The Great Fusion Of All Things
Every agony contains a spoonful of bliss and every bliss a spoonful of agony
I love this one.
I can explain my thinking in the comments after you’re interested. But for now just have a listen or a read of this fusion of the ordinary and the extraordinary.
Enjoy. (Apologies for my somewhat battered voice, there’s something going around).
To listen press the arrow below. To read scroll down for the text.
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1.
He was young, mid twenties, with a judge and jury eye, knew everything worth knowing. His certainty may well lighten if he ever comes to understand that certitude is most often fear. But not today. Not this day.
His nonchalant self-important manner, his one eye on the world and the other in the mirror wasn’t vanity, it was zeitgeist. Doubt, ambiguity and mystery don’t stand a chance around here. In this place dogmatism is power because pigheadedness is mistaken for personality and obstinacy for strength.
He wore his uniform with a casual air as if deep inside unbeknownst to even him a rebel might lurk, unconsciously struggling with conformity. Or maybe he just thought he looked more marvellous like that, sexy and unruly. Or perhaps he was merely careless and indiscriminate.
Whatever the case I’d find out soon enough.
He looked up at me standing there, his eyebrows raised in blank boredom, and saw just some old man flanked by two officers holding my upper arms pushing me forward a little as this young soldier sat back in his chair tapping a finger.
I wondered how he’d got himself this position. A zealot? Nepotism perhaps. Sheer good luck or sheer bad luck?
I often have a feeling that we’re all just acting out performative self portraits in a dream of our own making, and if we chose to we could, if we only woke up for a moment, we could quit all this madness, we could live an entirely different dream. I wondered if this young soldier had it in him to live an entirely different dream as he sat staring up at me.
It was a feeling I often got just before the worst things happened.
He leant forward and glanced at some screen, “It has been reported by a credible witness that you were seen carrying a flock of stuffed ravens upon your shoulder,” and then stared at me for confirmation. I said nothing. What was it to him?
“Carrying stuffed ravens is a crime,” he said, “as you surely know.”
I said nothing. There wasn’t any harm in it. What difference did it make? It was nobody’s business how many ravens I carried.
“Three stuffed ravens may be carried upon your person but no more,” he said, then added, “conveying a flock of stuffed ravens upon one’s person is illegal and is punishable by exile.”
I said nothing. Who was he to tell me how many stuffed ravens I might ferry upon my person?
These thoughts were not helpful. The laws on carrying stuffed ravens were arbitrary and despotic. Their rationality, their sanity or even their basic reasonableness are not up for discussion. Not in this world of good or evil, black or white, on or off where doubt, ambiguity and mystery are swept away and forgotten.
I looked at his bored face and I wondered did he keep his uniform folded up in a drawer or did he hang it on hooks in the open. I wondered if he was easily embarrassed like people who take themselves so seriously often are and I wonder what sort of things embarrassed him. Being caught out in a white lie perhaps, or talking to himself, or revealing some perceived weakness that would open the door to teasing. I imagine there was a lot of putting people in their place, squashing difference, ridiculing individuality, policing each other in his world.
An image rose in my head. I saw a women standing on the open grasslands in a long blue coat, a headdress of black feathers rising into the air, in her hand a staff of black and white birch, and there she stood peering out at the immensity of it all, patiently waiting for the Great Unsettling to wrench off our masks and save us from these stupid roles.
“Are we keeping you from something?”, he said and I glanced down at the young solider. Oh yes, him.
“Do you have anything to say in your defense before I pass judgment?”
I said nothing. I have no defense, no explanation, no negotiation, no pleading my case or begging for mercy. In this world of naked power I am just another old man waiting to be fed into the machine, to be made an example of, to make the whole thing valid with my body and my blood. So I stood in front of this vain, bored, pigheaded young man in a shoddy uniform and smiled and waited for my fate to wax or wane.
He sighed a full cheeked trumpet blowing sigh and said, “Silence is not a defense.”
2.
Every agony contains a spoonful of bliss and every bliss a spoonful of agony. I was held in an iron cage suspended below a hot air balloon tied to 30 meter silken ropes and pulled along by four white horses who slowly walked through the singing crowd. The view was blissful. The rising sun bathed me in soft morning rays as it emerged from the eternal grasslands to the east and the faces in the crowd below me were like some wonderful animated painting, hundreds of small illuminated glowing visages jeering or pitiful or sorrowful or wicked. So many had come to witness my exile and watch the balloon pulled to the boundary of civilisation and set free to float across the wild lands where I would be left to my fate.
I heard such a cacophony of voices shouting and calling and singing that the voices themselves seemed to hold me in the air. Encouraging, condemning, voices ridden with anger, voices tinged with melancholy, a discord of voices that sang a confused song without harmony and without rhythm.
I wondered what my voice would be if it were not I in this iron cage, I wondered if I’d have had the imagination to sit with whoever was being exiled, to sit with the fate of another and feel their heart. Or would I too be swept up in the cacophony and hear nothing but my own fear.
Of those exiled and swallowed up by the eternal grasslands none have returned. Exile means a farewell to civilisation, but it seems civilisation, whatever that might be, has perished years ago and I did not know to what I say farewell.
As was the custom my wife and sons and daughters had thrown oranges at the iron cage and sang out that they would be waiting for my return in 7 years. I had caught thirty of the oranges they had thrown and had peeled them and had thrown the segments back down to the crowd as was the custom. But I did not believe the sweet juicy orange would bring me luck. Throwing oranges was nothing more than a ceremonial performance.
But what a blissful performance it was, my glinting iron cage floating under a hot air balloon tied by silken ropes and pulled by white horses as I flung orange segments to a singing crowd, it was marvellous, awe inspiring, glorious theatre, even if it was utter madness. And then from nowhere a great flock of ravens surrounded my cage like a headdress of blue black feathers rising into the sky, shimmering like petroleum in the morning light as I sang my last farewells.
3.
Sometimes, when the light is just so, and the world aligns itself, and your mood is open, and your hand is empty, great truths will reveal themselves. Sometimes, when the lake reflects the sky so they become one, and the horizon is within arms reach, the theatre of culture and history and identity evaporate and the masks we wear blow away like dandelion fruit in the wind and great truths reveal themselves.
When I carried stuffed ravens upon my shoulder it was a plea to the great truths to reveal themselves but I could not see, I was blinded by civilisation, by customs, by history and I was deafened by the voices wailing through the day and through the night. I could not see the light. But the ravens gave me strength and conjured up the Great Unsettling within me and I was finally able to see the sweeping force of being in the great fusion of all things.
They thought they were exiling me from civilisation in an iron cage, when in fact they were freeing me from my own cage. So now I stand on the grasslands in a long blue coat with my headdress of black feathers rising into the air, a staff of black and white birch in my hand, peering out at the immensity of it all, patiently waiting for the Great Unsettling to wrench off your masks and save you from your imaginary roles.
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Ooh I loved how you ended up being the one with the black raven feathers, holding the birch staff! A marvellous journey you took us on :)
I want to smoke some of what you're smoking. Where do you come up with these ideas, loved it!