I go to a beach, my worshipping hands are not still but moving, propelling myself. My prayers are not words but the sound of air bubbling out of my mouth. My temple is not solid but liquid and it arrived here on meteorites, apparently. Meteorites which fell onto this from up there, where at this moment a mountain of cloud is bellowing up into the sky above Cyprus. I am floating.
I woke earlier with a foggy brain, depression was using it to create thoughts like: why is anyone bothering to live or do anything, it's all pointless, I my as well not exist.
Still in bed I blearily reach for my phone and watch a BBC news story about female Buddhist nuns who are learning what for thousands of years has been in the realm only of the male, Kung Fu. The Kung Fu nun has gentle deep black eyes above her vibrant saffron robes.
I put my phone down, moments pass. Having had enough of wallowing in nihilism I decide I will get up right now and go for a swim to shock me into wakefulness.
I put on my swimming shorts, grab my salt smelling slightly damp towel and walk the one minute it takes to get to the beach, passing a cat with wide teal eyes whose vertical slits are black windows into another universe.
Above the beach the sun was shining through the edge of cirrus clouds, I peeled off my t-shirt, shirt and jumper in one swift movement. I did my swimming shorts into a tighter bow, my belly button above it waiting nervously for the cold.
My feet are on the sand. My depression is still heavy upon me, life is still pointless.
Stepping in, the cold water reaches my ankles rising up the body like a chiding slap. My waist now encircled, three deep breaths and I dive.
Splash.
well no, it's more like...
shslslahsssh%blkkllaubblubb
There is an instant, before it I am above and after I am under the water. Before it I am hearing vibrations of air and after it, vibrations of water. Before it I am a blob of depression, nihilism and drowsiness and after it, a ripple of movement, a smiling gliding under water face, a salty clean serene body. That instant is the doorway through which I enter my place of worship.
So here I am, gazing at the mountain of cloud while floating on my back. It startles me, swirling with bruised blues and purples underneath, reaching up high with huge puffs of white. It seems as though the sky has stretched to accommodate, it seems as though it is falling over me as my arms jellyfish my body backwards.
In the other direction, out towards Beirut, a plane is passing high above, a distant slicing of the blue sky is heard.
Zeno of Citium would have looked at this same sky 2320 year earlier. A statue of whom I saw in Larnaca yesterday, where Citium used to be. He said -
Well being is attained by little and little, and nevertheless is no little thing itself.
Why is anyone bothering to live or do anything, it's all pointless, I my as well not exist.
Little by little I discover these stories are only as real as the extent to which I believe them, well-being is discovered to be what discovers this. This is no little thing itself. Because it is is large enough to contain all stories.
