| I know that somewhere Mary is
there and she has her reasons and she must wonder too about me. Perhaps I too was a dream that she had had. Did I misunderstand her and go to the wrong place? Did I keep the right rendezvous? It was, in a way, my final temptation. I could have pursued her, but did I need to look for what I had already found? The moment I had dreamt of, the existence I had achieved? I sensed all the earth in the sun-heated air, the grasses, the forests, the flowers, and the seas, and the wonder of their being shone beyond the need of my mind to express or to hold in any weave of words, or emphatic sound, or gesture, or music. God has many names, only names. He is Yahweh, Allah, Shiva to the Hindus. Shiva, destroyer of worlds, the dancer of creation. Above me, beneath me, in me, I felt the timbre of His steps, forever rushing, and still, forever frenzied, and vacant, forever mad, and blissful, the void of infinite possibility. In me something had changed, in the uncanny feeling that had always haunted me. How can I express it? Its source lay in the intense sense I had of with no respite constantly being in the sight of God, with never a lapse of this in my consciousness, no rest ever. He never left me and I had no relaxation in this unique focus of His attention. To be and to be and be was exhausting and often I was afraid. It was like a million sharp needles always reminding me that I am, that I could not escape, merciless. Even when I was drunk a needle like the finest slenderest pure gold would pierce my eye and a capil- lary jet of my blood would thinly haze my staggering vision with this redpale patina of myself and remind me, I am I am. To elucidate this uncanny experience, I have thought of writing a story, of a man like other men in almost all ways. He is hurt as they are. He laughs. He cries. The sun sets. The moon rises. The world is perceived with the same catalogue of senses. But for him - one frightening difference. He sees, as it were, beyond the head of the other. He glances quickly, because it terrifies him. He shades his eyes. He is thankful for sleep when the solid blackness floods into him. And when the light recreates his room, he has for- gotten momentarily, he leaps from bed eager for the world. He goes out. He sees another face. The face passes. He feels uneasy. He shakes the hand of his friend. For a moment the palm, the finger with the gold ring, is solid. He smiles at his friend, looks into his blue eyes, and, like an insiduous intoxication, infinitely silent and undeniable, it comes on, and he sees through the blue the blue of the sky and through that still to the far near- ness of the indefinable. He is alone. There is a simple sentence he can say of simple words that his friend can not understand. "You do not exist." A sentence he can not hear. As you can imagine, this is difficult to explain. How can you convince the man you are talking to, whose children you held, whose experiences you shared, whose cares influenced your own, that his existence possesses at most the impalpable immediacy of an aftertaste urged by a vivid vian? Yet he can relate what he did last week, tell the story of his life, show that fresh wound that yesterday a nail inflicted in his palm, tell of an erotic adventure years ago, confide his genealogy. In other words, he confidently possesses a history. His world, although created just then, is real to him. Now, in this metaphorical story, we might ask a question that reminds us of our own condition. How might a character, whose existence lies in a talented juxtaposition of ink, prove the existence of his author? How can anything he think, say, or do, which is to think, to say, or to do, in paper, prove the author's hand, establish his complexion, height, color of hair and eyes, his preferences, or his opinions? Can the character, peeling himself off the page, reaching out over him into the vertical gulf, leap out to mark his author's hand with the stamp of existence, an existence, moreover, peculiar to the page of the character's universe? Then the author too is made of ink and has the flat tangibility of words. So the author too is a fiction. The conclusion, of course, is impossible. And the author smiles. He continues writing. His hero appears on every page. Other characters come and go, fur- nished with a past. In this story the hero realizes (by the author's grace) his unique status and the palimpsest-like existence of those around him. Through the blue of his friend's eye he sees the white of the page. And he trembles. Now the hero is changed. He feels strangely light. Puzzled, he looks around, turning his head this way and that way, and he discovers another direction suddenly there and he is looking - out. Into the abyss that presses upon the page and, inches away, into the author's playful eye. There is another possibility: the book is a diary. I know God as I know myself. I do not say He is ineffable. For to me He is not. There in the limitlessness above me I find Him. I do not speak of bright- nesses or of seeing angels or of touching some solid glory. I look above me and see only sky. I hear the rustling of leaves and the common tapping of petals on my windwow. I feel the wind. Now I walk through the park, through the garden to the room where I live. I cross the paths and cut over the hills. I walk slowly, for I have nowhere to go but home. I feel the peebles in the grass beneath me and the dew cool on the leather of my shoes. There is no hurry. I stop and admire the life around me. There is a snail I see on the grass advancing blade on blade and bending them in intimate spaces, crawling towards me. There, at the tip of my foot it stops and the blade of grass on which it lies trembles beneath its atom-like weight. The smooth, spiralled, perfect snail and its long forward body glistening up extending as if tasting the air with all its flesh. The head curls up, and it seems to look at me, its twin antennae waving in tiny orbits. The head seems to tremble a tiny bit, strangely, as if out of recognition, and bows back to the blade again. Its flesh contracts into the shell and the muscular moistness of it tugs slowly moving, continuing, on its way. O, I am distracted! I turn, into a wind blowing. The sound of the wind follows me, like a chorus, and the trees respond to the invisible force, the very tops wheel and shudder and the leaves, the pines, the maples, the eucalyptus, buzz in a symphony of motion and exhu- berance. The trees bend their heads under the clouds. The branches gesti- culate and flourish and seem to point at me. There appears no end to the color of things and to the soft surge of the life that is here, from the earth to the blue pulse of the heaven. The wind blows between the branches, stirs through the leaves, as I walk, in the buzzing that now seems a hush, the murmuring silence of an awed crowd. The day could not be more beautiful and the sensations that I feel for all this fleeting existence not more refined. There is a satisfying laughter that bubbles from within me, the twin of my smile. I have reached the top of the hill and now feel the return to my home draw me on. It is not far from here, some simple minutes away, through the rest of the park. My day has been long and eventful. I cross the street. I open the door. I climb the stairs. There is no one. I go into my room and look around me at the things that are so familiar. I look out the window at the street and the people and the tops of the trees and the distant buildings of the city and I know that this life that I feel in the excitement of pas- sing seconds is good and that this room with its pictures on the walls and the books and the old dried flower lying on a sheet of white paper is good. And Mary is good. Night has imperceptibly come. My books are blurring into shadows. I am glad to be home. I take off my shoes and lie on my bed. I yawn. I touch my face. I will sleep for a little while. I hear the rustling trees outside. I know. It will not be long. No one will notice. To them nothing will change. I close my eyes and the stars cease to exist. * * feedback top literature directory hotpiehot's next dream © hotpiehot@hotmail.com |