when sotopans mother died, he found himself alone. truly alone. immeasurably alone. alone like a desolate mountain peak,
alone like silver rivulets of melting snow rushing through the trees. yet still he saw her face in the knotty bark of
the pine, he heard her soft voice in the bubbling of the stream. he felt her comforting hands around him in warmth of
the fire that made his kitchen cheerful and red like wine
in all, it was not a lonelyness that gnawed upon him, rather that his father and mother had renounced their bodies along
with their tongue and migrated like gulls into the land of his dreams, a land where they lived and breathed, would
sit cross-legged and laugh over a bowl of rice stew , would pull draughts of wine from a cracked jug, arms intertwined and
in young and serene eyed love.
stream enterer and last human being on earth, he carried the names of the thousand illustrious families. the hundred
precious jewels, recited during the sunrise as his breath steamed into the cold air, recited as the sunset branched into the
darkness at dusk.
in his body the final incarnation of a million years of humanity flowered humbly, a simple blossom without distinguishing
characterstics except that it was neither too large, nor too small, neither handsome nor ugly, neither fat nor thin
