Lila's Well

Once I had the directions, the first one wasn't hard to find.

Started on West Broadway, walked to the car, sat reading for a few minutes, then got a glimpse of it JUST around the corner before I had to turn the other direction.

The second one, which was bigger, was actually a little trickier to find - heard some splashing and looked down from the reading nook to street level and caught a glimpse of it, but it was hauling serious ass up the street, stopping at most houses, sometimes briefly, sometimes a little longer. I didn't pursue it, just closed my eyes and tried to capture its look and feeling

And when I opened my eyes, graced!

A ladder had conveniently attached itself horizontally at window height. There was no fear or apprehension about the next steps - just action. Hell, it was going to happen anyway, might as well try it with my eyes open this time.

Popped out the screen and tested the ladder (pointless, in retrospect, clearly I was trying to show I had some control in the game) and walked out. An astonishing array below; a fluid mandala repainting and destroying itself; Brahma and Vishnu swimming in an epic embrace, Shiva sitting legs dangling over the side into the pool with a giant Talking stick that changed length and width at will, mixing the cacophony of light color smell and spice below.

I was above the well now, didn't need to look behind me to know that it would be the same as what was before me - a circle intimated and barely boundaried; all this could spill out through the fragile and bliss soaked membrane holding it all in; but not now, this wasn't the time. Hundreds and thousands of ladders coming in to meet me from all directions; the Well was coming to the houses now, not the other way around. Maybe it had always been this way? Or maybe it vacillated between coming and going. Or maybe, probably, all of the above.

Streams of humanity, most of them unaware of my watching, traipsed down the ladders. Many waited with a willful passivity before a spectered hand caught them around the ankles and pulled them in. Lovers came together to the alleged abyss and jumped in with abandon, hearts and roots on fire; I could see their light circling round the well - flying while they swam. Some came looking for the edge and got a whack of Vishnu's stick; Brahma and Vishnu embraced them on the way down, then they dissolved in fireflied light, sparkling above the pool and eventually becoming a part of it.

And a couple, like me. Two of us ended up making eye contact; thrilled with the spectacle below us as well as with the tension that standing here watching created. Vishnu was indifferent to us; he looked up and out at us, seeing us at the place between unity and diversity, the penultimate place, the place where paradoxes ALMOST but not quite resolved, where opposites closed in on each other but remained slightly tethered and reaching.

The last thing I saw before falling in was a plaque, dedicating the impersonal well from Lila TO Lila, OF Lila.

I had a sense of what it meant, before I was consumed by the neon grays and blues Vishnu and Brahma had waiting for me; draped in a custom coat of many colors, I went my way, knowing at some level that the sublation would come again, when ready, and I could again view the pool as an guide instead of consumer.

Nika!