I woke up on the hard bed, in the gray dawn, with dry saliva
on the side of my mouth. As I was looking out into the stale
room that was becoming clear before me, I asked myself is
this what God does with all his used-up prophets - puts them
right back where he found them? I rubbed my face with my
hands, rubbed my eyes, as if this sorry room could be rubbed
off, detached and hurled away, to make room for the abyss of
light that was pounding underneath. Just like the prolonged
verge of an orgasm becomes unbearably like torture, so the
certainty, the nearness, of what I saw...
I have begun to hate my words. Like faithful servants, they
were only waiting for a sign in order to stab, desert or
steal. They used to obey me so brilliantly - they were mine
to build little castles, to play out little lives, to give
body and voice to the thousand small nothings that occupy a
man's mind. And now they are like faceless cards, I turn
them over one by one to find a chilling silence. They will
not paint, they will not lead anywhere... you cannot, really
cannot say - what you saw, where you were... the second the
word is let out, the beautiful flower that you pinned to it
while it was still between your lips shrivels up and dies.
And gold is only gold; diamonds - only diamonds. And light
is only the cold gray spatter clinging to my things, drying
on my skin like so much silvery mud.
If I could find a name, perhaps I could go back. If the
words only fit, I might be able to hold on to an image or a
voice, to climb into a dream before it fades. But my words
are like scavenging birds, their big black wings covering a
beauty so dead, so gone. And that first morning, when I woke
up nauseous and fevered, afraid to move. I felt as if an
umbilical cord was carved out of my flesh, that every step I
take (away from Him) would undo me, unravel me, diminish me.
You try not to breath. Breathing mixes you back into the
world, disperses your secrets, scatters what glow you have
left. Then, with every step, the cold floor is thrust into
your foot, then the water invading your face, the movement
of muscles pumping blood faster and hotter, distracting the
soul, burying it under the smug avalanche of flesh. Then,
you lift the razor to your face and you wish you were a
stone.
I get dressed and I go out. Into the world, into the light,
onto the long and narrow bridge that is the city's sidewalk.
But the light is too pale or too yellow; but the people are
like meatballs floating in a soup - the men dull knives, the
women sore sponges, the babies balloons, chalking off the
days of their blind, unconscious flight. And the houses and
the trees and the flowers, so colorful and so irrelevant.
Though everything, at last, becomes a symbol, as your mind
burrows under it its thousand winding tunnels back to bliss.
The sun, the moon, the sea? These are all doors - or, at
least, you wish they were. Or else things simply are - a
window, a stop-sign - and your tears burst out to lament
this muteness of a world that once sang to you a song so
joyful, so simple, so profoundly simple, that for all the
rotten molecules of your brain you can't sing back a single
note.
The coffee is either too bitter or too sweet. It wasn't like
the pleasure of a woman. The warmth was more enveloping;
every touch sprouted a bud, a branch of eager surrender. You
melt before you know it, but easily, not at once... and you
know your eyes are in His eyes and your heart is in His
hands and that He knows. He reads your body and your mind
without a dictionary, he frees you from the heavy load, the
weight - a word for every joy, every pain - they drop like
sandbags from your gaping mouth. Your soul unlearns its
alphabet, unfastens its locks, disentangles its coils.
Something is whole and you don't even need to say what.
I count the coins and put them on the table. Old faces, old
silent heads, silver and gold. You spend them like smoke. I
want to shout to the man who collects them, to my oarless,
boatless Charon - Do you know the difference between a
horizon and a cell? Between a puddle and an ocean? Have you
ever seen the world unfold itself before you, tasted the
sweetest offered promises of futures and roads leading up
and out, away into the vast Iris of love - only to have it
shrink back into an empty seed shell? What can you grieve,
you who had nothing? What can you mourn, you who lost
nothing?
Reluctant, my mouth still shut, I get up to go. There is no
use in searching for it. It isn't simply found. It isn't
something, isn't somewhere. It is a mocking grace, an
omni-present homesickness. It is a great big hand that
tightly grasped your soul and suddenly let go and left you
starving, staring at your frozen finger-printed self, with
no voice to call out for help, to summon back the culprit;
with no way of forcing the memory back into reality, of
weaving the tatters back into the cloth.
So you finger the traces that He left on your body - the
veins, the bones - and you head back home. You start
walking. You accept the dark, dank, crooked tunnel. You
renounce the bitter hope for daylight.
You stumble and your wounded heart betrays you
with every passing spark.