have you heard the legend of pahasa? no one really knows where they came from. from what stretch of the world or pocket of time. but those willing to take a guess came up with a few good ideas. my favorite among them goes something like this: pahasa was the only child of a runaway princess, who stole away from her father's kingdom one late evening. she crossed the swamps by foot, pahasa in arms, until she could no further. she was taken in by a man and his wife and their eleven children, and she spent the next few years with them in the rice fields, pahasa right by her side. the young child never suspected their royal heritage, until one day a messenger came from the palace to say that the king had died and that his mother was to be queen. but pahasa would not go. there is nothing for me there, he said.

but they loved their mother more than words could say, and they knew she could not stay. she had duties to her people, and an opportunity to rectify the wrongs of history. but pahasa chose to stay with their chosen kin and ride out the dry season with them. but in the fullness of time, nothing good can last forever, and change comes to all. eventually pahasa left his home and went to the city of minneapolis where they got a gig playing bass for a psych rock band and toured the country in a bus. pahasa was only nineteen, and had never known such ecstasy in all their life, never knew how fast the wind could roll through their hair as they stood up in the back of a limousine. but that too must end, and pahasa decided enough was enough. so they left the band and went to work on a memoir of his life to date. it won a national book award, and pahasa went on to publish three novels, two short story collection, four collections of waka poetry, a new translation of julio cortozar, and an obie-award winning two-act drama. all before the age of twenty-five.

but all things must come to pass, and pahasa had no interests in academia, so they left the scene behind to go be an activist freedom fighter dedicated to the spiritual and material emancipation of the world. pahasa wished to be—and in many ways was—the tip of the spear of the global velvet revolution. pahasa spoke to thundering stadiums and to thirsty congregations, they banged on tables and podiums and cultivated relationships with well-heeled politicians. pahasa implored the masses to abandon their egos and their individualism and to abandon their crude materialist desires, to build new social institutions across civil society, to adopt integrated and sustainable collective structures for communal living, and to redirect the surplus of our labor to the benefit of the many—not the few, to unleash the creative potential of free-market anarchy, to wield it like a hammer to break up the sclerotic police state and the two-party system, to mobilize against extremism and prejudice and dogmatism, to dream of peace, disarmament and greater global participation. and to meditate on the great truths of shakyamuni.

but then one day pahasa got word that their mother had died, and they entered the vast, great desert of their own mortality. something out there pulled them violently to the edge of the cliff, and seemed to wait for them to fall. pahasa had arrived at the midpoint of their life to find themselves alone in the woods. suddenly it become all to unbearable: the way time sped up, all the other unbearable losses already out there somewhere in the future. and in the midst of his catatonic sorrow, the movement they had spent years building, failed. the system was too sclerotic. the people too manipulated and triggered in every direction, liked a stunned dog. and at a certain point, environmental conditions are no longer amenable to any intentions, good or bad. pahasa turned inward and outward, and in every direction, there was only loss.

but in time all things must change, and so one day pahasa abandoned their heavy grief along the road, leaving it there for the next person to pick up. to bodh gaya pahasa traveled, on pilgrimage to the bodhi tree where siddhārtha gautama first saw the truth. there they knelt down before the diamond throne, and wiped their eye clean again. from bodh gaya to nepal they traveled next, to kathmandu where they walked from mountaintop to mountaintop, sitting quietly in all the monastery zendo’s. and from there, it was to shikoku in japan, where he walked all 750 miles of the way and visited all the temples and bengai.

everywhere they went, they talked to the people. pahasa was captivating to others, brilliant, but also humble. they spoke slowly and in common every language. they detested vanity, were authentic in their presentation, sincere in feeling and accessible in disposition. wherever they went, they were home and welcomed by others into theirs. they brought a sort of healing energy into whatever space or crevice they occupied at the moment, so that conflicts between people seemed to resolve themselves with ease when they were around, scarcity turned to opportunity, the impossible opened up into possibility, old habits were abandoned and all burdens were shed.

but all things must change, and one day pahasa disappeared and no one knew where they went. some say they joined a pirate vessel and sail among the islands of the caribbean. other say they became a goat herder and live in the mountains of afghanistan. other say they try fins and scales and swam down to the join the kingdom of the merfolk. no one knows and we must accept that, because the story of pahasa’s life is not ours.

but the stories and the poems haven’t stopped. they arrive every so often in the mail, arriving on postcards or on the back of maps. the sole recipient of communications from pahasa is a man named {…}{…}  of chicago. {…}{…} and pahasa had been friends for twenty years. they met at a writer’s workshop when they were kids. they bonded in being only children from single parent homes, and it was rumored they have been lovers at one point, though no one knows for certain. {…}{…}’‘s family owned a small italian eatery in the twin cities. solid midwestern stock: hard-working, unconcerned, self-involved. but {…}{…} was a queer boy weirdo, so was not encouraged to take himself or his writing talents all that seriously. so now he is not particularly confident or outgoing. i know, i’ve met him. he’s quiet and socially awkward. he works a job that he hates and takes up way too much of his mental energy, and then he scribbles away at some stories and poems that no one reads and about which he tells no one. i only know because i saw them myself. he’s only getting fatter, balder, older. he still smokes half a pack a day and he’s a stoner to boot, always sitting there in his chair, getting high, watching the weather, watching his life pass him by. lazy and yet somehow also stressed out. hideously self-involved man, emotionally frigid and yet also sentimental and insincere. he never looks you in the eye, and when he says he wants to know you, it’s actually his way of pushing you away. he’s a hard time maintaing long-standing friendships. he isn’t especially liked, even by people who say they’re his friend, though to be honest {…}{…} isn’t thought about enough to be actively hated either. most certainly a racist, probably transphobic too, he avoids the homeless on the street and interrupts women when they’re talking. he is someone of boundless privilege who does nothing with it, who never spent a day in his life that was not about him and never had anything truly bad ever happen to him. for this reason, he’s squishy, soft and complacent. he’s no memory whatsoever and so can’t recall the lives of friends or family. he is a stranger always and everywhere to everyone. and yet perhaps he was a person once worth knowing. he must have been. yes, a person of confidence, joy and hope. it is that person perhaps—that ghost—to whom pahasa sill knows and loves. and for that reason alone, i must love him, too.