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Prajapati was alone. He didn’t even know whether he existed or not. “So to speak,” iva. (As soon as one touches on something crucial, it’s as well to qualify what one has said with the particle iva, which doesn’t tie us down.) There was only the mind, manas. And what is peculiar about the mind is that it doesn’t know whether it exists or not. But it comes before everything else. “There is nothing before the mind.” Then, even prior to establishing whether it existed or not, the mind desired. It was continuous, diffuse, undefined. Yet, as though drawn to something exotic, something belonging to another species of life, it desired what was definite and separate, what had shape. A Self, atman–that was the name it used. And the mind imagined that Self as having consistency. Thinking, the mind grew red hot. It saw thirty-six thousand fires flare up, made of mind, made with mind. Suspended above the fires were thirty-six thousand cups, and these too were made of mind.

Prajapati lay with his eyes closed. Between head and breast an ardor burned within him, like water seething in silence. It was constantly transforming something: it was tapas. But what was it transforming? The mind. The mind was what transformed and what was transformed. It was the warmth, the hidden flame behind the bones, the succession and dissolution of shapes sketched on darkness–and the sensation of knowing what was happening. Everything resembled something else. Everything was connected to something else. Only the sensation of consciousness resembled nothing at all. And yet all resemblances flowed back and forth within it. It was the “indistinct wave.” Each resemblance was a crest of that wave. At the time, “this world was nothing but water.” And then? “In the midst of the waves a single seer.” Already the waters were the mind. But why that eye? Within the mind came the split that precedes all others, that implies all others. There was consciousness and there was an eye watching consciousness. In the same mind were two beings. Who might become three, thirty, three thousand. Eyes that watched eyes that watched eyes. But that first step was enough in itself. All the other eyes were there in that “one seer” and in the waters.

The waters yearned. Alone, they burned. “They burned their heat.” A golden shell took shape in the wave.” This, the one, was born from the strength of the heat.” And inside the shell, over the arc of a year, the body of Prajapati took shape. But “the year didn’t exist” then. Time appeared as the organ of a single being, nesting inside that being, who drifted on the waters, with no support. After a year the being began to emit syllables, which were the earth, the air, the distant sky. Already he knew he was Father Time. Prajapati was granted a life of a thousand years: he looked out before him, beyond the cresting waves, and far, far away glimpsed a strip of earth, the faint line of a distant shore. His death.

Prajapati was the one “self-existing” being, svayambhu. But this did not make him any less vulnerable than any creature born. He had no knowledge, didn’t have qualities. He was the first self-made divinity. He didn’t know the meters, not in the beginning. Then he felt a simmering somewhere inside. He saw a chant–and finally let it out. Where from? From the suture in his skull.

. . .

Born of the waters’ desiring, Prajapati begat “all this,” idam sarvam, but he was the only one who couldn’t claim to have a progenitor–not even a mother. If anything he had many mothers, for the waters are an irreducible feminine plural. The waters were his daughters too, as though from the beginning it was important to show that in every essential relationship generation is reciprocal.

from Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India, by Roberto Calasso

by Cole Swensen 

Perhaps simply from nostalgia
                                                          and a love of things that interlock:

John Müller’s iron dragonfly, who flew, and his artificial eagle, who went out
ahead to meet the Emperor Maximilian, June 7, 1470. And a wild duck that
could fly, eat, and cry all at once, driven by a system of interlocking chains,
and a peacock on St. Christopher Island, who, it’s said, could sing. All these
marvels ran like a common pocket watch, which wasn’t all that common then

and are, I think, related to the case of Wolgamot, the Englishman, who made
his name training bees, who walked about the countryside covered with
them, even to his face and hands, and caressed them and let them drink
from his eyes.

by Denise Duhamel

                                    Nick
said, “Don’t worry, I won’t
ever die on you, OK?”
and for a second I
believed him.      My
cinnamon angel, his soft
eyebrows folding in
sleep.      My thighs
sticking together, a white
icing between.      A
village near Kashmir
called Hunza is supposedly
the closest thing on earth
to the fountain of youth–
no one born there gets a
cavity or heart attack.
People, on average, live
to one hundred.      The
stems of sunflowers, like
pogo sticks, rising out of
the ground.      I
wanted Nick to have that
power, to make a pact
with the universe to die
second, to be a gentleman
about death.      Hunza
is on a high mountain, the
sea level perfect for breathing
and hard for Hunza enemies
to get to.      His scalp
smells sweet, a mixture of
cave and sea foam.      Water
was still running from the
faucet when Will found Pearl,
hip to bathroom tile, a
shattered glass at her breast.
Though she was dead, he
sniffed lilac soap in the air.
Her lips were sticky with
newly applied maroon
lipstick.      We ate red
bean buns on Canal Street,
fire-hydrant waters spraying
the children and glistening
gray fish that stunk up
entire blocks.      ”Pearl
never smelled dead,” Will
kept saying.      Once
in Chinatown I ordered
sea cucumber (not
a vegetable) by mistake–
chunks of fatty sea slugs I
couldn’t contemplate
swallowing.      Today
Nick ordered Pho-Beef. I
said I wished he’d ordered
Po beef so that I could
order Tinky Winky Shrimp
or La La with fried rice.
We both agreed on our love
of The Teletubbies–the
show that is like an acid
trip, everything in slow
motion, everything
done twice, that freaky
sun with a giggling baby
face.      Sometimes I
ovulate mansions and
magic.      Nick and I
were talking about this
the other day–what
we’d do if we ever went
blind.      Nick and I
don’t usually agree on
food.      I thought
about teaching Nick
how to put on my lipstick,
now while I can still
see.      In Miami
we heard a radio
announcement for
cochinillo asado that
guaranteed the piglets sold
were younger than twenty-four
days which made me
really sad though Nick,
who’s had cochinillo
asado, was saying yum
yum.      I’d just
read about the woman
whose surgeon sliced
off her entire eyelid
during a botched face
lift so now she can’t
blink.      She softened
and crumbled, like a
cruller dipped in coffee
too long.      After
he came, his moon
belly glowing, his navel
grew dark as though I’d
just plucked a fruit stem
from it.      The bananas
were as ready as we
were, bright peaches
bristling, the green insides
and outs of kiwi and
lime.      You sudsed
the hollow under my
arm.      We both
confessed to the irrational
fear of having our hands
cut off.      Our first
apartment smelled of
curry, a yellow pollen
dusting the sink and
drawers.      My
favorite lunch ever was
grilled cheese and a teaberry
milkshake.      You
shampooed my hair
twice.      When I
worked in the supermarket,
there was a customer
without hands who could
lift ten pounds of potatoes
with a silver hook he’d
maneuver through the
bag’s red mesh.      I was
always afraid the hook
would twist off.      I was
afraid to see his stub, afraid
I’d have to bend to the
floor to pick up that metal
question mark.