It’s four in the morning. On the other side of the white wall I’m leaning up against, Henry is having a very violent acid trip. I suspect I know what’s gong through his mind and I can help him but his girlfriend is here. She is my roommate. She is holding him now and whispering to him. The problem with tripping around two people is the mind’s propensity to split and begin viewing the two people in symbolic dichotomies.
The “I need the feminine force.” “I need the intellectual force.” “You need this.” “You mean that.”
He’s trapped. It’s scary. For him, I imagine. As for me, I’m reading Finnegans Wake and letting my self get washed and tripped away into languages and ideas.
I once heard of a short story by Julian Barnes that’s set in Heaven. In Heaven you can have anything you want, simply by saying it aloud. Any pleasure, flavor, activity…anything. Time stretches on and one by one the residents of Heaven lose all interest in afterlife. One by one, they request and are granted a ticket out; to be blinked from existence. Some enjoy themselves for awhile, pursue the things that make them happy and try the things they never had before. The scholars finally, for the first times in their lives, get an opportunity to finish the manuscripts they had dedicated themselves to while alive. The writers slowly and methodically complete their masterpieces. The dreamers are given the ultimate playground on which to exercise their imaginations. But none of that is enough to prevent even a single one of them from eventually choosing nonexistence over infinite time in bliss.
The white walls around me are made of canvas. My thoughts project moving images on their surfaces. Henry's words gradually smatter driblets of paint pointillistically from floor to ceiling. The world of possibilities paints itself around me and my mind projects.
Words permeate like fog through the wall and stick around.
“After life is nothing but the same thing there was before life.”
I look into a picture, slowly stepping forward with a soul and sinew. A thin twisted baton, carved of pine sits in my hand. My arms snap up and an orchestra rises like a swelling tide. Time rolls like kneaded dough and a great symmetry wraps smokelike between the folds.
“Oh blessed, spread your sails and flee all forms of culture.”
The baton cuts arabesques in the air. The room is black now, infinite space clawing off radii. My dreams and worries materialize, with a Godlike guide in tremor guise commanding through the walled edge of space. His power is unquestionable.
“Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well.”
Two figures step out of the void into my space of room.
“Just go home, brother. Let me be with her tonight.”
“Turn these cups right sign up and come to me again. This is what we’ve been waiting for, these S’s that I’ve sown into your dreams. I have shown you the letters of my alphabet tonight, my dear architect of time, and you have made me a mighty strong boy.”
They both howl earsplitting screams, each on either side of my head, ten feet away apiece. “Happiness in quiet steps.” “Faculty of judgment.” “Delicious flavors and beautiful loves.” “Of noncommunication. Lust’s of the flesh?” “The Sage knows what’s important.” “The Sage knows what’s important.” “Contentment the present.” “Contentment the present.” “Comfort and friendship.” “Reason and wisdom.” “Happiness!” “Happiness!” “Lonely miser of useless thoughts.” “Hedonistic sinner.” “Elitest!” “Layabout!”
“Empty your mind of all thoughts. Let your heart be at peace. Watch the turmoil of beings, but contemplate their return. Each separate being in the universe returns to the common source. Returning to the source is serenity.”
Henry howls: “Keep it tight because we have a dance to go to tonight, Mr. Moe only brought a Marrying Room and that was a little m because that was a big R when he turned the wrong turn of his right hand. Did you mark his left wrist when I pulled it off of him last night? Deedee and Gogo are coming with I, to try and identify the lies they have told us. They will scold us and scald us and stab us deep deep deep deeper. And no, what I hold is falling through my fingers and it was all for naught all for naught! Catch me as I fall through my fingers. Catch me and let me catch the tail end of time, that sordid ribbon playing crack the whip with Deedee and Gogo in Paris where the bridge held me up, and the k to the big M oh dash H held me back from the swirling stretches. She catches as the river below, frozen in July gapes a wicked grin to swallow me up in all of time. And she holds me. I, upon the ledge, see it’s beckon. NO! I must find- I must catch- I must not leave behind the…”
God fades back and I return to.
“How bootiful and how truetowife of her, when strangely forbidden to steal our historic presents from the past postpropheticals so as to will make us all lordyheirs and ladymaidesses of a pretty nice kettle of fruit.”
The fruit kettle falls by my face, down into the abyss, but soon enough later it appears again, far far above, again in freefall where the space begins and it continues onward past my head until so far below, I cannot catch a glimpse and far far far, when ‘oh dear’ it’s up high above my head once more.
“A fly can’t bird, but a bird can fly. Ask me a riddle and I reply: Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie. A fish can’t whistle and neither can I. Ask me a riddle and I reply.”
Off in another world, when fiction and reality melted and neither made much sense, I sat surrounded by white and Henry was He and I was I. Now, this world of spaceblack potentials, I and He are I, but still it makes much little sense. His never deading quest for time and identity, timentity is licked up in his latent Christianity. I, ‘dentitylessness (without the I, naturally) are running fast to sit here in peace. Yet we are one. Epicurus, Epictetus and a million little divisions. Diversions.
“Li Po kicks the water jug and is instantly enlightened.“
The water and the jug ripple and flip across my spacious void. I am Henry because identity isn’t real. He tells me to “Go home, brother” because identity is all he wants right now. I try to catch him and tell him that the river holds no truth, only death. Identity only counts after, and after there is nothing.. He tears free and seeks his Bible. Latency bubbles.
“And behold, there arose a great storm in the sea, so that the boat was covered with the waves; but he himself was asleep.”
No comments:
Post a Comment