Kubo lays himself beneath the lawcurled down against the riverwhile I, his angelus, recordabove and northwardby stylus of glutamate surfeitthe work of his idleness.There for chore of minor honorin the creek almost a canyon,he is to make a supplicationbetween dam and dam - to fill his dutied vessels fourthen bathe, and quaff right-out one more,in creek carved deeper, longer thanand now faster by all man.Kubo knows this not til afterand hardly then now wherefore,yet does and in the doinglets me light.So let me lend ye --
Kubo is come to shear his pastby its shearing be himself shornbe left, and leave himself toa future renewed, potent, modestall potential yet all plannedlike a work of devious circuitry.Kubo, ill, is ailed thus further.The days pass and each his past engorgeseach present calling to some burdeneach future a memory restored.The world only is as an arenafor lost causes, burnt effects, or other worldsKubo is sure he alone was shownand thus moves he withthe invincible indifferenceof some elder ghost.Kubo would as neither be this wayas become someone elsewhich he is set dead he wouldwithout his ghostliness beand so too oft in staggersor in fury will he go.Hallowed then to him is every chorepertaining to a precious simple - such as to fetch water,cut the white from peppers,aim some boys at the saddle between hills,all these having neither past nor future,all these the work of which is without change.It was for nought, then, really - or rather a day's magnifying minimum -that Kubo slid into the ravine.
'O boulder be not water but keep life,'Kubo prayed.'O river be not stone but keep life.'All men who've died before, stay awake;'see I, and you thereby, of life partake.'Kubo lowered his left and then right forearm,his left and then right calf, into the water,his palm to his face and then his faceinto the water, and into the water,running clear. The filth the water tookfrom Kubo flowed downstreamwhere none could find it againand Kubo felt himself at birth,pristine, and happily ejectedfrom something that knew him before he was.
As far from me as then his filthto Kubo is his dilemma, for as clearto my kind as water has it ever beenthat time flows not in the manner perceivedby earthly creatures, tho sorrowfullythis confusion is of their fundament.But paining specially is Kubo's sortseeking frantically the wronga right way round, against all fortune.It is not the case that the futureis begat from a lineage of pastsor by the concatenation of their laborsnor that the past is some inert,dark, and sunken place, over whichthe future passes in vain or neglected search.Nor can one call the past the future's wellspringor at least not who has livedand in living well found life in a facetowards the future, a heft pulled to past.Rather, as sharply drawn in Kubo's kind,for whom the past is a turbid bend,brackish, a slewheap of potential futures,the thruline a trickle of intimationsof the one more clear and pure - of destiny - is it best to understand the futureas coursing into the past,smoothing away the present,lending carriage to ever-amountingsediments of sentiment and meaningto be deposited in origin, in ocean.And whatever future one can imaginebe rarified, pure, separated into elements,with life tho less full of it, serene-austere,as proper as an aim, improper a goal,as is North, or Up, or Ordnung.The greater the capacity or interestin sifting through the past, the morevariant and powerful the entitiesone perceives crumblingnot by each other but at future,and too the alien unity of its design,its work and essence irrespective of all before it,as it's traced to ocean, to sky,nourishing an earth that can seem in error...such that a mighty fool this Kubo lookslooking for a sustaining swig in his tidepoolor even, when with will hiked upstreamtrying to cage the current in his hands.A stubborn sojourner, neither moving onnor settling, not clarifying his differenceand not withdrawing from it,without wings or roots, and ever braying - a picture of the muck of man,this man. To whom we return.
As Kubo leaned against the rock,one foot in the frigid water, he thoughtof the boulder, how long it stood, how little changed - of the stream, seeming to narrowthe deeper it sliced into the earth(only to hasten, and thus slice deeper) -of all behind him on the ten-foot wide riverside,growing all below an impossible grade, -pine trees, mossy boulders, rushes,all manner of prickly bush - footsteps of rock to marsh - and whether any before had thoughtit worth a setting foot.And he felt only, 'Good.'as if with a clicklittle to know he anchored not himself to the memorybut the memory to our toplinefor to ascend out of himselfand his present ever a pastto past insights that imbue the momentwith the clarity of destining design.For Kubo stood not then stubbornbut stalwart, as the boulder, or betterthe pine, holding its soil fast, its roots the water's edge.His face upstream, in the almost thoughtlessbliss of immediate recognitionand yet pressed back to travelers before,holding still because held against their weight,all who'd found the river's impasseboth a means of passing timeand the passage out - his present experienceof the present's meaning but in future restoredand by those passed, with whomhe'd changed places in darknessto arrive theregiving all attendanta lucid hope.
Yet none of that transpiredfor all its vivid, vivifying truthwhich may the moment overwritewhich moment ends for now insteadwith Kubo leapt into the riverat his buddy's beckwith no words or thoughts but laughtera whole conversation of laughterhomo ludensanimus sine vocisin the sea of joyof which all was createdand is in all creating onand still is all clear beyond a-ho
