Geometry Of Dawn

Dreamed before 1983 by Bruce Kawin

In the middle of a mountain I know, she said, there is a man and a tree of silver. The leaves of the tree are words. He shows you a branch, he shakes it, and deep in the mountain the words fall like slow fog: you are beautiful, fated, open, whatever the leaves say. You smile stupidly at all this information until you see that the words have left spaces on the branch like a line in I Ching. These spaces he proceeds to interpret. That silver litter, she says, is the language of men. God speaks in the sequence of space. No, I said, the language of men is binary, the leaf that is there or not, itself or not; the language of God is every shape at once, the flow of itself through space.

Very well, she said, I know another story but this one you must not repeat. She blew a smoke ring. I looked for the center and fell through a torus of cloud that turned round itself and would not seem to leave me all of that night. The rock said, how much of an island can you rccognize? A wave of rock on a wave of water, I said. Not bad, said the rock. Now what do you mean by wave? The regularity of space as it passes through itself, I said. Good, said the rock, I have a shack for you and your beloved to continue to discuss these things and when you are tired, to sleep, and when you are aware as this water to flow through each other and shape to yourselves the image of you together.