Its unreasonable, I suspect, to wish to know that which I wish to know. Clouds drift according to their purposes, hidden in the evening sky, and the calls of mysterious birds hint at coming sadnessess. The air is full of water, laden with tears perhaps. Each new stream seems pregnant with distress, its flow surely fleeing some disaster. A friend once gave me some firm words of wisdom, borrowed words worth a thought or two. "Everything that rises must converge." he said. And so I borrowed those words again: everything that rises must converge. And I burrowed into them and sought this rising everything.
But here I am again, climbing this same hill, breathing this same air, laden with heavy wretchedness, for everything I see seems not of rising. The rain falls sour on this land; my people seem writhing to upright each right, destroy each art we've wrought. From this high hill the world descends to nothing. All I see is fleeing, falling, finite, not converging at some limitless incline, but stopped by an abyss I daren't know.
And so I ask, perhaps unreasonably, to peek into that void. When every star has fallen, when each small cloud's dispersed, when all the thunder's voices fade to empty, then I'll stand. Standing I'll step down this hillock's rise and to the darkened canyon raise my voice and say, "Everything that rises must converge." And then I'll jump. I hope I'll fall as I descend and hope that time spent falling I'll spend knowing and receiving. I hope that falling will revive me and upturn me and discern me and that maybe all my life I've been living and deriving and been wholly upside-down. And falling, rising, whirling, wheeling, I'll come up into my knowledge of the world. And good and evil, wind and rain, indeed all things will know me.
And yet I linger there, silent, at that edge.
