The Thai monk walked beside me at once speaking and lapsing into dream. His head was a knob of curling wood. And when he spoke of happiness it was there to shut me up and yet also congratulatory. We spent the afternoon like this on gravel roads that turned sandy until the tar returned. He rode a bicycle in the morning and then walked with me as the sun intensified. And then as though I was understanding him I began to speak and lapse into dream. “This is the wall where the leprous ones gather,” we said, anticipating each other’s pausing. “Then promise is at hand,” we promised one another. The dreams roiled as we walked or rather as the dreams walked ahead of us in the distance and then coming into focus between each syllable. We dreamed separately of course, anticipating only the language and shared nuances of meaning. –
The dreams began as forces of language underlying the content and subconscious of our import. Though nothing could be sure, I began to suspect that he didn’t dream. In fact as we were nearing the foot of the monastery we both spoke “I do not dream, I do not dream, I dream,” and as the ghoulish and heaven like suspended itself in the dream sequences I could see out of the edge of my eyes that he was still talking and that I wasn’t. “You are talking,” I told him. “No, no – I am spitting on the ground,” he answered. It was then I stopped dreaming and the sun bathed around us, no longer so florid with heat.
“I want to meet your master,” I spoke as we arrived in the foyer. “He passed on some time ago,” the monk said. “Then let me meet your students who are like so many lucky hyenas.” “They are yet to be born,” he answered again. As he hit me I felt a wave of truth in these statements. Under the knob of his head his robes became tattered and patched. One of us grew leprous, one of us became a stone.
be universal 