I lay simmering in a scalding hot puddle beneath a gurgling pipe, heart fluttering, riding a rocket of euphoria fueled by endorphins, winter’s slanted morning light illuminating Condor National Forest in an apricot radiance.
Beads of stinky spring water on sunglass lenses catch the sun’s morning glow like kaleidoscopes, casting minuscule designs reminiscent of a wicked virus under a microscope or the sun seen through a telescope.
Then again, the lively images sparkling in the lenses a centimeter before my glazed eyes are remarkably similar to those motifs painted on sandstone abris and alcoves, caves and bedrock walls throughout the forest; those pictographs known as mandalas.
Though colorless and but silvery in hue, the tiny mandalas seen within a single drop of water clinging to sunglass lens are formed of perfect concentric circles, negative and positive spaces accentuating each other, while still others are ringed with triangular teeth.
And in the hazy moment within a liminal realm it appears impossible that there is no connection; that it’s just happenstance; that I’m not onto something now speaking today to what might have happened way back then.
Even if only remote and tangential, I lay there thinking, pouring sweat with pounding heart, there must be some connection.