You have been selected
for temporary assignment
to a rotating rock.
First, forget everything.
Because remembering
would ruin the surprise.
You will receive a body
made of water,
salt,
and old stars.
It will be impressive at first.
Hands.
Eyelashes.
Later you will discover
the lower back.
We apologise in advance.
You will also be given
a brain.
The brain is useful
for solving problems
and creating additional problems
when none are available.
It may wake you at 3:17 a.m.
to remind you of something embarrassing
you said in 2009.
Do not engage.
This is spam.
Upon arrival
you will experience
a sensation called being someone.
This is temporary.
You will also be assigned a name.
Answer to it.
But wear it loosely.
People will use it
to call you across rooms,
to blame you,
to love you,
to write it on envelopes
containing both good news
and invoices.
But remember:
you were alive
before anyone called you
anything.
None of this is your true name.
Your true name cannot be carried
by words.
There will be moments
when the world feels
too solid.
When stone is only stone.
When the sky is only weather.
When another person
seems impossibly far away.
This is part of the forgetting.
Be patient.
The veil is thinner
than it appears.
Nothing is still.
The mountains are moving.
The oceans are moving.
The cells in your body
are replacing themselves
while you insist
you are the same person
you were yesterday.
You might fall in love.
This is when one human
becomes unusually interested
in another human’s
sleeping noises,
minor opinions,
and preferred method
of loading a dishwasher.
It is considered sacred.
Do not mock it.
Actually, mock it a little.
Sacred things survive jokes.
Say I love you
before the moment becomes cinematic.
Most important moments
are poorly lit.
Do not wait.
You will sometimes feel
an ache
with no object.
Do not hurry
to cure it.
It is the memory
of belonging
to something
without edges.
You will search for this belonging
in lovers,
in houses,
in cities,
in gods,
in the face
you see in the mirror.
Search.
The searching is sacred too.
You may spend years
trying to find yourself.
This is considered
an honourable activity.
Eventually you will discover
that the searcher
was the thing being searched for.
Do not announce this over dinner.
People are trying
to eat.
But know this:
what you seek
is not elsewhere.
It is the quiet
beneath your seeking.
There will be ordinary days.
Many of them.
Do not underestimate these.
A cup on a table.
Sunlight on the floor.
Someone calling your name
from another room.
Fresh bread
while it is still warm.
Strawberries.
An afternoon
with nowhere important to be.
These are not interruptions
to the sacred.
They are the sacred
wearing work clothes.
Pay attention.
You will be tempted
to seek revelation
only in mountains,
temples,
visions,
and stars.
But the infinite
has hidden itself everywhere.
In dishwater.
In breath.
In tired hands.
In laughter
arriving at exactly
the wrong moment.
In the sound
someone makes
when they are trying
not to cry.
When possible,
sit beside someone
who is sad
without trying to improve them.
Bring snacks.
Snacks are one of the few technologies
Earth has nearly perfected.
You will be expected
to know what you are doing.
This is perhaps
Earth’s greatest misunderstanding.
Nobody knows.
You will make mistakes.
Some will wound others.
Some will wound you.
Repair what you can.
Ask forgiveness.
Begin again.
The divine has never required
your perfection.
Only your presence.
You will lose people.
Nothing we say here
will make that easy.
When someone you love
leaves their body,
you may feel
the whole world
has made a terrible mistake.
Let yourself feel this.
Grief is love
learning a new shape.
Speak to the dead
if you need to.
Love does not become foolish
because a body is absent.
There will be moments
when you remember who you are.
Perhaps while holding
a sleeping child.
Perhaps while swimming
alone at dusk.
Perhaps when music
enters you so completely
there is no one left
to listen.
Perhaps standing alone
in a kitchen
while rain moves
against the dark glass.
For one impossible second
you may forget
to be separate
from anything.
In those moments
do not reach for explanation.
Explanation is smaller
than experience.
Just stay.
Try strawberries.
Swim naked at least once
if local laws
and water temperature permit.
Waste afternoons.
Stand in the rain.
Taste peaches.
Laugh until
you briefly forget
the shape of your own life.
You came here
to become intimate
with the temporary.
To love what disappears.
To touch what cannot stay.
To say yes
to a world
already leaving.
For several decades
you will carry a universe
inside a skeleton
and complain about parking.
It will be magnificent.
And when your time comes
to return,
the body may resist
the door it was born
to pass through.
Be tender with it.
It carried you
all this way.
Before departure
you will be asked
to return all borrowed materials:
your bones,
your language,
the face you believed was yours,
the body
you called your own.
Do not worry.
Nothing truly belonging to you
can be confiscated.
You may keep
the astonishment.
Before you leave,
look once more
at the world.
At the astonishing arrangement
of light and matter.
At the hands
you called yours.
At the faces
that taught you
how to break
and how to open.
At the ordinary room
where something extraordinary
once happened
and nobody noticed.
At the sky
you stopped looking at
because it was always there.
At the people
you loved badly,
beautifully,
briefly,
for as long as you knew how.
Before you leave,
a figure with no face
may ask:
Did you understand
what any of it meant?
The recommended answer is:
Not remotely.
But I laughed.
I was embarrassed.
I stood in the rain.
I tasted peaches.
I ate bread
while it was still warm.
I wasted afternoons.
I loved.
I lost.
I began again.
For a little while
I was a window
the universe looked through.
Then the figure may ask:
Did you remember
why you came?
Tell the truth.
Say:
No.
But once,
standing alone in a kitchen
while rain moved
against the dark glass,
I forgot to be separate
from anything.
That seemed important.
At the final gate
you may be asked
what you brought back.
Do not say trophies.
Say:
I was here.
I paid attention
sometimes.
I loved
as much as I knew how.
There is no correct answer.
There was only ever
the experience
of answering.
Then step forward.
The figure will stamp
your papers.
The door will open.
And perhaps, finally,
you will remember:
you were never sent away.
You were never outside.
You were never separate
from the thing
you spent your whole life
trying to return to.
You only entered time
for a little while
so eternity
could know
what it felt like
to be here.
Rob Walker 