Going with the flow
Yet you do not know
That the flow goes all directions

The natural lines that blind your mind
These barriers of glass
Create channels, rivers, currents
Patterns
Where the water
The flow
Simply goes

When you are always in the rapids
When your point of view is rabid
Only reacting
Not responding
So swept up in the current
You flail, flounder, following
Helplessly

Yet little do you know
The flow goes all directions
You are never alone
You are a node
You are the ocean
Not a current
You are everything
You’re worth it
You are the moment
You are worship
You are attention pointed out
Barriers are but illusions
Your life is lilting, tilting fusions
But becoming the ocean is not always easy
It’s massive, the motion makes us queasy
Most of the time we are in our own streams
Funneled by barriers as real as our dreams
But funneled nonetheless
Carried away

The process of growth
Is slowly raising yourself out of the stream
Slowly
Gradually
Adding moments of response
Instead of reaction
In that act
We find branches
In the stream
And therefore choice
We can paddle
Change our course

The world opens up
We are not the ocean yet
But on our way
As you lift yourself higher
Out of the stream
You do begin to see
The flow goes all directions
Flowing into the sea
Not only are you the ocean
But you are every stream

You float above this aquatic landscape
Coursing rivers like veins across the living earth
And, here is the magical part:
You can choose where to swim

You dive in
Headfirst
You are birthed
This is divinity
Infinity
Each moment of consciousness
A fateful flux
Between ocean and stream
Between finite and infinite
The macrocosm above
The microcosm below
The cosm in between

You are
Here
Now
The barrier between the mundane and the divine
The band of fluctuation
You are the frame
In which
This artwork unfolds

That is what happens when you can choose
When you lift out of the stream

On one level, you choose the next moment

On another level, you choose any of the infinite realities that your mind can imagine

On yet another, you are consciousness, the great ocean of light
Choosing which point to dive into the universe
Which river to course through

To enter a life of conscious experience
To sing the body electric
Be born and live and die
Be born
Live
Die
From ocean to stream and ocean again

The stream will be your entire experience
While you are underwater

But never forget:
This is Water

David Foster
This is Wallace

Meditation is learning how to swim
To realize this is water
And dryness is within
Then you learn to rise
Float above the water
Ascend
Transcend
Fly
So high
Then choose your stream
Dive in
Up and down
In and out
Like a dolphin merrily moving through the ocean
A smiling sine wave
Flowing seamlessly, dreamily
No wonder they are smiling
As free as one can be
They are the ocean and the stream
A realization that is probably easy
When one is born under the sea

We are the water in the stream
And the sea
Stretching across infinity
We are the force flowing through the tree
Splitting, branching
Diverging from the whole
But connected at the soul

In actuality
We are fractality

the sensuous curves of their shels
red
shinny

the clicking of their hands
also
called
claws

the look in their eye's
very
scary

On split finger webbing,
blistered metatarsal pads,
catlike: left left, right right.
You're just over there?
You call this chasm just?
On split, sore patella,
charred hands,
the head hanged loosely,
as dead: left left, right right.
My head down, eyes up, right?
Compensation has been tendered
for the services rendered, right?

                          Right?

Swim in the deepest part of the ocean,
With waves over head,
A life pieced by water,
A nautical life,
Or aquatic wonders,
There is no fear,
Living in fairytales,
Mithical creatures,
Sorrounding the waters,
Travel sea to sea,
Hopes disguised as flounders,
Surfers all above,
And here come the divers,
Ready to explore,
The kind I belong to,
Sing to them now,
They'll jump off from sails,
To follow the voice,
Deep in the waters,
Desperate souls,
Following as I speak,
Gullible minds,
When told to go under,
This siren awaits,
For sailors to wonder,
To bring them in deep,
In dangerous waters.

-Kathia Mariana Landeros