I Am Was Is

It calls us. On the wind. It calls us all. It’s in the roaring whisper of the river. If only we would hear the words a bird forms upon its wing. There is a song and the Earth sings it to us every single moment of every day. Calling us to become what was always meant for us.

We all heard it once, a long time ago. And we danced in tune with everything around us. A song of belonging that told us how to be. Now we are lost behind a veil of our own wilful imagining. Swaddled in ignorance as we arrogantly live a fantasy of falsehood. The devil won so long ago, and he keeps on winning to our eternal cost and shame.

The river wanders lazily this way and that. He is drawn to it as he always was. Now he understands. And he always knew. He knew it in his very bones. The knowledge resides in all living things. There is no secret. The secrecy lays in a way of being that was never meant for people.

Slipping his hand into the cool waters he crouches there for an age. A statute worn smooth by the incessant movement of the river. Never is it the same river and yet they are no longer strangers.

Behind him a bear approaches. A huge beast creeping up behind him on oversized paws. He thinks of them as slippers and smiles at the beautiful absurdity of that image. Making of the animal an inept middle-aged man. Diminishing him comically with an uplifting affection.

The enduring river is far more powerful than the stalking bear. He’s bookended by them both but there is no fear within him. He is open and he feels the moment. The presence of the bear is undeniable now. The intent comes at him before the bear ever does.

He drops almost flat, his rippling face peering back at him as the bear leaps forth. Feels the goliath sail gracelessly over him. A subdued roar that is more of a defeated moan. Water roars upwards as the bear bellyflops into the river. In the next second he’s jumping at the bear. Hits it in the chest as it stands up in the river. Bowls it over and into the water.

The two figures break the surface of the thrashing waters. The bear roars and he laughs. They come together with the inevitability of gravity. The man is still laughing as they embrace. There is no ill intent from either of them. This is play. This is fun. Enjoying the gift of life and all that it brings with it.

“Nearly got me that time, Bear,” the pale man tells his friend.

Bear wails at him and swipes his shoulder with his ridiculous slipper.

“Hey!” the man warns, “don’t be a sore loser.”

Then he rounds on the bear and bowls him over. They wrestle for a good five minutes. Neither wins and so they both win.

Afterwards, the man returns to the river’s edge. Both hands in the waters. “Catch!” he calls as he tosses a salmon over his shoulder. The bear watches the arc of the flying fish all the way to the point it hits him on the snout.

“Clumsy,” the man says affectionately as he carries another salmon back to his home and the barbecue that is already fired up and awaiting his catch.

Another man joins him. Hands him a beer as the fish cooks, “you spoil that bear.” He say, pointing with his bottle.

“And he spoils me,” replies the man.

They sit in companionable silence, watching Bear eat his meal.

As they eat, the man draws in a breath. This signals the beginning of a chat. The longer the pause, the deeper the words will go. This is the longest of pauses.

“Things are different,” he says.

The other raises his beer, find it empty and retrieves two more, “and you mister, are a master of understatement!”

“Don’t you feel it?” he asks.

His friend raises his eyebrows, “I feel more now than I ever have, Ben.”

The man who is called Ben nods, “if you’d been told this back when you were normal you’d have thought it improbable, and you’d predict madness were it to happen.”

The other returns the nod.

“We’re not mad though are we, Thom?” he asks his friend.

And Thom grins by way of reply, “oh! we’re madder than the hatter, mate! All of this is madness beyond anything we could have managed. We are a prime example of you have to be careful what you wish for. Only… we didn’t wish for this. At least I don’t think we did.” Thom either misses Ben’s sheepish look, or chooses to overlook it. He raises his bottle in a toast and they tap the glass together.

Bear looks up at the sound.

“No, Bear,” says Ben, “you are not raiding our beer supplies. You know what happened last time.”

The last time Bear got drunk had been fun for the first evening. What they didn’t know was he’d carried off further stocks of beer and had planned on going on a week long bender. The come down had been fierce.

Bear grizzles at his friend in reply and lopes off into the woods. He’s carrying a fish head in his mouth. A present for a friend he hangs out with deep in the woodland.

“You don’t think he’s got another stash do you?” asks Thom.

“No,” Ben is smiling, “I checked, just to be on the safe side.”

Another pause, more beer drunk. The sounds of the river and the woods serenading them.

“We have become gods,” Ben says grandly as he finishes his second beer.

His friend eyes him thoughtfully as Ben does the honours and gets them another beer.

“Doesn’t feel like we are,” Thom says when his friend is seated.

“And yet it does…” Ben takes a long swig of his beer, “can you remember the person that you were?”

“I…” begins Thom.

Ben nods, “I remember, but it is like…”

“Another life,” says Thom. He thinks it’s a little like revisiting primary school as an adult. The place is a miniaturised mockery of what once was. The chairs and desks are impossibly small. Thom could never reconcile that petite world with what he had become.

“Remember when I was a dentist?” asks Ben breaking Thom out of his dreamlike thoughts of his past life. He’s grinning like a Cheshire Cat now, showing off his own teeth.

“That was pretty wrong!” chuckles Thom.

“Why?!” asks Ben.

“You weren’t qualified!” says his bestest friend.

“I knew my stuff,” Ben says defensively. Another swig of beer, “anyway… I was thinking about how I was back then. The dentistry was kinda symbolic.”

“How so?”

“All those mouths, but never anything said,” Ben looked up at the now dark sky. The light from dead stars a warning of the impermanence of life that few heeded, “there was so much noise back then.”

Thom nods, “what’s brought these thoughts on?”

“I’ve been feeling the change,” says Ben.

“In touch with your feminine side, eh?” says Thom.

Ben is caught out by the quip, fires beer from his nostrils. “I’ve not done that in a while!”

“Last Thursday,” Thom states.

“Always much needed,” Ben taps his bottle upon Thom’s and has another go at imbibing the brew. “We are what we do, Thom,” he sighs, “and we are gods.”

Thom sighs also, “I’m not sure I want to be a god,” he swigs some beer, “those Greek gods we encountered were complete dicks.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Ben’s nodding, “I mean they were absolute dicks. But maybe we caught them on a bad day?”

But Thom’s shaking his head, “not unless all their days were bad in that respect.”

Ben points at his friend with his beer bottle, “which is a worry isn’t it?”

Thom almost asks why, but instead he stills his tongue and thinks for a moment, “yes,” he concedes, “it’s a worry.”

“Some would say that we were dicks before we came into our powers,” Ben observes.

“I think that’s probably undercooking it,” says Thom smiling a very knowing smile. A knowledgeable smile that has witnessed much and conveys a gentle flavour of the irreverence that Ben and Thom have always had for the powers-that-be, “but we were different back then.”

Ben scrutinises his friend, “and yet we brought our values and ways of being along to the party. And that party has got a little out of hand at times.”

“It’s not a party unless it gets out of hand,” adds Thom.

Ben nods acknowledgement, “but you know what I mean.”

“But you say we’re changing…”

Ben winks, “so you admit you feel the change too?”

“It stands to reason,” Thom says, “we’re not the same as we were.”

Ben shrugs, ”but we never sat down and thought any of it through.”

Now Thom snorts and very nearly projects beer across the camp fire that was casually lit as the sun went down to the pub for a well-earned drink, and the night brought its gentle splendour out to play, “since when have you ever thought things through before you do them?!”

“That’s a very hurtful comment!” Ben says with mock recrimination upon his voice.

“And yet it’s true, not only of you, but pretty much everyone,” says Thom, “and that’s no surprise. We don’t really know how things will work out until they’ve worked out.”

“Or not,” adds Ben.

“Which is life, isn’t it?” says Thom, “the result of free will. The trick is to try to do good and to keep trying whilst attempting to learn as you go and not repeat the same thing over and over.”

“Which is a bloody tall order!” Ben scoffs.

Thom gives his friend a look, “just because it’s difficult, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. Imagine if we chose the easy life.”

Ben rolls his eyes, “as if we have a choice.”

Thom chuckles mirthlessly, “we do! There’s always a choice.”

“It’s not in us to sit idly by,” says Ben.

“Never has been, my friend,” Thom raises his bottle in a silent toast. Ben mirrors him, “it’s part of the reason we’re friends.”

“Because we’re both idiots?” asks Ben grinning.

Thom shakes his head at his friend, “that as well. We keep each other honest. When one flags and thinks about giving up, the other steps up and doesn’t let him. Part of that is we have fun with it. That’s important. Not only for the most obvious of reasons, but I reckon it means we are always looking at other angles. We’re not one trick ponies. We naturally adapt because we are intent upon having fun.”

“When you put it like that,” Ben takes a drink before continuing, “it sounds like a bad marriage with adventurous sex!”

Thom laughs, “it’s a good marriage, mate. We lift each other up and we keep each other honest. And there is adventure. But no sex! And there never will be.”

Ben descends into thought for a while and Thom gives him the space to do so. The friends know each other well and this is how they roll. This is listening before the words come. Listening to the entirety of the person you love and want to know well, “honest.”

“What?” says Thom, he may be a good listener, but the single word leaves little purchase for his cognitive functions to climb all over.

“You said honest,” Ben reminds him.

“Yes I did,” Thom admits, “we keep each other honest.”

“Do you think that’s what we do?” Ben asks him, “and do you think we try to make the world a little more honest?”

Now it’s Thom’s turn to take a moment and think things through at least a little. He nods as he does so, “we try to. We always have. We kicked against the injustice of things ever since I can remember. The lives we found ourselves in didn’t fit. We’d done everything we’d been told to and played it by the book and it didn’t work. It felt like… it felt like we didn’t work. But at the same time, we knew we did. Or maybe that we at least should. I sometimes find it ridiculous that we’re almost poster boys for the British sense of fair play…”

Ben chuckles, “well, in principle we are!”

Thom joins him in laughter, “but we are as far away from the establishment and the stiff upper lip as can be!”

“Yeah, I get stiff…”

“We’ll have none of that!” interjects Thom in the nick of time.

Ben winks lewdly at Thom, “such a spoilsport at times, deary.”

“And you’re…” Thom gets up to find more beer, “…least said about that the better!”

When he is seated again, Ben reopens the current can of worms that has sat untouched for far too long. Every now and then, the boys lift one of the rocks they know is hiding thing that needs attending to. Or they open a can of worms that has sat on the shelf of their lives for far too long. Being aware of these things does not mean that the house is always spick, span and tidy and that the garden is a paragon of order. No more is this more apparent than in Ben and Thom’s garden; the organised wilderness of nature into which they have embedded their lives.

Then there’s the pet bear. Bear is organised chaos in one massive package. A force of nature who does not know his own strength. Nor does he know Ben’s strength, only that he really enjoys being thrown aloft and caught like a tennis ball. Somehow he gets that this is unusual and he values the fun and games he has with his friend. This is an expression of love that he would not be without.

And deep in the nearby woods lives Vest. It is said that life finds a way. No one is clear as to how life found a way when it comes to Vest or why it was that life decided to reside within him. The stains upon Vest, now they are a different matter and no one would have been surprised if that matter had grown legs and walked off.

The truth of Vest lays in the mists of myth that rose from a soup of becoming. A planet that was about to be born and the restless and playful spirit of that planet. She’d rebelled and gone out into the world to find herself and on her quest to learn who she was, she met Thom and fell in love with the absurdity of him and his friend Ben.

She went in search of meaning and found life could be a storm of intended chaos that caused order through sheer determination and lunacy. Just as long as it was underwritten with love and the suite of values that love brings with it.

The meaning she sought was balance and Thom and his friend Ben brought that balance. She was the playful calm and the sense. They brought a sense of fun and tempered risk to the party. There would be flames, but the house seldom burnt down. The curtain budget was higher than most households, but that was a price worth paying because there always had to be play.

As Thom and Ben had met their match in each other, they had then met further matches. Finding a way to be themselves in this life had led to them finding their tribe and a place where they could be. They had come into this existence without a clue as to what lay before them and they had retained that throughout, but it never stopped them from carrying on with their lives and facing what lay ahead.

Life always found a way.

And Ben and Thom had somehow found a way to become godlike whilst remaining themselves. They weren’t to know it, but this was unusual and it made them rare beasts. Renewed in god-like powers. Ancient and yet childlike. Their seemingly accidental ascendency and its success had put a few noses out of joint and right now, there were beings looking down crooked noses at them and plotting the downfall of two heroes who didn’t want any trouble or nonsense.

That was how these things worked though. One party doesn’t look for trouble, trouble looks for them. This was the lad’s lot now. This was the destiny they were fulfilling. Little did they know that they were far more than the balance to the planet they had made their home, it went far beyond that and it kept on expanding for Ben and Thom were the embodiment of balance. A disruption to the falsehood of an order that had had its way for far too long. With their childish gaze, they saw that the emperor was naked and that he could do with a wax. And once they saw the emperor in all his naked glory, they understood that he was up to no good and that this wasn’t fair.

When it really came down to it, the boys asked questions. They’d always asked questions. Seemingly stupid questions. Silly observations with an insistent question mark. They gently called out that which did not make sense. But there were those who found such questions far from gentle, for there was power in these questions. And the power was truth.

Yes, the boys had tapped into the most ancient of powers and they were only getting started. After all, injustice was a lie that could not stand. Justice could only be done when someone had the courage to speak out and ask the question that must be asked.

Ben and Thom were the answer.

They were yet to find the question that really made sense of them.