Exiting The Eternal Return

The problem was that when you send out two guys who won’t take cannot as an option you get something like what was going on.

A ladder braced on a metal crate, held steady by Lucen as I stretched myself at the top to hang the new sign outside the studio.

Lucen couldn’t’ see what was going on, so my only communication was to keep the ladder as steady as possible and don’t talk about how high up I was.

Did I mention that I have serious vertigo at any height over six feet.

I had seen Lucen’s studio logo many times, he told me the mythology behind it, the symbolism and why he incorporated it, even the geomantric values of the angles.

I appreciated it and understood it, even if if personally I wouldn’t take things as far.

Maybe it was the vertigo, maybe it was all I had to focus on to keep my eyes steady, maybe for whatever reason I finally understood.

Back on the ground it took me a few minutes and a cold glass of water to focus back around and that is when I asked him.

Although it came out more as a concluded statement.

You aren’t planning to come back.

Did I expect him to be shocked by that statement?

I did.

His response was more a silent affirmation that I was correct.

A shrug of the shoulders when you deep down you know the weight of the truth.

He wasn’t planning to come back.

None of them were.

That was the whole point of the studio.

We had a full day ahead of us, so for now I’d let it sit, and later in the evening if he wanted to talk about it, we could.

The studio was full of energy from the day of classes, workshops, and community activity.

Lucen was the last to leave, all of the other teachers and assistants having said goodnight and taken their leave.

A few were hanging out in the parking lot chatting away.

When did I realize he asked.

When I was trying not to fall off the ladder.

I could see Lucen was running calculations in his mind.

Why not come with us?

I was part of the group, in a way, of sorts.

That was something I had not considered.

I always enjoyed Lucen’s presentations on Friday night at the studio. His partner ran the classes during the week, while he picked up the admin work and logistics of the place, the philosophical and spiritual talks he gave supported the classes.

Many of them spoke of liberation, the body and its movement as a way to free the limitations imposed on the mind and achieve non-duality.

At least in theory.

Strive for the best that you could be, and carry out your will.

Be and do what you were put here to do with complete focus and joy.

How maybe if one lives with complete focus and dedication, at the end of a long and happy life full of success, one could make a choice as to what is next in the adventure.

What if we could choose what is next?

Those where the themes and questions of his talks at the studio was an extension of that.

That moment, the silence in the studio, the two of us.

I could not come with him.

Lucen wasn’t hurt but he was curious.

He remarked that I had the possibility.

Yes, while we had that other thing we shared, the studio was his movement and the dojo was my movement.

A lifetime to the path of budo showed a different possibility and asked a different question. One that I had felt and been unable to verbalize, but the time spent here at the studio, with him made that now possible.

A warrior’s duty is to fight, and if one such warrior was to exit what Lucen called the eternal return, wouldn’t that be a dereliction of duty given that there are still battles to fight?

And that even if the warrior didn’t have any more battles to fight, how could they exit, taking liberation while a warrior-friend I once and still know is out there somewhere?

I will not be taking such an exit.