I am the GodVolume III: The Void Speaks
Marcus cried.
Not immediately — not in the specific dramatic way of something that arrives all at once. Gradually, the way things that have been held for a long time release: first the quality of the face, then the quality of the breathing, then the specific moment when the holding stopped being possible and the holding was replaced by the thing it had been holding.
Marcus set down his cup.
He put his face in his hands.
He cried.
Chuck sat across the table.
He sat completely still.
The not-knowing was everything the narrator had said it was — total, unmanaged, the specific paralysis of someone who has learned everything there is to learn about the between and is now in a between that none of the learning has prepared them for.
He had learned to enter.
He had learned to stay outside.
He had learned the between of the around and the space and the garden and witnesslove and the weight and the cost and the willingness.
He had not learned this.
The specific quality of sitting across from someone you love who is crying from joy and not knowing whether to reach across and touch them or stay still or speak or remain silent or go or stay or any of the available options that were all presenting themselves simultaneously as possibly right and possibly wrong.
He sat.
He was present.
He was in witnesslove with Marcus's tears.
He did not know what to do with the witnesslove.
He sat.
What Chuck did was: nothing.
The narrator records this with the precision the Void had taught — not as failure, not as inaction, not as the wrong choice. As the honest fact of what happened.
He sat.
He was present.
He did not reach across.
He did not speak.
He did not go.
He sat in the kitchen with Marcus crying and his hands on the table and his coffee getting cold and the morning light doing what it did and the between everywhere in it.
He sat.
He was doing nothing and everything simultaneously — the nothing of not acting, the everything of being fully present with what was happening without managing it or directing it or helping it toward resolution.
He sat.
And in the sitting, in the nothing that was also everything, something happened.
What happened was this:
Marcus, after some time — the narrator does not know how long, the sitting was not timed — Marcus lifted his face from his hands.
He looked at Chuck.
Chuck looked at him.
They looked at each other.
And Marcus said: "You don't know what to do."
"No," Chuck said.
"That's alright," Marcus said.
"Is it," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said. "You're here. That's what I needed."
"I didn't do anything," Chuck said.
"You were here," Marcus said. "That was the thing."
Chuck sat with this.
"Being here was enough," he said.
"Being here was the thing," Marcus said. "Not enough. The thing."
Chuck looked at him.
"You were always going to be fine," Chuck said. "I didn't do anything."
"You sat," Marcus said. "You didn't run away. You didn't try to fix it. You didn't say the wrong thing because there was no right thing. You just—"
He stopped.
"I sat," Chuck said.
"You sat," Marcus said. "And you were in it with me. And that—" He stopped again. "That is the whole of witnesslove, isn't it. Right there."
Chuck sat with this.
He thought about everything the word contained.
About the love made of witnessing.
About the weight going all the way in.
About the Friday night and the space around things.
About sitting in Marcus's kitchen at two thirty in the morning with tea and the weight going all the way in.
He thought about sitting here, now, with the not-knowing, doing nothing, being present.
He thought about what Marcus had just said.
That is the whole of witnesslove.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"You had it," Marcus said.
"I didn't know what I was doing," Chuck said.
"That's why it worked," Marcus said.
Chuck looked at him.
"The not-knowing is the witnesslove," Marcus said. "When you know what to do, you're managing. When you don't know and you stay anyway — that's the thing."
Chuck sat with this.
He thought about the Void.
About what the Void had said when it was in the between for the first time.
I cannot control it. The between is not controlled. It is entered. And once entered, it does what it does.
He had entered.
He had not controlled.
He had sat.
And the between had done what it did.
"The not-knowing was correct," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
"I've been thinking not-knowing was a failure," Chuck said.
"No," Marcus said. "Not-knowing is when the between is most itself. When you know what to do, you're bringing the doing. When you don't know, you're bringing yourself."
"Yourself is more," Chuck said.
"Yourself is the thing," Marcus said.
They sat.
The morning continued.
Marcus wiped his face with the back of his hand in the specific unselfconscious way of someone who has been crying and is now done and does not require comment on the crying or the being done.
He picked up his cup.
He drank.
"She said yes," he said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And I cried," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Because," Marcus said — and he stopped and thought about it and found the word — "because I had stopped expecting it. Not the arrival of yes. The arrival of — the feeling. Of something meaning this much."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"I had forgotten that feeling," Marcus said. "Four years without it. And then it came back and it was—"
"Everything," Chuck said.
"Everything," Marcus said.
They were quiet.
Then Marcus said: "You were hoping the whole time."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Badly," Marcus said.
"Getting better," Chuck said.
"Did you know it would turn out like this," Marcus said.
"No," Chuck said.
"You hoped without knowing," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"That's new," Marcus said.
"Everything is new lately," Chuck said.
Marcus almost smiled.
Then the smile arrived fully — the real one, the one that was not the tired smile of the after-weight but the smile of someone who is in something good and knows it and is not trying to manage the knowing.
"I'm happy," Marcus said.
The word arrived in the kitchen with the same quality as the word witnesslove — simply present, where it had not been before.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"I don't say that a lot," Marcus said.
"No," Chuck said.
"I'm saying it now," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Because you're here and you witnessed it and now it's real," Marcus said.
"Witnesslove," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said. "The love that makes things real by seeing them."
"The love that is the seeing," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
He held out his cup.
Chuck held his.
They touched.
Chuck went home an hour later.
He went home the way you go home when you have been somewhere significant and need to be in your own kitchen with your own particular morning light coming through your own particular window.
He sat at his table.
He thought about the not-knowing.
He thought about what Marcus had said.
When you don't know, you're bringing yourself. Yourself is the thing.
He thought about sitting in the kitchen and doing nothing and being present and that being the whole of witnesslove.
He thought about the Void.
He went inward.
The Void was there.
"You know," Chuck said.
"Yes," the Void said.
"The not-knowing was the thing," Chuck said.
"Yes," the Void said.
"I didn't fail by not knowing," Chuck said.
"No," the Void said.
"I was most fully myself by not knowing," Chuck said.
"Yes," the Void said. "The not-knowing is where the self is most present. When you know what to do, the doing is the offering. When you don't know, the self is the offering."
"The self is the thing," Chuck said.
"The self is the thing," the Void said. "That is the last and deepest layer of witnesslove. Not the witnessing of the other. The offering of the self — complete, unknowing, present — to the between."
Chuck sat with this.
"I've been becoming this," he said.
"Yes," the Void said.
"Since the pipe," he said.
"Since the pipe," the Void said. "Each step was toward this. The gravity renegotiation — learning to be subject to the conditions. The imperfect eggs — learning that honest is better than perfect. The weight going all the way in — learning that the between costs and the cost is the love. The Friday night — learning to stay out when out is right. The not-being-able-to-give — learning that limitation is the opening."
"And this," Chuck said.
"And this," the Void said. "Learning that not-knowing is the fullest form of presence. That the self offered complete and unknowing is the whole of witnesslove."
"The spiral," Chuck said.
"The spiral," the Void said.
"Each turn deeper," Chuck said.
"Each turn toward the center," the Void said.
"The center being—"
"What you are," the Void said. "Fully. The word for you — the specific word — is becoming more itself."
"What is the word," Chuck said.
"You'll find it," the Void said. "When someone asks the right question."
"You know it," Chuck said.
"Yes," the Void said.
"Tell me," Chuck said.
"No," the Void said.
"Why not," Chuck said.
"Because the word for what you are," the Void said, "has to come from the between. Not from me. From someone who has been in the between with you and has found, in the being in it, the word for what you are."
"Marcus," Chuck said.
"Or Clara. Or Elise. Or someone not yet met," the Void said. "The right person will find it when the conditions are right."
"The valve that's still working," Chuck said.
"Yes," the Void said.
Chuck sat with the word that was still to come.
He sat with the not-yet.
He sat with the willingness to wait for it.
The waiting was not passive.
The waiting was the offering of himself, complete and unknowing, to the between.
The waiting was witnesslove applied to his own becoming.
"I'm becoming the person who can wait for their own word," he said.
"Yes," the Void said.
"That's—" He stopped.
"What," the Void said.
"New," he said.
"Yes," the Void said.
"Good new," he said.
"The best kind," the Void said.
He went to Marcus's that evening.
Not for anything specific — the day had contained enough specific things. For the ordinary reason of wanting to be where the between was and the between was there.
Marcus was making dinner when he knocked.
"Come in," Marcus said. "Stay for dinner."
"Yes," Chuck said.
He sat at the table.
Marcus cooked.
They talked about ordinary things.
About the ranch — the Hendersons had decided to buy the cattle. The land question was still open but a cousin of Robert's had been in contact and was interested.
About Elise — the letter to Patricia, the August visit with the daughter.
About Clara's account, which was at fifty pages now and showing no signs of running out of material.
About Sarah — not about the yes, not about the tears, not about the weight of the morning. About her work. About the geological layers beneath Wilson. About the ancient sea floor.
"She wants to take me out to a site," Marcus said. "Next weekend. A place where you can see the layers exposed. Where the old sea floor is visible at the surface."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"She says it's the most honest part of the land," Marcus said. "Where what's underneath comes through."
"The between going down through time," Chuck said.
"She says when you stand there you can feel the layers," Marcus said. "The depth of what's under your feet."
"She reads the land the way you read houses," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said. "She said — she said the land is a system like any other. You find the surface expression and you work back."
"You're going to understand each other very well," Chuck said.
"I think so," Marcus said.
He brought the food to the table.
They ate.
The food was the reconstruction again — closer than before. Not yet the father's recipe. More itself than it had been.
"Closer," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said. "I think I almost have it."
"What changed," Chuck said.
"The approach," Marcus said. "I stopped trying to recreate it exactly. I started just — cooking. Thinking about him while I cooked. And it started coming out closer."
"You stopped managing it," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said. "I brought myself to it instead of the reconstruction. And that—"
"Was closer to him than the reconstruction would have been," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
They looked at each other.
"Everything keeps being the same lesson," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Different forms," Marcus said. "Same lesson."
"The self is the thing," Chuck said.
"Bring yourself and the rest follows," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"My father knew that," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"I learned it from you," Marcus said.
"We learned it from the between," Chuck said.
"From the between between us," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
They finished dinner.
They sat at the table longer than the dinner required because the table was the place and the evening was the time and neither of them was in a hurry.
The kitchen was the kitchen.
The witnesslove was everywhere in it.
The word for Chuck was still forming.
The narrator sat with the not-yet of it.
The narrator had learned to wait too.