Mad Honey

By John Martin

MAD HONEY

Had the sky always been this blue?  In all the years Ge had never had the time to notice.  Not until he came here.  Maybe it was the deep rich purple of the rhododendrons that made it seem more blue.  Or maybe the sky made them seem more purple.  He looked down the sloping hill and they were all you could see. That and the enormous bees, dark patches against the sky, hovering, collecting nectar and moving on. They were the size of his thumb and it was his job to tend their sacred garden.  

His muscles ached, the sweat from under the brim of his straw hat dripped down and stung his eyes but he didn’t mind.  This was the longest he’d ever been in one place.   This day would be special, the day of his induction into the monks of the Goddess Tara.  He’d learned every step in the cultivation and harvesting of this mystical substance.  Having proved his worth, the time had come for him to partake of the nectar of their life’s work.  

That evening, after prayers, the shiny red clay jar of honey was brought out to first be blessed by the oldest and holiest monk there.    When his turn came, he took his spirit dagger, plunged it into the jar then licked the blade until it was clean.  It was the sweetest, most delicious thing he’d ever tasted.  He could taste the colour of the flowers that it was made from. All his senses seemed to fuse together and just like that, his soul was swept out of his body into the body of one of the bees itself.  

He felt the rush of the dizzying journey from plant to plant as seen through their kaleidoscopic eyes.  The garden faded and he was now riding his bee companion backward in time, back through the spiritual DNA of his own body, back through twenty births and deaths until he was in the presence of a gentle man holding a bamboo brush writing delicately on parchment. 

He looked up from his work and smiled, “Pleasant trip?  That honey is something else.  The journey back is just as interesting.” 

And with that, the process of birth, death, and rebirth repeated itself, only forward this time until at last Ge experienced his own spiritual reemergence from the beauty of the lotus as the holy circle of monks swam back into view, smiling at him expectantly.  Finally, his many selves resolved into the singular clarity of understanding and he smiled back.

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John Martin is a writer and visual artist living in Uxbridge, Ontario, calmly contemplating life at the edge of the abyss. 

substack: @martinwriteswords1 

insta: martinwriteswords 

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