Where the Buddha Meets the Road

 

“The White Bird” by Kiley Jon Clark

 

Of all my childhood, I recall nothing as vividly as the majestic white bird.

When I was six years of age my family moved from the city to a small town. The town was ninety-eight percent of Mexican descent. We had moved to follow another one of my father’s failed business ventures.

My father was a drunkard, with bouts of depression. In his alcohol poisoned mind, it would seem that the undeserving had it all, while life dealt him continuous bad hands. I pitied him.

My mother was raised a very sheltered child. Up until she married my father at age twenty, her mother laid her clothes out every morning, made her breakfast, and gave her a “to-do” list. Strangely enough, mother was shielded from the world but not safe in her own house from her own father.

She entered marriage with a combination of ignorance and low self-esteem. It was legal slavery. She looked to my father for everything, even though she was the bread winner. He controlled her. He used her. The arrangement served him. I pitied her.

I was shunned at school because of color of skin and the fact I was not a native of the town. I was always either alone in thought or defending myself. Even my own brother, who is four years older than I, recruited his friends by inviting them over to beat me until they got tired or thought that I might need medical attention. Cruel?  Yes, but he never lacked friends.

I have given you a little insight, that you may hopefully comprehend what I was feeling in the day of the sighting of the white Albatross. As I have stated, I recall it with more realness than anything else from that time.

It was during our recess period. I was at my usual spot under a leaning oak tree, alone, as usual. I would sit under that tree and watch the other kids play until it was time to return to class.

On this day, for reasons unknown, I had an urge to get up and walk through the field of playing kids, to a destination unknown.

It was a beautiful day. I could feel the sun’s warmth on my skin as I walked in a daze. There were children running, jumping, and throwing balls all around me.

Through them I walked slowly yet firmly. I never let my hollow eyes leave my destination, of which I knew not.

When I had reached the middle of the playing field, I caught a glimpse of something high in the clear blue sky.

I stopped and let my gaze rise upward to find the object.

It was an ordinary white crane. Yet to me it was the single most brilliant creature in the universe.

Standing trance-like, I felt as if I was looking into a realm that not even angels were privileged to see. Although it was very high, the sunlight reflecting off of it created a hauntingly beautiful, ghostly white vision.

As I stared, I began to feel dizzy and lost all concept of a body.

Everything around me became a blur. Once I heard my heart or maybe a trumpet blast, and then there was neither quiet nor sound.

You simply must understand the magnitude of this creatures’ beauty! It was majestic! As nothing I have seen before or since. It was surpassed by nothing, as if looking into the very eyes of God.  

I rose suddenly, in a split second I was looking down at myself, the way perhaps a circus performer looks in the spotlight down below.

My eyes, the birds eyes, the eyes I was looking through raised off of me to reveal the abundant sky as I have never seen it.

The clouds were living being, glowing with the freedom I felt. The sky was water-matter. I could touch it, feel it, be engulfed by it. It was cool to the touch and having the color of the bluest sea. Looking down now, I saw fields of flowers, tops of trees, farm houses, and cattle grazing.

I could see as far as even the curvature of the earth. A plowed field was not cold dead sod. A field was the womb ready to be impregnated with seed and give birth to life nourishing crops.

My mind was a wonderful thought, yet I wasn’t trying to think. It was as if everything I’d seen before had been dirty and now was shiny and new. I was the eyes of the Universe.

But as quickly as I had left, I had returned equally so. I stumbled back and there was no longer a bird in the sky.

Had there ever been one?

Was this some form of spiritual experience or just the imagination of a child, and is there a difference?