Snow

"Snow, how does the living become jealous?"

She does not ponder my intellectual intensity, a blizzard haze of self seeking trails.

"The dead are jealous as well."

"What is it to be dead?"

"The same as it is to be alive. That is why when you are alive if you are jealous when you die you are still jealous. What you see is what your eyes perceive. What you know is what your eyes do not see. What is before your eyes will disappear. Your knowledge is your only true vision."

"What therefore is knowledge and how is it attained?"

"Through experience the lesson of action and inaction. We never really know anything. We can only speak of experience so this is our own knowledge. Every single person as an individual creates their own mind and their own wisdom. This way we all each know something different so that we may learn from one another."

She prepares me as not to shock; I am inexperienced misery. She presents a riddle for me to decipher profound simplicity; Snow is the sage, the archer, cheerful indifference for the chastiser, and the woman I honor shadows of monks. Water ripples wild currents of analyzation across my forehead. My brain storms lightning; her bow springs for attention.

"Is this what becomes of my body?"

"These are skeletons and they hold up your body as not to say we become a skeleton; we are skeletons already."

Lamps burn bright acknowledging her presence; chants of unified contemplation without beginning or end cools the air.

"This is my head? What a strange being I am."

Her laugh is thunder of a charioteer's horse hooves dancing through snowy mountains transforming into seagulls.

"This is a skull. All the pieces that form the protection for what makes you wonder so many questions is tucked inside like a turtle's soft body. Each one of these creases or plates is like a trumpet pronouncing the oncoming battle."

"What must I defeat?"

"Jealousy, envy, lust, deception, greed, boastfulness, grotesque behavior, and the source of temptation for all of these."

"Where and how must we meet?"

"Inside of your heart and mind that interacts with other hearts and minds. That is where you will find hatred and that is where you will find love."

"Thus love is hatred? If so closely relative in one place then they must be of the same origin."

She places chin upon a curve hook finger; the pirate lost his hand.

"Hhhmmmmm.........side by side like heaven and hell."

"Uranus and Pluto must cross each other's path; we assume each to be so far apart but both are similar."

Her index bends between her lips; a gesture of caution for words unspoken.

"Like war; brothers fight and they come out of the same womb. They forsake their mother and what once was love is hatred. Maybe what was always has been so they always felt that way about each other. Change is just realization."

"Then jealousy must be both love and hatred as one without changing."

The Centaurian grins for found treasure; her words flow electricity striking the conductor.

"If so then when you realize this what do we feel and what will be the outcome?"

I think about Nadia balancing objects upon my dome while I sit still; I seem to float away from the physical world. Once an egg, very uncomfortable; I feel the top of my growth.

"I believe it to be what we truly seek. I believe what we seek is freedom. The feeling and the outcome is freedom. Jealousy will cease to exist!"