Lux Aeterna
“The musk is within the deer, but it seeks itself outside.” - Kabir, 15th century mystic poet.
A musk deer roams forests and fields following the scent of another. But the perfume it seeks and yearns for is leaking from its own body.
This is the central tragedy of othering. Of mistaking the borders between the self and the other… to search outward for what is already emanating from within. Oof. Herein lies our mistake. Kabir’s image is a little sentimental on the surface but the more I think on it, the deeper it sits in me. The brutality of bodily fluids. The primordial weight of the world on a tiny human mind. I do not want to be a deer chasing what I already contain.
I may run myself into exhaustion, confusion, ruin myself by driving off a cliff into an abyss and for what? To find the truth is already leaking from my ribs.
What does it mean, then, to smell something and not recognise it as you?