Kids of Lower Utopia - V6 No3 - Letters from the Front Lines
( A-work-in-progress)

V6 No3 Page 7. Introduction

River's Letter

"Dear Comrades. There is no reason to write this, and that should tell you where I am.

When I was a kid, I thought my Heart was such a fine bright thing, I daringly wore it over my skin. And I remember the frightened delight that skinnied the eyes of the first hungry man who lovingly ripped it. Now with barely a hundred years of childhood done, I might look like a slouching beast, scarred and patched with bits of books and other Hearts, maybe so much so that only inside my pockets does my hide-like coat-of-soul still shine like the wind. But I tell you, though its beetling-blue may be stained and faded out, it is wholly ready, and still belongs to no God but me.

So I said to my small God, 'This is it, isn't it?' and we both laughed. You see, I died, and … we live.

So we swam like Salmon against my churning Blood and tumbled rough among the rolling axiom Stones and fine Bone particles of past cognitions. And discovered a place beyond as-far-as-my-voice-could-reach, and found there a sweetly dark and softly awake land where …'She …whispers.

And who is 'She, and where am I? How can I tell where I am, other than to say, I am now where I AM, and 'She is this Place.

'She is that stillness in the space between the thuddings of the cotton bell in the circle of my heart. 'She is the good dark landscape that is listening with its close and careful light. 'She is the Image nation, where all things that love me embody their self's for little chats and well-lit walks beside me in my memory. 'She is my VerySelf and I am this Dream. But don't ask me who I am - I AM is all I really know. I am my doings. I am my name ...River. I wear my own face when it's talking to me, and …I am none of this. Inside my body there is everything, and then …there is All.

Once when my small God was a sun-drenched white-snake swimming in beside me on Milky pond, He whispered a deep shimmy up through my heart. He said, "Nothing IS Sacred Unless Everything IS."

I recognized these words - they sounded just like the 'Place I wanted to live.

Well comrades, that is all I can write for now, JoeyFool is warning me to quit my scribbles, I have some Dreaming to do, 'A Whoosh is coming,' he says.

More-soon. Be-brave.

'Up-With-Each-Or-Down-With-All!'
Says PapaWolf,
and I, your Sister,
a voice from the front-lines.
River Scout Finnagain"