Author: Robert Roach

Birth is a spoke-fellow of death, as is profit the harbinger to ruin; success to failure.
Turn the wheel does, with the inexorable energy of the cosmos, the vast sucking power of the black stars.

The power of it is felt in the bones and the fibers as they grind, stretch, tear, grow. The pain of its turning is also the flow of ecstasy. The movement of things that hurt and things that please, the ever going and coming of things, the dynamics and form and shape of existence is made manifest by its turning.

This is where the power comes from, where the dying and the birthing; the grave and the swaddling clothes, the womb and the cock. The furious, unfathomable, unstoppable wheel is all.

It is the beautiful muse which speaks to us in the velvet dark of our own genius and ineptitude. It forces upon us reams of shitty words, and horrible paintings and transcendent beauty.

The wheel turns, and all are raised up and driven into ruin. The wheel turns and Suns and time circle great wells of destruction to be vomited back into……….. What?

All are creatures of destruction, all things seen and unseen are products of fusing and tearing and melting and pressing and expanding. To know God is to know that we are all the bones of stars set in motion by destruction. To know God is to know that existence is the bastard child of suns raped by time and gravity; The wheel-sperm spewed upon the surface of time like so much semen on a black sparkly prom dress.

For all reflects the wheel. All reflects the motion and the grinding and the lifting and the falling.

Humanity is right. There is a fate, a cosmic plan, an existence after. After the appointed time and appointed reincarnations, the molecules in our flesh bags who may or may not remember the countless forms of themselves will circle a black star. The power will be felt in their cohesive bonds and electrons, and they will be compressed, torn, fused, made singular. The wheel did-turn-is-turned-will turn and they have-are-will circle great wells of destruction to be vomited back into…… What?

Oh yes, God has a plan for you.

The wheel turns, does it not? What more proof do you require?

Old man Quakey slowly allowed the wind to turn his head. He looked down at the strange creature at his feet.

Time is different for trees folk; and even though Aspens live relatively short lives, it had been many times of springing since something has disturbed Old man Quakey’s thoughts of roots and leaves and seeds.

Now, he tasted something… different. He sipped at the bright red water. There was something in it; a memory from this creature.

He had tasted memories before. He had tasted the long slow memory of this mountain; had enjoyed the bouquet of lives upon lives building up the rich soil his feet were buried in.

So many lives… lives filled with mating and dying and eating and howling. Lives of the small things that ate death and lives of bigger things that sometimes feasted upon his sprigs in the summer; lives of things that scored his sides with antlers in their rutting lust and died shaking at his feet in the sleeping time.

But this memory, the memory he sipped now from the strange two legged creature, the memory brought to him from the red water that was soaking into his feet…. These were more….. complicated.

A rush of images that made Quakey’s leaves shake in the breeze crashed into his heart… This was of color…. He was looking at himself through this memory… There was something about the color…

He felt his leaves.. they were dying. It was the time of changing; The time of drawing in; the time before the sleeping. Old man Quakey was confused… why would the color of dying be so strong a flavor in this creatures life water?

He sipped a bit more. There seemed to be a lot of it. It was hot and heady and tasted of joy and life and death.

There was that color again… that rush…. This time, the Tree, in it’s Tree like eyes, saw a girl. Her hair was the color of the changing; the color of His own crowned Majesty. Some of the hair curled around an eye the color of the most beautiful sapling. That color was contrasted by her skin and made Old Quakey think of moonlight and starlight.

Love….. aching love…. What is love?

Quakey did not understand… perhaps love was like the life the mountain gave him. Perhaps it was the sweet rain that soothed his new leaves at the time of springing.

Perhaps……

The life blood was cooling now… There was less of it. it was coming from a rend in the creatures side. A shaft with flying thing feathers on the end protruded from the creature’s trunk.

Old man Quakey drank again…. This time he tasted……. Sorrow? Regret?

He did not understand these things..

The last of the red life pulsed from the creature’s wound…. in respect, Old man Quakey drank the last of it; tasted the last memory. the old Tree saw hair the color of his leaves again…. surrounding the face with the green eyes… arrayed around like his very own halo of Changing; lying on the sweet grass of the springing.

And now, it was gone. Old man Quakey remembers now, remembers the red hair. He will remember it until He rots and feeds his children with his bones… They will taste him and remember. They will remember the red hair when they also feel the changing, and their color, in their time, will match this precious memory.