“Does life love us?” my Mummy told me
was the most important question I would ever ask -
and that my answer would shape my world.
I was still a puppy at the time,
but I already half-understood
that there were worlds with different shapes.
I left the others and went for a stroll in the hills.
Up and down, up and down, went the hills.
And up and down, up and down, went I.
I found water in a stream,
and lay down on my tummy in the shade of an oak,
front paws crossed casually, contemplatively.
The Earth could be flat and loving...
It could be round and loving...
It could be round and not loving at all...
I wondered about shapes and love...
Could the sky see me?
I could see it!
Did it love me?
Or was it empty blue?
There were lots of flies,
and sometimes I´d catch one.
They were crunchy.
Even then I already found flies fascinating.
Up and down and sideways all seemed the same to them.
But thinking about flies made me dizzy.
And if I thought about the shapes of their worlds
I´d almost pass out.
I looked up and down and around and around...
“Life? Love? Us? Me?” I asked
the wind in the oak,
and the flies in the wind...
“Life loves itself” I heard the hills reply.
But perhaps that was because I´m a dog.
What if I was a fly?
Would I have heard the same?
Maybe.
But maybe not!
And who´s to say the voice in a dog´s head is superior
to the voice in the head of a fly?
II
The sun was setting,
and I felt like going home.
So down I went, down the hills -
down and up, down and up -
until I could see the others.
I saw them,
and they saw me -
and our hearts jumped up,
and bounced about with love -
and we rolled about,
and bit each other with joy.
Dusk came,
night came,
and we all cuddled up next to Mummy´s hot tummy,
and suckled ourselves to sleep.
one by one...
I was the last one awake.
“So what´s your answer -
does Life love us, or not?” Mummy whispered gently.
“I feel intellectually ambiguous, Mummy”, I said.
And I closed my eyes -
and I never again saw
the day I went for a stroll,
and drank from a stream,
and heard the voice of the hills.
III
As I slept
I could feel the night on my fur,
and my tummy full of milk,
and Mummy´s front legs around me -
and it was then:
without me asking,
that my answer came to me...
First I dreamt of two puppies fighting -
one named “this”, and one named “that”.
One was white, and one was black -
but they were indistiguishable -
and their fight, I knew, went on and on and on.
As I turned away
from their interminable debate -
the wind from the hills picked me up -
and threw me about
until I couldn´t tell up from down from sideways...
I laughed and laughed and thought
“maybe it´s not so bad to be a fly!”
Until, then, the hills themselves spoke again:
“Don´t ask ´does Life love me?´ they said,
“ask ´do I love Life?´
Only by loving Life can we truly know
if Life loves us.”
And at that moment
I would have been happy to be a fly or a dog or the wind -
because I knew
the sun was waiting to play -
and that when I awoke
I would hug the world
and the world would hug me -
the way the morning mist and the hills hug each other -
and I knew
that as I grew up
my world would take the shape of a hug.
*
Mark Josephs "Mark the Mystic Activist" Aragon, Spain Summer 2024 CONSCIOUS TRIBES Seeds of a New Culture www.tribusconscientes.com
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