which is heavier?

dear fri(sil)en(ce)d, dear apologies left unwritten, dear pound of feathers,

Every night can be a small death, if you wish it. In the morning, you can be reborn. That is the secret to life, the secret to evading these endless hedge mazes that drag us around and around. A pattern of interlocking circles that is always getting bigger and smaller simultaneously, a trap that ensnares us with each breath and pause. Yes, sure, we can all agree that history repeats itself. But we forget that yesterday is the past, and that it has long tendrils reaching always forward into tomorrow, into the future. Take a machete and make a hack job of the shrubbery.

Sometimes, my head is filled with fog. I can feel it spilling out of my ears, my nose, my mouth. It pulses through me like a shock, and rattles like marbles in an empty jar, and clogs my system like smoke. The fog brings with it an emptiness, and some call it peace. I know better than to name it that, but I imagine it is the root of many thousands of years of misunderstandings. The fog is not peace, it is emptiness, and we must be fools to keep confusing the two. Fools we are though. Fools that think they can choose left or right in a circle, wherein the two are one and one direction is all directions. A new destination cannot be found until we break the circle. Until we shatter that sacrificial ring, and cease the slaughter.

Imagine a forest at dusk. You come across of circle of twelve great statues (ah, that horrible number, always repeating itself within us, always assuming more nuances). They bear the heads of animals, with grotesque eyes and gaping mouths. They sit upon tall poles, reminiscent of heads thrust onto pikes, a show of death with purpose, albeit senseless. These are a different sort of death, one you cannot understand yet. You approach the circle warily. The eyes are watching you. The ground is pulling at your feet. The thoughts fall from your head in a thousand swirling feathers and scales and clumps of fur. Your skin peels back with the force of ten thousand winds, your skeleton is exposed as layers of muscles are stripped away in lines of small teethmarks from invisible mouths. You are worn clean with decades of sand scraping against your bones. Your blood is water which bathes the ground. The eyes pin you to your place. You approach the circle again. And again. And again. Always, the same. Always, the undoing. Always, the remaking. You know that if you make it to the other side of the circle, you will break free of this strange enchantment. But the question you cannot fathom is this: where is the other side of the circle? It is not where you think it is. You have been trying for so long now, to walk across it as if that could ever reveal a different side. No, not this circle. It is not so simple as to give it a side that can be seen. It is not so easy to draw a line in the dirt and say Here, this is inside and this is outside, and this is one side and this is the other. What is a side? How can you escape the stereotypes of what constitutes a side?

When you remember, come find me. I will wait. In this life, the last or the next, we will all meet again. Don't forget that the key to the circle lies within your palm, even now, even as you crash back into it and bounce back out of it. Cycles last until they are broken, But the first time is always now.