Hope Married Exile

Hope was a tribal woman. She had many choices and chose Exile. They married at the Cathedral of Dreams and danced through fields below Spanish mountains. They reached an edge of the Mediterranean.

“There’s a big world out there,” she said pointing over the sea.

“Yes and that’s only the top of it. Shall we share an orange?”

“Yes.” Hope smiled at real and imaginary worlds past the horizon where one reality edge met another reality edge in a singularity.

“We will sacrifice the peel to enjoy the fruit.”

“Delicious.”

Hope birthed a girl named Patience. It was hard raising Patience. She was a test for Hope and Exile. Patience gave them the test first and the lessons later.

Exile was a free wild bird and Patience tested his love. She tested his stability, honesty, devotion, and his way of constructing a world inside a world, a universe inside dancing phenomena. He was a risk taker not a ticket taker. Patience grew to admire this ability.

Together they evaluated their respective character traits and perfect imperfections. Patience tested his trust, his ability to let go and forgive with gratitude and generosity.

Patience handed them finite illusions of fear, anger, jealousy, ignorance and desire. Sitting together in meditation they created a diamond mind reflecting 10,000 things.

They lived on the edge of a forest. The old forest, seeing an axe handle approaching, said, “Look it is one of us.”

Exile raised Labrys, his double-bladed laughing axe. Streams of splinters blasted into air. Exile chopped. Hope carried.

“Patience never dies,” he said.

“She will live forever because she is magic. I felt it before she was born. She was a stream of light floating inside me.”

“She is radiant,” Exile said. “She is beauty, truth and wisdom incarnate. She will learn how to project her spirit energies. She will be a wise healer.”

“He was at the cemetario today,” Hope said.

“Who?”

“The nomad, the forcestero.”

“And yesterday as well," said Exile. "Wonder why?”

“No why. Visiting spirit sources. Emotional connections. Renewal. Affirmations.”

“Indeed. They will be out tomorrow with the full moon.”

“Clearly.”

Hope and Exile danced in a meadow under the moon.

Light pierced being. Humans did not see them floating and dancing. They were protected by light. Their energies were free from physical being. They were spiritual beings in a human world.

“What you perceive as fantasy is the product of your imagination.

What you perceive as reality is also the product of your imagination.

Without imagination reality is nothing.” - G. Seto

They released their temporal bodies and floated down to the Rio Guadalete to connect with water. The water was clear, cold and refreshing. Following rocky paths it flowed in a rush of sound from dark gray Sierra Mountains. Flowing flowers released scents. Rose water sang through fresh turned soil, olive and cork trees, forests thick with pine, fir, evergreen, pinsapar, maple, and trees without a name.

Bare trees pointed at pulsating white stars.

“Look there,” trees said, pointing thin arms into the sky, “there, there we are.”

“Yes,” they sang, “there we are.”

“Look,” said one, pointing in another direction, “there we are.”

“And there, and there.”

The wind listened as stars telling star tales containing star trails across the emptiness of sky whispered secrets about magic inside a vast vacuum of silence.

Hope and Exile were light.

"Hope is the last thing that dies," whispered wind.

A Century is Nothing