries from the caves trying to chant away human suffering. From wagon train dreamers, to the creators of the rails, in our struggles to connect people we dissolved the very connections of community from whence we came. How can one see the actual results of even things made to improve our lot and alleviate suffering? But humans are resilient, we create community wherever we are. Even in this prison I have made community. I can tell you human laughter is no less divine be it behind bars or utterly free. It is the act itself that transcends, thus all these many years, I have never been truly imprisoned. At least not in any prison not of my own making. You know too well, that my history was one of living absolutely alone surrounded by people… until I met you. Those brief months were the only time I removed the bars of my prison; I was yours in my entire. I held nothing of myself off limits with you.

The things we fought for were and remain worthy, but we will never know the greater implications of the individual changes we helped create. Our lives are too microscopic for the view. The lives of many made those rails of ancient history, the lives of many made our global coalition in our present history as well. Who can say the cost/worth? Who can say if it will be a progress in the end?

Its funny, babies parallel play until they reach an age of being able to interact socially. Children interact socially until they reach an age where they no longer can or will, and go back to living lives of parallel play, each in their own internal universe, never allowing the thoughts happening behind their adult masks to be known.

In my old age, and in this prison of their making, I have again learned to connect. There is nothing left for me to lose, you see. Those behind these walls have become my community, my friends, my kindred. We have spent days in laughter as well as tears. We learned to speak to one another from the heart, without the walls. Has our joy in one another less meaning because of our environs? Indeed, no. It has the same truth-ring as any other bond one makes anywhere.

Yet, I never took another lover. Solitude is my way, not yours. You need bonds to survive, and should have them. But for you, my life was spent that way, alone. You alone freed me from my prison. I laugh, recalling the time I said that the hours we stole out of time would be enough to last me a life time. Who knew how prescient those words would be? They have sustained me. It truly was enough, though I wish it could have lasted forever. You would not recognize me now, even though the torture programs have long stopped. It aged me double my years. Of course, you are no longer a young man in your early 30’s prime either. Equally, it matters not to me if you have become thin and frail with age, nor robust with fine living, the nerve endings beneath whatever skin you now carry would recognize my touch and my touch would would still bring the same joys to the same man I always knew and loved. But that is never to be. Not with me. But you should have it nonetheless.

I know you are alive and free. I can still feel you, I can feel that vibration deep in the assemblage point in my belly, that spiritual explosion of mitochondrial energy that always happened between us when we connected. Through the years, that connection, the sudden vibration of you thinking of me, has allowed me to enjoy you in spirit, and given relief to my more human urges. It has come far more rarely these last years. You have found someone. I celebrate that with all my heart, and it eases the guilt of knowing after tomorrow, you will never be able to find me again in that way. I release you. I release you to the other mirror of your soul you have found. Be well, be happy, live and love fully.

It is ironic, that I hear they are starting to commute the death sentences of the “terrorist rebels” of our day. Like any process in the drag of human history change, it will be longer coming than I have to wait. Tomorrow I will be reborn, not die, I am certain, for how can this human frame possibly hold the vibrations I have known to be true spiritual connections? I am not afraid.

It was not a waste, anything I said or did, that resulted in my living the better part of my life in this place. I say that knowing full well it never got as bad as I anticipated. People still worked, lived, loved and died in their worlds, while those in Power did as they would. In some ways, history happens outside of the geo-political games that men of power have always played. I have to believe that the actions of myself, you, and those like us eased the conditions under which this latest, but surely not last, episode of human drama played out. That the bloodshed of our allies who died in arms against oppression woke them to their limitations, that my cage gave me a platform from which to be a silenced cause. There were wars, but not Armageddon. There is still not Peace, but there still are the Peaceful, and our numbers are growing.

Things are getting better. It is far from the Utopia we dreamed of, yet I feel the  Reformist Party has made huge strides. Our countrymen have an infrastructure again, no longer based purely on depleted fossil fuels and the profits of War. But things are far from perfect; there is still the results of the class war to contend with: hunger, poverty, illness, and still those behind gilded gates living like kings.

I hope you remember a few things. That the times we transcended the world in one another’s arms, those moments of peace and joy were also fibers in the weave, vibrations in the web of history. As are all the things human; the laughter of children, the comforting of the bereaved, the sharing of a fine meal, the sound of music, as well as the ecstasy of the orgasm. These things exist and have existed throughout every facet of our creeping history, and really are the only lasting things that matter in our butterfly lives. But the wings of a butterfly flapping may make tsunamis in time. These things color reality and the turn the Wheel as well. Neglected, all that is left is the uglier side of our natures to be the driving influence.

So celebrate all these things in your struggles. Bond again wholly with your beloved. If any of my three children survive me, and you happen upon them, remind them these words.

Tell them I died well and at peace. Tell them I enjoyed my life because I chose to celebrate these things. Tell them these walls were never my prison. These bars never stopped my touch, of them, or of you. Tell them the only true prison exists within, and never, never to succumb to it.

Again, I say, the wheel of human history turns slow and we must, and I have, tried to influence it to the very best of my abilities.

But tiny wheels of human lives are so very fleeting, so we must and I have, tried to live it as the precious gift it is.

I release you all to your lives, with full love and approval that you may enjoy the gifts as well, and not regret me or my loss. I will see you again in another part of the wheel, or in the light from whence we came. And I will love you as truly there.

With every ounce of my heart,

Me