Across darkness I rose through horizons. A jazz musician once told me that his saxophone speaks spells for the subconscious. He said, “If you dive deep into the ocean of your mind, who knows? ...Maybe you’ll find a leviathan.” Cresting a mountain peak, I saw it, the ocean he spoke of. In the moments before dawn, all was gray-blue, a murk. Focus drifting, my flight faltered, and I fell through clouds toward the ocean.

Beneath slow waves I could make out forms, bubbling and swirling, some small, some large, and one gargantuan. I pictured the musician falling with me, reading from the book of Coming Forth by Day, reading that in the night one turns and faces oneself, the many howling, laughing, pausing in the body of one. It was still night. And I was afraid. And so I gathered sand to make islands in this ocean that I could step across. For I feared that tooth or tentacle might snag my foot if I were to swim amidst the open sea. At last, dawn broke in the east.

For days I lay across beaches, baking and reddening in the sun, starving for lack of fish, the ones I could grasp if only I were to wade in from the shore.

One day two figures rose out of the sea, a mentor and a child. They wore my face. They sat on either side of me in the sand.

I am afraid, said the child.

And how do we regard our fear? asked the mentor.

The child replied:

We will turn toward our fear. Fear is that which builds islands in the rolling ocean of god. Fear is the little-death that brings total fragmentation. And yet we see with wonder how this little-death is god-suffused. How it protected our hearts as grim lightning cracked whips across black skies. How, just as we cried out those nights, our fear cries out for the cradle-embrace of love. And so this: We will feel our fear, receive it viscerally, intimately, and completely. We will permit it to express outward and through the body. And at last, full with its knowing, we will set our fear free. Let the wind of our breath stir sweet tides upon fear’s shores. And the grains of sand that once composed an island will diffuse across an ocean. And where fear had once composed, there will be only the knowing and swimming of life. We surrender to this practice with total commitment, Until one day we will turn toward fear, To find only the rolling ocean of god.

I do not remember when, but partway through this recitation I found myself wading deeper and deeper into the sea alongside them, until, at last, we were far below the surface. I spoke to them in astonishment, words bubbling into water from my throat: “How is it that I can breathe in this ocean, and more freshly and sweetly than ever before?” And yet before I could finish this thought, we were devoured whole by the leviathan.

Today we sit in his belly, dissolving, finding peace in having been his meat. In my dying dreams I see my meat become its flesh. I see its flesh devoured by a yet greater leviathan. And so on, and so on, devoured and renewed, until the one day when our collective remains meet the mouth of one so large that its only predator is the rolling ocean itself, in which all forms meet their end.

Inspirations for this piece:

Brandon Lee Lewis and his Program of Deprogramming. In real life, he's a drummer and not a saxophonist. I ran into him at Fat Cat in Manhattan one night at...it must have been 2am or something.

Awakening Osiris: A New Translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, from Normandi Ellis inspired the prose style of this piece. I've purchased this book for friends 7 times according to Amazon, that's how much I like it.

Heptapod B by Jóhann Jóhannsson from the movie Arrival, which was itself based on Ted Chiang's moving short story, Story of Your Life.

The Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert's Dune (probably my favorite book of all time). I wrote a new version because I'm not sure it gets the intention toward fear exactly right.