humanity

There was a creature rising from the earth, made from flesh and from the earth itself. It was born of the earth, one with the earth and decaying back in to the earth. It was human, or rather, it was once human; the source of all humanity and the place to where we return once we die. It was compost. The creature breathed on me, a long, slow breath, drawn up from its unfathomable depths. Its breath smelled sweet and rotten, fecund and ancient. I could smell life and death and time. As it breathed on me I understood that we are all born of the same flesh. We each enter the world, of the world. We are an expression, an extension of the same force, the same source. We are an organism. A living, breathing energy spreading across the earth. Unstoppable, almost, but for the earth itself, which will consume us just as we consume the earth. We are driven to survive and change and, I understood, what sets us apart is our constant striving. Striving to be better, to have more, to change, to succeed, to overcome, to create, to build. Striving. Just as in our bodies how when a cell dies it is swept away, I saw how when we stop striving we die and decompose back into the earth. We need to move to survive. To stagnate is death. At the same time, it is our striving that will finish us. I breathed in the breath of this original human creature and understood, and then I woke.