Code of Laws 11

One day our beautiful dream of togetherness was tested. I had been out hunting deer. I felt a sharp pain in my leg as if something had bitten me. I began to feel ill and I managed to get back home I don’t know how, but my wife was waiting for me there and when she saw me she looked terribly afraid. I hadn’t brought back anything except fear in the look in my face and her face reflected it. I could see immediately that she thought I was a dead man who had come back to her.

That night I entered into a delirium. I began to see things that I had forgotten. I saw my father, I saw my sister. I saw my mother. My father was God himself. He appeared briefly in the guise of a punisher. He had a belt and I felt afraid. Then I saw his anger, I saw it as an animal a wild animal but one which had been caught and was about to be slaughtered. Then my mother appeared in the dream, she was soft, but she turned her face away and I couldn’t make out, she was hiding something. What was she hiding? She was now the beast, but it was impossible to see her as she hid her face keeping it turned. My father disappeared in that dream and I wished to see him and I searched but I could not find him.

When I woke there was pain and there was confusion. But most of all I felt lost, I felt like a lost child, like a newly made orphan. “Where is my home? Where are my parents? Where is my father?”

My wife was afraid for me, I could see it in her eyes. She had seen me before and she had thought that I was strong and independent and that I was a hero, and I was. But here I was lying in a sweat. I was weak as hell, there was no food and I was probably poisoned by something. I was meant to give her the protection, but here I was lying in what appeared to me to be death itself.

Had I been in a dream? I had been in a delirious dream of love and romanticism had been the thing which I had followed throughout life. What I needed now was not romance, not the image of beauty and divine soul connection.

“Here, have this. It’s porridge. It will make you feel stronger, you must eat my darling.”

My wife now spoon fed me as I was unable to move. I was unable to communicate with her. I was as if deaf, dumb and blind I was beyond useless, but there she was at my side with the spoon with comfort, with soft words and no criticism, and no panic. This woman, although afraid at first, took action. She pulled herself together and cooked up the porridge, she put sugar and butter on it and it was beautiful and hot and delicious. After a few hours I was able to communicate.

“My love, they hurt me.” I said.

“Yes, it was a snake. But I have sucked out as much of the poison as I could.”

“My love, this world is evil. Are you good or evil?”

She looked at me for a minute. I had lost my mind. She was my wife and nothing would make her want to hurt me. Nothing. It wouldn’t matter if I had come back with lost limbs, and it wouldn’t have mattered if I had come back with another woman to share our bed with, she would have gladly shared it because she knew that we were one and nothing on earth could destroy our love. As it was I came back poisoned. I had been poisoned with a snake and now I was babbling about good and evil.

“My mother is evil. She didn’t kill my father but she took vengeance against him like a wild beast and she abandoned me out here in this forest and stole my memories.” I spoke these words as if they were a confession, and she was my confessor.

“And your father? Is he alive or dead?”

“I loved my father as he loved me. He gave me life and was the prop on which I stood. But he didn’t understand the way of the world. He was too optimistic. He was naïve, he didn’t understand the reality.”

I carried on. But now this anger welled up in me, it was frightening. I carried on about my father, I don’t remember what I said, but I was mourning his loss, and as I understood it my mother had done something unspeakably evil to him. She had hurt me too, in hurting him she had hurt me. I became angry and filled with hatred at the thought of my mother hiding her face with a quiet smile, like an unspeakable beast, an evil like no other, and my own mother. I frightened my dear wife. She started to cry, and at this I began to weep.

“I’m sorry my love.”

I begged her to come close to me, and I embraced her and she lay on top of me and I held on to her. I had doubted her. I had asked whether she was good or evil, I had thrown a spear of doubt into our love, the poison swirling through my heart through my veins. The truth is that I love her, I loved her because she was without guile, without calculation, she understood my mind and anticipated my needs. And now I was weak I was a sick man, sick in body and recovering, but in mind I was just at the precipice. I was falling into something great and evil, and if she couldn’t save me then no-one could. My weakness was like paralysis. But I was not dying and I recovered in body.

“Now is the only time that counts.” She spoke to me.

“It doesn’t matter about your parents, they are gone, they are no more. They committed evil, both of them, they both were responsible and they both left you. But they don’t matter, they aren’t you. I love you and I am here, and I have no lies in me and you must trust me.”

These words were true, she did love me, and she proved it. I stopped speaking to her. I was unable to talk the next day. She asked me a question and I didn’t look at her and I didn’t speak. But she didn’t get angry with me. She didn’t persist with her questioning, she merely went about caring for me and loving me. The following day I was still unable to speak but she did not sulk, and she didn’t do anything to upset me. She came close to me, she put her hand in mine and looked in my eyes, but she wasn’t weak this time, she didn’t cry, she showed strength and it was a beautiful womanly inner strength. It was a strength that said that she was my wife and that I was her man, I was her possession and that she would not lose me, but she would not get angry with me either for lack of communication. In truth weeks passed and I couldn’t speak, and I did the things I had to do in life with apathy and little enthusiasm. When I did things for her, I tried hard, but my life was dead. In the day I lived in my mind, the images which had disturbed me continued to do so, and I mulled them over in my thoughts and dwelled on them and I tried to forget like she had said but they would not leave me. My evil did not leave my mind, but my woman remained, and continued with pleasantness and joy even though a cloud of darkness now held me captive. If she had left me, or if she had reacted badly, I don’t know what I would have done.  In truth the months that passed were a form of hell in which I descended into, with her, my love looking down into it not descending but waiting patiently and calling me, and not giving up.

Code of Laws 10

Of course, true love has no happy ending but we were together and there was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide from our own mistaken ideas and misinterpretations. I was out of words to say, and she looked sad, so I held her, and I kissed her, and we stayed there together throughout the night.

“I don’t want to lose you again.” I began the next day. It was a show of vulnerability on my part but it was the truth, and it was sincere and I should never pretend otherwise. I could not hide it. But her pride swelled up and I could see she felt great power. This was fine.

“I had to come for you though didn’t I!” That was her protest.

“Yes, and I’m sorry.”

“Separation is painful. I spent many days myself, walking up and down the halls and in the gardens thinking of you.”

“Tell me about your life.” I asked her.

“Well, there is not much to tell, except that I lived in paradise, with my family, and I’m very clever as you can see, I’ve read many books, and I, well you know me, you know who I am.”

“What are your family like?”

“My father, he’s a very strong and powerful man, and my mother, I love her so much, and I have three brothers and two sisters.” “But, I don’t want to talk about them.” Now she confessed.

“I just want to be here with you.”  Then she put her hands on my chest and she kissed my face. We stayed like this for a long time.

Even though we had been walking, we were back underneath the giant beech where she had first appeared. We were back where we had started. We lay together under this massive tree, and there was no more anguish of mind, all the confessions had been made and forgiven. The pact of love was forged. And again, as it had been the day before, the Sun eased its way into the afternoon illuminating the green leaves to the brightest green, and shining down bright shards of golden light onto the moss around us.

“No happy ending.” I spoke again from my heart.

“I promise you no happy ending. When I die an old man, I will leave you a sad and lonely widow, I promise you the saddest ending. And I will make you cry so much that God will feel sorry and will weep with you.”

“You are so dramatic sweetheart!” She replied to me now.

“Why should you die first?” “If I died, I would make you so unhappy, you would immediately cut your wrists and hang yourself to join me.”

“My love, I cannot imagine you dying.” “Don’t even think about it. If you were to die, I would also be dead.”

“But we are not dying and we won’t die.”

“Not even when we’re old?” I argued.

“We won’t become old, and we won’t die.” She answered.

“Of course we will, we’ll be like two crazy old beggars, lost, forever. But together begging in the street until the very end of it.”

“You can go beg if you want, but I’ll not, thank you!” Now she was haughty.

“Will you not support your loving wife, the mother of your children, in this harsh world?”

“Of course I will my love. You will have everything that is mine.”

“You don’t appear to have very much right now. Except for that beard, and you smell too.”

As far as no happy ending went, this was turning out to be a fine one. She knew very well how to stretch it out. I would be the cause of all of her suffering and the scourge who did not “support” her. But she would be there to remind me of my shortcomings from moment to moment. Could this really be “true love?”

“I’ll be a soldier my love.”

“You’ll break my heart again?”

“I’ll be strong and protect you and serve you and kill anyone that comes close to you to hurt you or take you away from me.”

“But when the war starts you’ll leave me forever and never come back.”

“Would you hurt me like that sweetheart?”

“No, of course not.” “What would you like?” I asked her.

“I’d like an honest man that will never leave me. You must be respected but you must never be taken in by the illusion.”

“Can’t we go back to the fourth dimension?” I asked.

“We are already there sweetheart. We are there you found it, and I found it, we both found it, but there is no return now.”

“I want to go there my love.”

“We can’t go back. We must stick it out here while we can, and try and create paradise here within our hearts. You found it, you found it and you found me already.”

There were revelations to be had. I had not gone to the fourth dimension. I was still here on earth in three dimensions as far as I could tell. I was in a delirium of happiness that my love had come back to me and had found me and I had promised never to leave her side again, and I had promised to kill anyone who threatened to separate us. But, if she didn’t want to tell me about her life, and about how she had found me then I shouldn’t ask. That was her secret and a secret which she had the right to, just as the mist which enveloped my past kept it secret from her, and from myself too.

“Where will you take me sweetheart?” She asked me.

“Where do you want to go?”

“I thought we could just stay here like this forever.” And with that she stretched herself over me and closed her eyes in a delicious embrace.

Well, even though I was not in the 4^th dimension, I was in paradise. I had my heart’s yearning sleeping softly under my arm, and I had everything I could have ever wished for. I had my wife and my family all in one, how precious she was to me. Since I had no other family around me, none that I could remember of, perhaps deep in the subconscious they were there and might also come back to me one day. I had that huge beech above me looking down on us benevolently protecting us. Then I asked myself the question: Did I really want to leave here? Did I want to take us away from the place where we found our greatest happiness and love? The answer of course was no. I’d gladly stay put with her under that tree for an eternity, until the tree had long died and its children had sprouted up and become forests of their own. She was my angel, she was my princess, my goddess. What was I to her? She confessed her love and her anguish at losing me for years on end, I was her missing half also, and she had gone for so long loving me without seeing me. How could I possibly deny her the chance to have what she wanted. We’d stay put.

Another day dawned and we stayed where we were. Life under the tree was not so difficult as one might imagine for someone who had spent life more or less as a savage. But my princess, was truly indeed a princess despite her enthusiasm in doing things, though she did not go without her merits and achievements.

“I was cold.”

“Were you my honey?”

“Yes, I woke up when it was still dark and I was cold and I couldn’t sleep.”

“Yes, I felt you were moving, I am sorry, I wasn’t warm enough for you.”

“No you were warm, but it was still cold.”

“We are not in the fourth dimension now are we my love? We are not in paradise, everything does not just appear out of the air as if by magic, does it?”

“But darling what will we eat? I am hungry”

“I will catch us something my love, in the meantime you could find some wood so that we can make fire.”

“I’d love to, I am keen to do it.”

She had no idea that we needed dry wood, but we got there in the end. After some time searching there was a pile of wood, contributed equally by both of us, and I had fashioned a fresh arrow for the bow.  I told her to watch the wood and to try and make fire by rubbing sticks, while I went to hunt. But she’s have none of it, my angel insisted that she would come with me, to protect me, and to make sure that I didn’t get lost from her ever again. How protective a woman can be, but how loved I felt at that moment that her face showed anger and grabbed me to keep me from going alone.

The squirrel foraged, the birds chirped, and the dear drank the water with thirst. I, with my love clinging to my arm in excitement trod the ground silently without letting a drop of sweat roll down and drop onto the leaves below. Time passed, and she became tired, but she did not sigh, she did not give up her grip on me either. We missed on several occasions and her excitement and enthusiasm was equally matched by her disappointment at our mutual loss. We went through the highs and the lows of the hunt.

“Ouch!”

“What happened my love?”

“I cut myself on something, it hurts.” We had been walking now through dense forest full of ivy and brambles and hostile plants. It was good for catching what we were after since we were practically invisible to it.

“Let me see.”

“Here,” She showed me her arm, cut and scratched and I was very sorry to have brought her out here.

Eventually, just as the Sun was at the zenith high up above us in the Summer, I let go of the arrow, and it hit the animal and the poison seeped in quickly and killed it after it had run a little. And although a princess, my love was keen to help me drag the warm dead creature back to where we had made our home. We skinned it together, with great joy and trepidation, it was our first kill together, a kill which would sustain us and our love in the third dimension. The blood of the animal was on our hands, and she smudged it on my face, and I smudged it on hers. Blood was a sacred offering, but this blood was ours and we were the god and goddess who revelled and joyed in its spilling, and I thanked God for this bounty and that I had, provided for my love as she had so wanted me to. The skin was stretched out on wood and placed in the Sun, and my love would have a new coat, or cape or blanket to keep her from the cold in a matter of days when it was washed and oiled and ready for her.

While the fire was burning, and the meat was cooking, and my love warmed herself by it devouring the smell of the meat, I went looking for branches to build some kind of shelter. The kind I typically made did not look like a house, or a shack, not even a tent. It was a few branches covered up with more branches, and coniferous leafage which had a sheltering effect, it tended to keep most of the water out should it rain. Unlikely in summer, but possible and there was of course the damp dew of morning which was itself not kind to the lungs, with moistness which would turn to frost sooner or later. We ate our dinner in silence. Love causes appetite once it is fulfilled, and we had not eaten for a long time. Finally she spoke again.

“My sweetheart, the shelter is very good, but do you think it will keep us warm?”

“No, of course, when the winter comes we’ll both freeze. We must either make it into a house, or we must leave here. What would you like my love?”

She had said she wanted to stay put, and so we had started our life together under the Beech. But it was of course, not much of a life. She looked at me longingly and realised that I like her had been scratched.

“Life is simple here.” She started again.

“In the summer it’s fine, it’s like Arcadia.”

“I’ve been there” she replied, “It’s in Greece.”

“You looked very fine with that knife.” I complemented.

“And what about without the knife?”

“Utterly beautiful.” At which point I could not help but touch her.

Life in the forest, with just the two of us in those few weeks was simple. It was without complaint or argument, it was not perfect of course there was discomfort, but I was happy to leave any time she wanted and that time soon came.

Code of Laws 09

As we walked in the forest, I became silent, inside. No thoughts were with me, just the sounds of the leaves soggy under my feet, and the sound of my breathing. I began to observe. This forest was in parts, ugly, especially on certain, frosty, and cold, cloudy days. It reminded me of pain, of sharp splinters of wood, sticking into the hands, or nettles, or other natural states of being which existed solely for the suffering of man.

We walked for a while, but it is strange that after some time, Peter had disappeared, I carried on searching, but he was gone for good, as was the familiar wood where I was. I was alone again, not that Peter’s company was missed. I had imagined murdering him in cold blood, and he had gently lost me in my own wilderness. He was no doubt safely back at home, and I was, safely out here away from walls, and constriction and inner control and inner death.

My thoughts, and my dreams had been violent and angry. I sat down in desolation, in anger and in fear again. I began to pray, I meditated and I prayed. I was living like a wild man, and my thoughts and feelings were wild, which is why the people that I had met had taken me away from them and had cunningly put me out of harm’s way, because I myself was harmful.

But something in me was still civilised, I was not a wild animal, and even though I had had angry thoughts, I did not act on them I had enough self-control and consciousness to refrain. I had never acted in violence before, it was instilled in me from the beginning and I was in touch with the covenant of divine law, which was taught to me as a child.

How would this end? How would this existence continue? As I was praying on some moss under an enormous beech tree, which was illuminated and dazzling in the late afternoon sunlight, something strange happened. Something supernatural occurred. A door appeared in front of me, right in the middle of the forest, with no house or hut or even track around for miles and miles.

But there it appeared, as if by pure divine magic. At the moment that I had realised that I was not a savage, but a human being and wished no harm upon any other living thing, and as I prayed, magic appeared before my eyes. It was frightening and beautiful at the same time. My heart speeded up, but I stood up like a man to confront it, and I looked away, and then I looked back, and there it kept and there it stayed. A greenish old wooden door free-standing in the middle of the forest out of nowhere materialised.

The door suddenly opened and a short woman walked through. She was extremely proud of herself but utterly and completely enchanting. That moment I recognised her, but at the same time she was a complete stranger. I had no words at all to say to her, none whatsoever. It would have been foolish to have asked. I knew in my heart who she was I did not need to speak with stupid words.

She walked up to me, offered me her hand, I took it, I kissed it, and I held it and did not let go. She smiled full of luscious pride as if she were saying that yes, she was some kind of princess. I asked her without speaking, just with my mind, “where had she come from?”

All of this took place telepathically, without actually saying a single word.

“Why, you know very well where I’ve come from Mr.”

I felt perplexed.

“The fourth dimension, of course.”

She now looked right in my eyes with affection. Her eyes knew me, knew my every thought, the history my life, but still with great affection. And then she said to me without utterance.

“Silly.”

I did indeed look and sound silly. Firstly, I was wondering where she had come from. But had she asked me the same question, I would be at a loose ends to be able to reply.

“I’ve spent a few years wandering about in this endless vast forest my love.” Speaking from heart to heart rather than mind to mind or mouth to mouth. She now looked at me with great fascination. But we were walking now, striding forward together, but careful and without too much haste.

“I can’t really tell you where I’ve come from or where I was before, it’s all rather hazy. I think I was born in Albion and I spent some time in the New World and then I don’t remember.”

Without words again she spoke, as did I, which seemed rather strange at first but so much better. There is no mistake and no misinterpretation in telepathy as I’d later recount.

“You lost your way dearest one.”

“Yes I did didn’t I. I’m so glad you found me, I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

“Sweetheart!” She now filled with tears of joy. I put my arms around her and I held her tight as if never to lose her again.

“You must have lost your way too?” I enquired. Now she didn’t look like the proud princess, but rather more like a sobbing girl. Since we were speaking telepathically, no secret could remain hidden and all was revealed with sincerity and with great love.

“I lost my way the same way you did. I realised my divine nature, and my connection to the true source of knowledge, the pure source, which led me away from where I, like you came from.”

There were no lies or deceits when the heart spoke directly to the heart.

“I loved you, and I needed to come back to you.”

“Yes,” I replied,

“I loved you and I love you now more than I ever did and I’ll love you a little more every day.” My heart couldn’t but help returning double what was given to me. But poetry was the only possible way to communicate, which was also done telepathically.

“Like fire I love you and like the burning Sun whose fire never ends I love you and like the trees in autumn who blush bright red I love you.” And at that instant my face indeed blushed red.

“I’ve been alone for such a long time, in fact I think I may have walked around in circles.” She smiled at me now with a touch of malice. But telepathic talk can’t hide it’s true meaning.

“Darling, yes, you’ve been mistaken, walking about like to blind fool. All you had to do was remember me, but instead you were chasing around some crazy fantasies.”

“Aren’t you a crazy fantasy?” I retorted without intending to. She pinched me hard, and I smiled it was in jest.

“Crazy, yes. But as you can feel, does that feel like imagination to you?”

“What did I do to make you come for me now, and why didn’t you come earlier?” I asked the question though I already knew the reply.

“You needed to remember a few things my love, you know that.”

“And to forget a few things too.” I added.

At that moment while I was swirling around in happiness walking with my newly found newly remembered 4^th dimensional bride, she tripped on a root and nearly fell to the ground which was hewn with hazardous flint and rock. I caught her of course, I caught her before she had even begun to fall, almost before she had tripped. She swooned and smiled, a smile of gratitude, a smile which could only be made by a princess saved from disgrace. Then I realised that this forest, although perfect for someone with no cares like myself, was not suitable for her. I imagined lifting her up and carrying her out of this anti-Eden.

“Hold your horses sweetheart!”

Of course it would be ridiculous to think that I could carry her for miles, though being of a middling stature, though not short, petit was the word, wouldn’t be too heavy for me, for a few hundred meters.

“So, my love.” It was our first awkward silence after being away from each other.

“How is the 4^th dimension?”

“It’s paradise. And we’re going back there together, you and me.” She said with total enthusiasm.

My love was quite proud and passionate and full-blown in her opinion. But she had one quality which was above anyone I’ve ever met. She was unable to lie, and unable to be sarcastic, irony was lost on her she was truthful to the bone. But of course, we were talking heart to heart so; there was no possibility of pretending to believe one thing while believing something else. However amusing that might be. Indeed speaking without sound or words was a beautiful, and enlightening experience. I could hear her every thought, and hear what she didn’t want me to hear.

“Don’t ever leave me again!”

“I have never left you, I tried to protest my innocence.”

“You.” She replied.

“Where were you my love? I’ve been wandering out here all alone? Where were you, I needed you, I suffered alone.”

But I knew in that instant, there was no hiding of course. Of course I had left her. I had left her the moment that I had stepped into the 3^rd dimension myself. I stepped out of paradise, and left her because I was transfixed on some fantasy, on some crazy notion of suffering imagination. I saw the flames of the 3^rd dimension and like a hypnotised moth I went to the flames.

“I’m sorry my love.”

“I love you a little bit more every day.” She replied, with tears of joy.

Now she said something that disturbed me slightly.

“True love doesn’t have a happy ending.”

“Oh?”

“Because true love never ends.” At this she once again grinned with total pleasure at her folly. But who was more deluded? Who was crazier out of both of us? Was she crazy for having stepped through a door with no wall, in the middle of the forest, from the 4^th dimension? Or was it I, was it I who was mad, because I did not know where I was from, what I was doing or where I was other than I was in the forest and I have a very hazy recollection of my family and upbringing, in fact so hazy it was just fog. She wasn’t my imagination either. She was laughing at her own cleverness and happiness, and she had pinched me and my arm was still red where she pinched me and she had just tripped and fallen and I had caught her, and if she had been a dream the falling would have woken me up, but she had fallen and I had not woken up, but instead I had caught her in my arms.

No, I was the fool. She had known all along. She had always known where I was going, where we were going, and although I had caught her and saved her just now. She was in fact the one saving me, from endlessly and restlessly roaming without direction. She knew where we were going, and I hadn’t known until she had just told me. “The fourth dimension, of course.” Clearly. Together that’s where we were going. How were we to get there? I do not know.

“You ignored me darling.”

“Yes, I know. I’m sorry. There was no excuse, I’m sorry, I can see now that you loved me.” She now laughed at me as if to say;

“Oh, I loved you! Did I say that?” But her heart couldn’t lie of course. So she didn’t say it, not aloud, not in her heart either.

“So why did you ignore me? You know you made me sad for such a long time.”

“You already know why my love. I was blindly distracted like the moth.”

“And do you still not remember where you’re from sweetheart?”

It dawned on me. No, I still didn’t remember where I was from. She had said that she had come from the same place that I had come from. And she had also said that she was from the fourth dimension.

“Well at least you are not ignoring me now. You are looking into my eyes and pretending to listen.” She had a point. My mind was quietly ticking away while she was talking, listening to some, but not necessarily taking in all of what she was saying.

“Am I an escaped mental patient, suffering acute amnesia?” At this she smiled that luscious smile again, that smile that said that amnesiac I was, but her amnesiac entirely and no-one else’s. ´

“We are both escaped mental patients, sweetheart, both suffering acute amnesia.”

Slowly something stirred in me and it was a sick feeling. Something terrible and frightening. I was out here with what I thought had been my purest desire the fulfilment of my deepest imagination and fantasy, but I realised with some horror and I couldn’t hide it from her.

“You caused me a lot of suffering my love.”

“Oh,” she now said, with a look of guilt.

“I remember seeing you laughing at someone else’s jokes and touching someone else’s hand, and looking deeply into someone else’s eyes.”

“Oh! But, I never wanted to hurt you I just wanted your attention.”

“It hurt me, because I couldn’t compete with that. And at the time I thought that if you loved someone else, then what was the point in chasing after you?”

Our conversation had dried up, and there was no hiding the truth. And there was no hiding from each other either. What were her excuses? No, of course what she said was true, she couldn’t lie to me, she just wanted to catch my attention. What were my excuses? I was of course, nothing more than a moth chasing after a flame, a deluded and escaped mental patient with total amnesia. I felt sick in the stomach and sick in the heart and I felt a great gulf separating us. I had ignored her and she had broken my heart innocently. She was right about one thing though, “true love doesn’t have a happy ending.”

To Stand Firm

 

Truest love that lasts a thousand years,

Takes a thousand years to build.

With each day, it cuts me a little.

It cuts you too and I can see the pain

That you suffer for it.

I am in one wilderness,

Stranded by the gunfire that shell shocked me

Out of civilisation.

You are in another wilderness,

Outside of the mainframe which fried your nerves,

And left you cold.

But without our great and evil city,

Our love could not be,

And without the war and violence all around us,

Would we be?

If these are the conditions which bring us about,

Then they are whole and good.

 

In the multitudes I see faces,

Oppressed and sad,

Grief stricken with excess desire,

Addicted to the sugar,

Addicted to the money,

Addicted to sensation,

To what the eyes see,

But whose hearts are blinded by the lust.

Men, women, children, blinded by the lust

Of bright colours and images,

The illusions brought about through poisons

In the water and in the air.

Seeping through their dreams.

 

But when your face appears to me,

No lust. Something softer, gentle,

You are seduced by it like they are,

But you are mine.

It may take me time,

To shatter the illusions around you,

But so long as you are looking into my eyes,

You will not see the lies of this world.

You will not be deceived by those illusions,

And nothing else will be good enough,

Nothing else will contain any flavour,

So long as your eyes are fixed on mine.

 

You are mine.

This was confirmed on the day that,

I first looked in your eyes and you laughed, girlishly.

Now you don’t laugh like that any more.

In the short time that I have held you in my mind,

And in my heart,

You have become sturdy,

And tough, a woman, a goddess.

 

But I am no stranger to conversion either,

Since I met you I have become faithful.

You can go with anyone you like,

And I’ll do the same.

But, in  the end,

I am the only thing that is real to you,

And you are the only thing that is real for me.

 

How long does it take to build our love?

How long did it take to build the pyramids?

Piece by piece, day by day.

You will think of me,

You will construct me inside yourself.

 

Like the granite edifice in the cold and lonely tundra,

You stand out, and you won’t abandon me,

Not now, not for an Age, not for a thousand ages.

And however cold I am, however cold I get,

However distant and however hostile I become,

There you will stand, with your eyes fixed on me,

With great sadness.

 

But your sadness is a form of love.

Your sadness is happiness in disguise,

Because, I can never truly abandon you.

Those who do not abandon, cannot be abandoned.

Those whose love does not die,

Will be loved undyingly.

 

Unmoving, lonely sad and clinging,

Clinging like a magnificent tree to the ground.

You put your roots down in me and you won’t let go.

But I cling to you too, moody and fearful and afraid of

Losing you. Hold tight to me, with fear, with anguish and

With hopeless desperation.

Let me give you hope and then abandon you.

But one who does not abandon cannot be abandoned.

I cannot leave you,

And I cannot look at another.

Only you are real, in the desert of illusions.

Only you stand your ground while all around

Seems  to shift and melt like a million snakes.

 

You are no snake.

As a woman, you stand erect and proud.

Your dignity is enough to beat all others,

And burn them like so much dry tinder in the ground.

I am sorry I am still shifting and changing,

I am like the clouds to you,

Who pass above longing yet far away,

I am like the breeze in the tree, you cannot hold onto me,

Yet. But I will condense into more substantial material form.

So long as you continue to stand firm and cling,

And desire. So long as you hold true, and keep,

Thinking of me, building me in  your heart.

Code of Laws 08

Optimism and joy ran through my heart. But a question arose, as soon as I was walking again. This was the question: What was I doing now? Where was I going? This was a good question, and one no doubt asked by thousands before me, on the same road. I immediately answered it with what I had always answered such questions: “I am searching”. It was re-affirmative and self-assured. But this time it wasn’t enough. I walked for several hours and thoughts came and went through my head, but this one came back to me and persisted. “What are you searching for? And where are you going?” I answered myself with the most affirmative retort I could muster: “I’m searching for my great love, and I’m going to the place where I’ll find her…” Immediately, doubts bubbled up again, on the lines of: “How will you find her… if you don’t actually know anything about her?” I had to answer again… and it was a strain to find reason against my own rigorous argument. “I’ll find her because she’ll find me, and she’ll come to me in spirit and in soul, and I’ll know her face and it will be beautiful and I’ll also know her spirit and it will be beautiful equally.”

What was I now admitting? I was now walking in the most beautiful pine forest. The ground was sandy, and I could see the lake which lay some distance below the wooded hills in which I now walked. The land was now more pleasing that it had been before. There was something great about these trees, they were protective, and I didn’t have a chance to feel exposed. Sometimes the wind would pick up and they would move slowly and I’d hear that sound of whispering.

I wasn’t admitting anything. All I was saying was that “she”, my great love was somewhere and that I was searching for her, and that she’d find me. But I went even further. As I walked and kept going, in the silence and benevolence of the great Earth, I reasoned that I wasn’t in fact searching for anyone, or anything. My life, my self was just a flowering, and there was no inherent need in it. I reached the peak of a hill and I saw over the lake. One minute I was dazzled in sunshine and the next the clouds and rain obscured everything, and fuzzed up vast areas in my view with rain.

There were people in the past, great men of poetry and music, who spent their whole lives pining after their great loves, who died, crashed on the rocked still in search of their muses. What was I in search of again? I was at the crest of a high peak, overlooking a vast scenery of craggy, mountainous land, jutted and treed, with no sign of human habitation. It was a pure wilderness, it was God’s creation without human entanglement, without human calculation. I was in search of more romanticism, in my heart there yearned excitement and fear and a host of emotions, and I wished only to experience those which were high and great. I wanted to be lost in lofty beauty, I didn’t want to come back to every day, human life, with its chores and banalities. My “Great Love” was somewhere, possibly just in my heart. But she was like the great forest, and the lake, reflecting the luscious green, she was like the still deep black, whose eyes showed the whole universe, yet revealed nothing.

Was it possible to find this spirit of the infinite in something so crude as another human being? A tree clos to me with the softest, greenest leaves, and with little flowers that looked like little exploding white stars, and brown seed pods, rattled and sighed slightly in the wind. If I could find such serene beauty in a tree, if I could see the perfection of God working through something so ordinary as a tree, I could surely find perfection in another human being. “But people are not natural, they are self-involved and calculating.”

As I sat, I saw the clouds roll away before me, as if parted by God himself. The warmest, gentlest summer evening light gently precipitated down all around me, and I suddenly found myself laying in a field of the brightest yellowest meadow flowers, which had simply been closed during the obscurity and darker period. I wallowed in the Sun now, warming up after being quite wet and cold. And in the lake below, waves, which looked like ripples began to form, as if the Sun were blowing upon it.

My religion made pacts with eternity. And it was the reason why I was in search of this mystical greatness. God is everlasting, and yet, it is necessary to love God on a daily basis, to show respect and do “chores for God”, such as prayer, and repentance and all holy yet at the same time daily “things to do”. I was never one for deep meditation, nor for serious prayer. But in my heart was a yearning for the divine, for the eternal, for the spark of life, the divine spiritual ray. I liked to live life from day to day, feeling what was necessary to feel, staying away from serious distractions, that held other people in slavery.

A great love is one which is both full of daily joy and sorrow, and yet, something which grows and stretches out over the whole of life and into eternity. What is special about the beauty surrounding me now? The beauty in the trees, is the sensitivity of them, the fact that they all seemed to have been painted with the finest of brushed, down to the finest little detail of each and every leaf, yet at the same time, neither they were self-conscious of affective about it, nor was their creator. These trees simply existed, in purest stillness and without desiring to be noticed or given special treatment, without looking to the future or to the past.

Was it an irregularity in the human mind, that made us unable to just exist in the same way as this marvellous “nature”? I imagined my love as if she were part of this great nature, infinite, yet without consciousness. But consciousness was necessary in order to appreciate the differences, from day to day. I needed to see her laugh and cry and get angry. I wanted to see her get excited, so I could be excited with her and by her.

I was at the greatest peak. I watched the valleys beneath, and the lake which filled the valley, I watched small boats, like tiny little toys far below, and I watched how the Sun played with them and with the water, changing it from deep blue to black and then to black with sheens of gold rippled and smoothed. I sat at the peak, and watched, as God, and as part of God all around  me. I watched without consciousness, and I watched while in deep thought. I sometimes didn’t even watch, I just let the light and the breezes enter though my eyes and caress my soul.

I stayed at the peak for several days and nights. And during the nights, although cool, it was never cold. What I did see were the stars, old friends, who sometimes jarred with unhappy stirrings, but who sometimes cheered with delightful beaming goodness. Jupiter, one night shone up there, and I had been observing this old god’s travels though the stars, Jupiter shone with a brightness and freshness that was unmistakeable. But I couldn’t leave that peak, I couldn’t leave that spot until I had come to a clear resolution on what it was that I was searching for.  How could I possibly go on, without knowing where, or why even?

One night I lay dreaming again. Jupiter was probably up to tricks. In my dream I was rolling along on a bright path somewhere in a dry area. Suddenly I had a sword in my hand, and just as suddenly, out of nowhere there appeared to men, with swords in their hands. They clearly wished to take whatever I had. I suddenly had this enormous explosion of anger from within, and they, in that instant drew very near. But a moment later, I blew outwards and the sword in my hand disappeared, and my anger disappeared and the two men de-materialised. I awoke, and there was Venus, shining through the star-flowers in the trees.

I prayed a little this time, because it had seriously disturbed me. I prayed and asked for forgiveness for my anger and I was immensely thankful. I didn’t want to petition God anymore. I made thanks, for everything. But this question of the great and eternal love once again nagged in my mind. The face of the one so recent to have captivated it once again crept into my mind. Why was this face here, why did this woman captivate me so much? I had been through a lot of thoughts on her already. The main point was that I was unlikely to ever see that particular face again, and this had made me intensely sad, it was the reason why I had been relentlessly moving. Was I running to her or away? I was running in any case. Was this a mystery that I’d never solve? Was this just a mirage? It could have just been an illusion. But as far as illusions went she was pretty addictive.

On my exposed spot there was a cliff. Sometimes, on clear nights with a bright moon, I’d go over to the edge of this great fall, I’d stay at the edge and meditate. At last, something unsettled me. The view had been breath-taking, and I had felt great peace with nature, and with God. In my solitude with this awesome eternal vision of nature, I had found my great love. I had found a peacefulness that I had never found before. But on that night, there was a change. It started out as perhaps just boredom. I imagined jumping off the immense cliff. In the space of a few minutes the dissatisfaction snowballed and I became thoroughly miserable. I was hungry. All my bread was gone. In front of me, above the lake the moonlit clouds parted and very suddenly it became stupendously cold. I wrapped myself in my sheepskin, but the wind blew right through and caressed my bones.

A different star was above me  now, one which cursed and hated with a frozen touch. The first snow of winter, always magical was like a devious trick, whose charm and poison were one and the same. In desperation and in fear, I was hurled off of the cliffy summit that I had found so pleasant and blissful. It was not a matter of wanting to live. A human being will not willingly put hand in fire, nor feeling the pain, then keep it there. I imagined for the first time in a long time, a warm house, clean dry clothes, hot soup and fresh bread.

As I left the unbearable exposure of the cliff top, whose beauty now haunted me I had ran almost as if out of harm’s way. But now I walked in the forest again, not in darkness because the Moon illuminated this dark world through the trees. I walked, but now I was unhappy. Some form of dark melancholy poisoned every living thought, or attempt at rationalisation. Where was I now? The ego, that sense of self was already over the precipice, yet, was it not my dissatisfaction that was a clue to what my ego really was?

I wanted, and I craved, and the denial of those desires in disappointment was surely the sign of a self. Something that I had been taught when young was that it was important to let go of the self. And I thought that I had achieved that a long time ago. But now, the deeper my sadness grew, and the greater the sorrow and misery of existence, of unbearable solitude, of the inability to be one with the universe, with God. These were indicators that my “self” was still there. I had admitted and confessed directly to God about my lust, and my “Great Love”, and she was still there, and the greater that she was, and the more magical and voluptuous she was, then the more massive and active was my own sense of ego and self.

I walked faster, through the forests now, but darkness permeated, despair turned once again to misery and I slowed my pace. I limped along as if my entire body were made of stone. I walked through a dried river, the Moon lit up the smoothed boulders which strew my path, and the sand in the night was soft and dark, and I put my hands through it for a moment, and its softness was sensuous and comforting and I knew again that there was compassion within or without. Yet, it still did not take me from my sadness, which permeated though me like freezing rain. I was dry, and I was thankful that I wasn’t cold. The difficulties of keeping the human body satisfied and alive were one thing, and I was prepared for these, they were a second nature to me. But, the difficulties of keeping the human mind and heart warm and nourished, were another thing completely. One thing was for sure, whatever religion I had previously practiced, I was still emotionally an animal. Wolves howled, why did they howl? It sounded like they were unhappy about something, then in the morning birds would sing the most exotic warbling sounds, like streams and rivers, why did they sing if not out of pure joy? Nature, although animalistic and primitive was an emotional entity. And yet, I was a part of that nature. But I wished to be out of it. I wished to not suffer anymore the misery and the heaviness which now felt like such enormous weight that I carried around my neck.

In the end, I came across a shack. It was a cottage in reality and I could see a warm glow from within, where there was fire and comfort, and I, I was tired. I was tired of carrying my burden, I wished to let go, I wished to lie down in comfort, and rest. I knocked at the door, and a man opened the door.

“I seek work, in exchange for shelter and food.” I stated.

“Are you a man of God?” Answered the fearsome looking man at the threshold.

“Yes, I come in peace, and I ask for your kindness, which I will repay however you see fit.”

With that, I was allowed into the inner chamber. Suddenly there was comfort, somewhere to lie down, so soft, fire, so warm, soup and bread, which almost melted the stone of misery which hung around me. A pair of eyes, now glared at me, it was the lady of the house, the eyes of the wife of the man who I was now a slave of. I was enraptured and I was enslaved by her in that instant also. She spoke softly and was kind and generous, she gave much and asked nothing. She had a knowingness about her, as if she knew where I had been and where I was going, and knew also that her husband didn’t. It was a new pleasure and a new misery all rolled into one. I made a pact with her with one look in her eyes, yet that pact was one of death. Her angry husband, like a lion would tear us both to pieces, and I was just a sack of bones that wondered in from the forest.

“At the edge of the forest, there aren’t that many possible occupations. But, we do a little bit of everything. Everyone does, and it is a good life. We are able to farm a little, and to keep animals for sustenance, and the forest gives us other things also.”

His explanation was adequate enough, but that night, while I slept I dreamed. I dreamed that I was in fact the happy cottage dweller, and I was happy. In the dream I was married to that beautiful women with intense eyes and beautiful body, and I held her in my dream, with fire and passion. The dream suddenly imaged forward in time and there were lovely children all around, and this was a different joy. But as the dream unfolded, it quickly became dissatisfaction, my beautiful voluptuous wife was suddenly an immense overbearing woman full of wrath and hatred, and the children now tormented and hung around my neck like lead weights almost strangling me. Suddenly I looked in the mirror and my face was covered in boils, pustules of disease, our faces emaciated and starving, and my wife and children nothing but bones, and then the cottage burning in flames and yet I stood in the flames and all that there was, was intense eternal anger like a furnace, like a rage. This is how the dream ended. Their names were Alison and Peter.

Peter took me out into the woods in the morning to catch lunch. I sharpened my arrows and dipped them in his home made poison. Poison seeped into me, when I imagined piercing his flesh with my poison tipped arrow. It was Alison who goaded me. But heaviness sank into me, I was not like that, I lusted, but I let the anger dissipate and turn itself back into that melancholy which was now such a feature of my heart. I decided that I’d do my very best to be friends with Peter. He had welcomed me, and all that he required of me was my company and co-operation. He had no intention to force me to the grindstone and make me a slave, like so many others would do.

Code of Laws 07

I felt very strange. I was in a church. Where was I? I wasn’t in  the Hindu Kush any more, but where was I then? Somewhere in the vastness of Russia. It was a plain church, there was the smell of incense. Candles resisted flickering even though outside the rain was driving down hard and the wind was in a hurry. Trees waved around making shadows, dancing to and fro like mad clowns mocking and jeering in the night, and there was no-one, just me, and the cross.

I came to the middle of the church, and I knelt there at the front, in the second row. I was dry and it was raining outside, and I felt grateful. Madness was whirling around outside, the dirt roads and paths had turned into rivers, but the church was raised on a step, no water seeped in. Was this the illusion of safety? I was alone in this big empty building and there might be fearsome priests, or monks, men with judgement, on their foreheads who might easily throw me out into the night, in order to suffer for my sins.

I stayed very still, watching the candles before the altar. I looked up and then I saw beauty in the marvellous hight  and awesome design of it. A huge space indeed, but a benevolent one, wide, and embracing, expansive, and indeed Godly. I began praying. I prayed in a whisper. I was a sinner, without doubt and I had fallen from grace when I came down from the mountain. My mind had ceased to be serene and I had ceased to care for anyone except for myself and for finding the woman that had impressed me so much and had imbued me with the promise of so much life and joy. I confessed my sin of lust, and of anger and of being apart from humanity and living for no-one but myself. I confessed everything, and I tried to explain that now I did live for someone, I lived for this lovely girl, whose name I didn’t want to sully. I talked to God, I told God about her, about her loveliness, and then I confessed again and instead of feeling clean and forgiven, I felt even more filthy.

“What does God care for you and your love… which is nothing more than biological animalism anyway?” I prodded myself with this question. Why should Jesus care about my feelings for someone any more than I care for other people’s love affairs. I don’t care for them, I don’t mind them, but I don’t care for them, so why should he care for mine? Fear was in my heart. I was with the devil, I was guilty. My love was guilty, it wasn’t love, but lust. It was lust extended and romanticised and made beautiful and luscious, but it was still lust, and all things that call themselves love between man and woman were lust, and it was impossible to hide it. Dear God I prayed, “I want your love and your blessing, but I cannot let go… I cannot let go of her, I love her with a fury and I cannot rest, and I only ask you to bless our love and forgive me for it.”

“I am imperfect, and I am not one for heaven,” I continued confessing. “Yet here I am, I am a man, I am of the earth, this night I had literally slept in it, in front of my dead father who also slept in it. Dear God, I am a miserable sinner, my sin is desire, and I cannot help it and if I were to renounce it I should be dead, because I am born to love, to want, to crave. Jesus, I wish to do good by you, I wish to love my neighbour, and I do, yet, I have no interest in my neighbour, people are empty, and full of chatter, and I have my heart set on something great, something greater and with more gravity. Our love  is like a mountain, so powerful, so strong…”

Just then I heard a voice behind me whisper:

“Jesus walked on water because he was attached to nothing material. Your love will sink you to the bottom of the ocean.”

I turned around startled, surprised, astounded. There was no-one. Had I been disturbed by an unholy spirit? Had I attracted a demon, which was now pursuing me? Or did I say those words myself? I looked around again. The storm continued outside. I stopped my confession, I wasn’t truly sorry, I just wanted to share my great love and justify it, and ask God’s blessing for it, and confess it. “I love her!” I loved her, without remorse. If I had thought for one second that she hadn’t loved me I would have given up on her, but there was something about her that visited me everyday. It was the birds, they had been singing to me every single day during my solitude. They sang the most beautiful and soulful love songs, they told me about her, and her longings, they told me about how she missed me, and wanted me to come to her world. They told me that she lived for me and loved me with passion that could flood the world and engulf it in flames at the same time.

I carried on speaking to God, whether that God cared or not. Sometimes I thought not, and I quietened down in order to try not to offend. But then my heart stirred again and I needed to confess, I needed to let the waters flow inside, just as they were flowing outside, and I needed to let out a storm and so I did.

“Dear God, I prayed, nothing in this world lasts forever, but every word and deed and thought and love is everlasting. And I am thankful for the dream that I had. I was with my bride, and she stood proud and smiling and I knelt by her with the ring and the miraculous stone, and it shimmered and what feeling there was.”

Then as the rain began to soften outside, I began to release. I began to loosen my grip and my desire waned cooler, and I wore myself out in prayer, and God whether listening or not brought me peace.

“Dear God,” I commenced again. “Dear God, I am grateful for the dream that you sent me, she was truly beautiful and pleased me and made me feel alive and I wish I could see her again, I don’t want to let her go. The diamond is a symbol of lasting, while of course human flesh doesn’t, human feeling doesn’t, all human things corrupt so quickly. Why are we made like this?”

I didn’t expect an answer, or hope for one. But I continued with my perverse and selfish prayer.

“God, you have created all things, your work is beautiful and wonderful and great, and I love you for it and I am grateful. Yet, I am suffering. This is part of your creation also isn’t it? If you are all-powerful, then the devil is your pet.”

In my mind I suddenly got mental criticism which said that I was now close to blasphemy.

“Dear God, I love all of your creation and I am sorry for bringing up the fires of hell with every desire that I feel, and every thought and every emotion. Yet, here I am. I am here, in your church, and I don’t pretend to be good. I haven’t killed anyone or committed any immoral acts, except desire someone. I am here in your church and I ask for your blessing and your love, even though, I do not love my neighbour as much as I should and I only care for following my dream, and reaching the woman who sends me love letters on the breeze and who sings to me through the birds, and whose face I see when I close my eyes, and who I know loves me with a passion that only serves to draw me to her. Dear God, I wish and I pray that I might have her kneeling here with me, and that we might both bow our heads together and pray to you in humbleness and in reverence.”

With that I began to feel really sleepy, and I laid down for a while on the wood, and it was hard and dry, and the church was airy but still. I slept the most beautiful sleep in that church, and God stayed with me all night. I was blessed in the morning, shards of iridescent light gleamed in through the stained glass windows, and the dust danced in it. I quickly awoke and left.

I found the earth soaked to saturation, it was mud. But there was greenery and the moisture was fresh and delicious, it was difficult to walk in it, but I felt a renewed sense of calmness after church. God had stayed up all night, listening to my prayers, and had not put me down or punished me. I had been listened to in quiet and in patience, and my prayers and confessions had been accepted and taken up. Even though I knew that I was out of God’s grace, I started out again, I started out renewed and refreshed and like a fresh flame burning with enthusiasm I looked up at the soft blue morning and I felt a newness in my heart, despite all of the heaviness of the night.

There was renewal and there was forgiveness, and I knew now  that there was not going to be any obstacle to finding my heart’s content. Was I still attached to her? Yes. Did she weigh me down? No. Because I weighed her down with an equal weight. I knew that I was in her dream without doubt. It was a pact, an alliance, both of us were cut by the same blade. Both of us pulled at each other. I thought of her smiling that smile that she used to make. That she was probably smiling right now.

I walked up to a gate. It was wet with water. I opened the gate, and then walked into a moist field. It was green, and empty except for a giant ancient tree. The tree spoke of solitude, and I went towards it. I briefly touched its surface and its leaves and they soothed me. Then I continued walking, I went out towards an open expanse. I went towards what seemed to be a brighter part of the sky.

What was the right thing to do, the right place to go to? It was not right to remain alone any more. I was right to find people and to talk and to make friends. And even though my heart carried around this desire for her, she had to find me and I had to learn how  to be good company to her. And you only learn how to be good company, by being good company. I decided that it was time now, to head into the city. I needed to cure my wound, and to be looked after by others. There was no hope but despair in the life that I was leading. And in my conversation with God the night before it had crossed my mind that my love was waiting for me in the city.

It started raining gently again, but this time is was the softest rain which made the odd ripple in puddles already on the ground. I closed my eyes for a second again, and their soft noises against the water and the ground and the leaves on the ground were like breaking waters, like refreshing drops from heaven, and I thanked God. I was grateful and I held my dream to me. I walked in freedom and in optimism, I walked with joy in my heart and with hope re-kindled.

Code of Laws 06

I sat in Marfic’s field. I sat there on his old boulder, and looked out at the little mound which now, marked the spot where my good old friend now slept. Did the evil birds, or spirits get him in  the end? I didn’t know. Did some brutal gang come along and kill him? There was no sign of any difference in his ruined cottage, it was as I had left it. His field was unploughed and nothing but weeds now grew there, and even the weeds seemed to have difficulty in growing on that dry patch of earth.

Where was I now? Trees were in front of me, and the Sun illuminated them to the brightest hue of emerald green. It was a truly beautiful and peaceful spot. I became cheerful, the atmosphere and the warm air around me and the cheerfulness of the image that laid before me impressed itself onto my consciousness. I thought of nothing in that moment, I just felt the wonder of the serenity and beauty of the trees which stood out in the dry arid landscape. They seemed joyful in the midst of this semi-desert, and yet there was no reason for it.

A cloud suddenly dropped a huge shadow on the scene and what was luminous brilliant green, without warning became a dark green, full of dark blackness hiding within its interior. And as I sat I looked at the cut on my hand, and it wasn’t bleeding, but it remained as an open wound, and stung a little.

As I sat, I began thinking of how I had come to be wounded like that, of how that pain had originated, and it was a clear memory. Could I go back and take more care, so as to avoid this pain? No. Thoughts came to me from the past, if that existed. Memory flashed here and there with nothing more than fleeting glimpses. In my mind I focused on certain things, on certain people who I had met. There were friends that I had left behind years before, there were girls that I had loved before, and whose faces in memory were nothing more than a blur, and whose names only stirred up memories of feelings, some of them good some of them tense. But these memories had no bearing over me. What was in a face and a name that you hadn’t seen for years? Nothing, their impact on me may have been great at the time. But what was the use of brining them back to me now? These old friends and lovers were nothing more that shadows in the night, not even black shadows, just blurs with no end and no beginning.

I sat on the boulder, and then I became tired of sitting, tired and thirsty and hungry and in pain. I found the ground next to the rock, and I laid down for a minute. It was just a minute of lying that I wanted, just a minute of rest, from the effort of sitting without any back support. But after a few hours I was deep in dreams. After resting deeply for hours, an old aunt flashed into my dreams, I was not yet awake, but she decided to be present and to remind me that I ought to be good. I think she felt disappointed with me for some reason, the presence of her in my dream was not so pleasant. It was as if she had something against me, both judgement and a form of disappointment. But further on in the dream she was dead, just like my old friend, she didn’t matter and her judgement went with her into the earth.

Further on into the dream warmth prevailed, and the elderly and judgemental aunt gave way to a young a beautiful woman. Petit, with long curly black hair and an intense, joyful personality. She was my antithesis. I was kneeling at her feet with ring shimmering with a jewel, both black and crystal, a diamond which was simultaneously black and white. In that dream I had been waiting for a special occasion to kneel at her feet with the ring, and there I was, and it was joyful and beautiful. She was in some gown of white and I was dressed like a groom for a perfect bride.

That dream was a delicious one. Where did it come from? It had not existed in the past. And, so it couldn’t be a memory. When I awoke I imagined the girl to be the one who I had met in the mountain. But on waking the memory faded so quickly, her face became obscure and faded, and it was just “a girl” in the end.

I awoke and I sat up again, and it was cold, and the trees which were only a few hours before so full of beauty now looked like dark threatening shadows, and projected all sorts of hallucinations from them. They threatened death, and oppression and I felt fear. I was alone again, and the universe was a frightening place, there were animals which threatened out in this terrain, away from the city. And my hand throbbed with pain and it was deep in the middle of the night, and no sleep would come back to me.

And although fear permeated through my heart and through my veins, images of beauty stirred in me, the wondrous dream of me and the mystery woman. I was too tired to keep walking, where would I walk to? No. I sat up, and I decided to stay the rest of the night and think about what I’d do in the morning. I sat up and I had some unease that was brought on about my aunt. Her son’s death, and her husband’s grim misery gave me uneasy reverberations. But she had always loved me and watched over me and she had prayed for me, and I had always loved her, and she disapproved of me…why? Of course, I took the road less travelled, I was thousands of miles away from home, I was to die in a ditch, and that had not been her hope for me. She was not disapproving of me though, she was worried about me. And here I was miles away from her, from civilisation, bleeding, hungry, thirsty, she was right to be worried.

I sat, and I remained awake, and the torture of being tired and yet not being able to sleep was dreadful. And the pain added scorn to the misery. I focused on the dreams, they were a source of thought. What connected my aunt, with my bride? There was no connection, was there meant to be. The disturbing worries of my aunt had disturbed my dreams and unbalanced me, her worries were justified, I was completely alone, and she would never have wanted that. Comparing the two dreams, my aunt was real and in existence, and her worries were probable, and likely. But my bride… where was she? Was she real? And why was I giving her a ring in such a formal pose? The second dream was very beautiful, but it was unfounded as far as I could see.

“Reality” struck me in my pain and isolation. But at the same time I realised that I was strong, and powerful, just being alone. There was no judge of me, there was nothing which I should compare myself to. It is said that nothing exists in isolation. But it was fact that I did. Was I exceptional? Not really. I didn’t really exist in isolation, I had connections to people, they appeared to me in my dreams and memories. They yearned for me to “come back”. I would go back to my dear angel of a woman, if only I knew how. I would return, if I knew where I currently was. I would see her, if I knew where she was… But there was no map. I was lost, beyond lost, I was lost, I didn’t know I was lost.

The night was a long night, and it brought more uneasiness, more fear, more anguish and more pain. What was this fear about? Some ridiculous thoughts that I had, regarded the truth in these dreams. I imagined my bride, and being with her, and I imagined that she was with me also, but I also questioned whether this was in fact just a fantasy of my own making. I had dreamed of her, and she had made me happy in my dream, but where was I for her? Was I in her dream, did she think of me, did she yearn for me as I did for her? And my aunt, I imagined that she loved me and wanted happiness for me and it felt good, but wasn’t this just fantasy? I also imagined her disapproval of my renegade journey, but wasn’t this just fantasy too. My bride in reality, did she dream of me the way I did of her? How could she? How foolish of me. Where is the connection? Physically speaking I was sleeping in a graveyard watching over the spirit of a dead man, or perhaps his spirit was watching over me, but there was no spirit, only the dead bones and the moist nightly earth which pressed down on them.

“My bride, my love, my angel”, I sighed and my heart sank. And I felt no hope. And she within me even more, lighting and dancing and smiling and posing for me. And how could she love me, I was a stone, a rock, my feelings were heavy and intense and clinging like a chain, and she was like a heavenly butterfly fluttering among the flowers. But then Persephony was the same butterfly to Hades. She was the light and I was the dark, and I gave her a diamond which was simultaneously shimmering both black and crystal clear white.

The clouds rolled in over the Moon and the night became even blacker and the atmosphere became heavy and threatened rain. It was now not a good time to be sleeping out in the open. I crept away, I went to the ruined walls, but I found that they were not adequate shelter from the storm. I imagined the future and I saw myself being washed out like a rat, into the river and flushed down into the sea, or washed up on some riverbank in brutal sunshine like a mangled piece of old cloth. Dead like a sack of straw all falling out all over the place. Dead and softened flesh, like a steak of meat malleted and softened by a chef, and ready to be placed on the flame grill.

I got up and I began walking down-wind from the storm. I walked and it followed. I feared and it followed, I gripped hold of my bride in my arms and it followed. I gave her the mystical diamond that broke the laws of physics, by being both clear black and crystal clear white, and the storm caught up on me and began hailing me with thunder and ice. And I began running, with my hand bleeding, and my mind bleeding and it raged behind me like a hungry animal.

And I saw a building, and I opened the door and I went in and it was a church, and it was totally dark, except for one candle close to the end of its tether, and I was welcomed into the church, and I found comfort. And I closed the door and it echoed inside, but the blast of wind was stilled, and in the church only the shadows of the trees being blown around made movements on the stained glass. I kneeled down and I prayed. Not so long ago I was kneeling in my dream, and here I was again kneeling before God.

Code of Laws 05

“What’s my fate, dear old man?” I asked, with a sort or revered affection, as if of a dear grandparent.

“Son,” now he became clear eyed and focused. “Boy, you have far too much of the force of destruction.” “You must learn, that Godliness is perfect equilibrium, the state of not wanting, of not craving change.”  He pronounced with trepidation.

“Will I ever be content? Will I ever find happiness?” I hazarded, as of a fortune teller, which is how I now saw the man.

“When you become old like me, my son, you’ll see the world differently.” This answer although undoubtedly wise, was not revelatory, it was simply stating the obvious. It didn’t give me anything new.

“I want to know God.” I now said earnestly, “Like you do. But, in this life I need to move forward. I can’t sit around praying all day. I need somewhere to go, I need to feel as if I’m moving somewhere, going up, ascending a mountain.”

“Or descending.” He cut in. “Yes, the forces of death and destruction are far stronger than that of life in your being.”

“What should I do then?” I began to feel frustrated.

“It’s not what you should do, but what you are destined to do. Everyone has a choice in this life.” He now began to speak in contradictions. “You will go through change and destruction will seem to surround you, but that’s just because destruction is part of your personality.”

“I want to be good, I want to make the righteous choice. I want to be godly and good, but I’m also afraid of suffering, I don’t want to suffer in life, and I want to feel like I’m going somewhere, like I’m achieving something, I’m afraid of being powerless and at the mercy of tyranny, whether it’s in the form of government people, agents of kings and emperors, or whether it’s in the form of bondage to my own family and blood.”

“You are reasonable son. But do you not realise that in your desperate desire not to be tyrannised by others you run the risk of becoming the tyrant and brutal enemy of others?”

“I don’t want power, I just want my freedom.” I tried to be reasonable.

I received a sullen look now from my dear old grandparent. I felt as if I had said something incredibly selfish and or stupid at the same time.  Stupid yes. Freedom is a concept which means not being in a state of incarceration. And it was unreasonable of me, completely arrogant, for here I stood, a free man, able to choose my course, go wherever I wanted whenever I wanted, without having to ask permission of anyone, and yet I still demanded more of that same freedom.

“Freedom’s not enough, my dear friend.” I began to confess. “I can go anywhere I want, and I can see anyone I like, I can choose whichever path I want, but I am unhappy. I choose difficult paths, and I don’t know… why.” “It’s not freedom I really want. I don’t want to be God, it’s lonely.”

“You have chosen right so far son. It has brought you this far. It has opened up certain faculties of seeing, yet you still do not see the ultimate purpose. I can see that you have a noble soul and that you are just. You, though and your life is accountable, despite choosing freedom, in fact especially for choosing freedom.” “And even though your soul is noble and good, there is a terrible lack, a dreadful hole of fear and death, just like in all. You must keep your life simple, you must fill your life with the words of  God, accept what is given to you by him and not crave more, for in craving more, power or freedom, this is where you go wrong son.”

“I do not want to be a priest or a monk.” I responded with certain distaste. I want to live, I cannot remain indoors, closed up, nor can I tolerate being good and just while all others around me mock me and jeer, as they naturally do with holy men.

“I want God, and I want salvation, but I don’t want to be a human sacrifice, because my faith isn’t that strong. I can see all around me that the majority do not act according to the law. As I said, I want to be righteous and good, I want to be just and to hurt no-one, yet I also want happiness in life.”

“Honour the law.”

Those were the last words that Marfic said to me. I had become tired and felt that I had got nowhere with him. I said that I was tired, and thanked him for water and food, and then I said goodbye and left. He nodded at each thing that I said but said nothing.

I was now off the mountain, out of desolation and approaching a small lake. My mind was no longer in turmoil. I walked along a rocky road and there was peace in the evening, and as I came to the verge of a hill, I saw the lake for the first time, and it was beautiful. It glistened in perfect stillness from a distance. The wind blew up its moisture and freshness into my face, and the feelings which stirred within me were of freshness and cleanliness and of a vigour, because it was strong.

On my way down into the valley where the lake was, I met a new person. The man recognised me and introduced himself as Alan. His voice was loud and had a particular crackling aggression in it, a voice with wisdom, but one with bearing in it, as if it was directed and pointed like the voice of a great teacher. I stopped by to listen and he started asking me questions.

I didn’t really wish to talk for long, I wished to continue to meet my fate. I was impatient for it, I was impatient to find her. Alan, this bearded and smart man with bearing but also with great curtsey and respect, asked me what my hurry was. I told him straight out, I had met someone, and I had to find this person again. He smiled knowingly. He then proceeded to tell me a long story, which I listened to reluctantly.

I said that I had to be leaving, and as I was leaving he jabbed at me with his final judgement,

“She will find you, and you will have the greatest happiness when she does”.

“She will find me?” I thought, then I thought again. Yes, Alan had a point, the odds of me finding her were remote. I decided to go back after five paces.

“What more can you tell me? I wish to become wise like you are. You can see that I am just a hopeless fool chasing after something that might not exist.”

“Dear boy, you and everyone in this world are a divine spark of creation. We are all expressions of God.”

I was unimpressed. “Well, this is all very well, but I want her, I want her and no-one else. And knowing that God is part of everything gives me no comfort at all.” I began to feel despair and sadness. This experience was one of loss and sorrow. I told him this. I explained my impending sadness. It was like a descending cloud on me. But he stopped it, and he stopped me.

“You need to make the wish. Only by making the wish will you realise it, will you make it come true. But you don’t have to make it come true, it will come true. All wishes come true.”

When I finally left, I wondered slowly. I have to make the wish. What do I wish for? I ought not to wish for impossibilities. I was unattached to most things in life. But to this woman, to this girl, her face and her being was something that I couldn’t let go of, and it was causing me the greatest grief and misery. Of course, I wished for her. I’d not let go of her. But this drove me into further misery, and I reached the town by the lake, and I found my destination and I stayed a while. I meditated by the lake, I swam in it and I went fishing. I caught fish and I gutted them and cooked them on an open fire which I also created. It was an easy life, free from worries. But every waking moment was a moment in which she was present. I could not for the life of me let go. And it caused suffering. I suffered day and night, and nothing would take my mind away, not even the pain of day-to day life, the pain of cutting myself with a razor knife. I wouldn’t sleep in the night and in the day I became miserable and brooding and sloppy with looking after myself.

The day that I cut myself was the day in which my dream of freedom was over. I met no other helpful strangers, and since I couldn’t look after myself I was in need, in desperate need of some human help. I was no longer able to find food like mana from heaven, which I used to be able to do with ease. I was no longer able to speak to strangers with happiness and get good things from them out of their altruism. People saw me for what I was, a fallen angel, a man with passion and immorality and lust, and after some time anger, and sorrow and eventually melancholy which etched itself into my heart like a creature.

“She will find me,” I thought.

On my final day of my freedom, I saw one of those special events in nature which you are supposed to wish on. I decided to wish on a star, falling from heaven. I wished to find the greatest happiness, and to be able to share it and not be alone. I didn’t wish for the particular person that I was grieving over to return to me, something in me had given that up. After some time I decided that she was in fact more fantasy and less reality. Instead I changed what I desired. I desired not to desire, but to just want what would come to me. I changed my entire outlook. This is not to say that I hadn’t searched. I had returned to the mountain. I had searched for her there and I had found nothing. I had found the cave, but there was nothing there. I had found the old house with the woman and the children but they were gone, and the house was ruined. I had found Marfic and his field, but he was now buried within it. He was dead.

Conversations in Zen

15032011

A: Do not renounce anything, do not accept anything. What is built upwards is also built downwards.

B: I feel doubt, and I feel loss, and I feel terrible despair.

A: Clinging, or trying to capture and keep things is the source of suffering. This is why the rich man cannot get into heaven, because he is attached to the things and people of the world.

B: How is it possible to walk on water?

A: When one is lighter than water, when one is not weighed down by any attachment.

B: But it is impossible to live without being attached to anything. Should I chose to be homeless, and destitute and without family, work, or friends? Should I chose to starve and burn in the midday Sun? I love comfort. I love people, and I love my shelter and food served every day. I love my job, and I love being loved. I am attached to people, I have desire and need and want, and I can’t renounce, and I can’t let go, and I love and I crave, and I am a storm of desires.

A: Nothing is built up, without being built down also. You must accept that the castles you build in the sand, will be flattened with the tide.

B: But I shall build it out of cement and I’ll build it on a rock.

A: It will last longer, but it will still be eroded and destroyed, and the stronger you build it, the greater will be the destruction of it.

B: I will build my castle magnificent, and its destruction, I will accept and take pleasure in.

A: You will take pride in the creation, because it will cost you your life and blood and bones. And when its destruction comes, you will be desolate.

B: Be it so, I shall be proud and pleased with what I build in this life. And it shall last me until death, and it shall be good, and solid and strong. And I shall suffer to build it and test it and keep it, but it shall be good and it shall be with me, and I’ll not lose it.

A: This is a noble goal. And it shall be your eternal happiness and grief at the same time.

B: I shall build it, because I must, because I desire it.

A: This is admirable.

B: I am unhappy.

A: Why?

B: Because my dream, is still just a dream it is not real, it is a fantasy in the air. I cannot touch it, I cannot feel it, I have no satisfaction from it.

A: What have you got right now? What have you built up to now?

B: I have modest achievements, but in reality it is nothing. It’s not enough, I am a hollow cavern with nothing but all-consuming desire, and I crave my future, now.

A: When your future comes, you shall still feel you have nothing, and that all you have it rot and that you still crave to improve your castle and your dream will always try to reach out into the future.

B: I shall never be content. I am doomed by my desire. I am doomed to suffer eternally for my dissatisfaction.

A: Everything that you want you already have. Everything that you love and desire are in existence and present. You just do not know them properly, you do not know their properties and true value.

B: But, I love… C.

A: And C loves you equally, and with the same force that you love.

B: How can you be so sure?

A: The building loves the earth it stands on, and the earth draws the building towards it. Gravity is the attraction of two masses towards each other.

B: I am still unhappy.

A: You will be loved in exact proportion to your love.

B: But even if I were loved by C, it would still not be enough would it…?

A: Perhaps you are not born to be satisfied.

B: Perhaps it is my destiny…

A: But all are capable of being aware of truth. All are capable of being revealed the real nature of life. Those who have great desire and great suffering, and don’t know, are no different to those that have little suffering and little desire but do not realise the truth.

B: So just by understanding that all things are ephemeral and are in perfect balance and harmony, I somehow am better?

A: You will never cease to suffer and to desire. But in understanding you may be able to achieve harmony.

B: Harmony then. A balance between up and down?

A: Build your castle in the East of the land, and you will be balanced by a castle in the west.

B: But I thought that the balance was “creation and destruction”?

A: You are the East. And you will be balanced by West, and you may love West, and marry West, or you may hate West and go to war with West.

B: But should I not suffer then?

A: Only if you chose to.

B: No, I chose to build and I chose the path of peace.

A: But you must prepare for war, because if you are peaceful, West will be aggressive and angry with you for it.

B: This is not fair. I chose the path of peace, and I chose equability.

A: Then you shall be balanced by fire and in-equability. Your order will be balanced by its equivalent and you will have to continuously fight in order to maintain it.

B: I wish for contentment and peace. I wish for security and happiness. But I also wish for excitement and fun, I wish for change and movement and dynamism. I wish to have my desires, but I wish also to be happy and content with those desires when they are fulfilled.

A: Your wish is already granted.

B: I am eager and impatient to have my wish.

A: Your wish is in existence already, all you had to do is to imagine it and conjure it, and it will materialise.

B: I wish also that I will one day realise that everything I ever wanted I got. I wish my life to be like the sweet smell, touch and glow of a ripe peach in the autumn Sun, I wish for it to be golden-red and deliciously sweet, dripping with sweet juice. I wish it to be a shared experience.

Snake: Your wish is already true.

Adam: I love God, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t have money does it?

A: Yes, this is the truth of the path. However, there will be no peaches on your tree come winter.

B: But, there is a different beauty in winter, there are different shades of colour and different pleasures.

A: The path is narrow dear student.

B: Yes, sometimes I forget all about the balance…

 

Desert Walls pt. IV

Alone in this place again,

I am left alone.

There is no redemption here.

There is a parched, dusty earth, not sand.

The ground is covered with bushes and thickets,

Thick with spines, and trees with no leaves.

 

The day rises slowly with the Sun, but no warmth,

Is here, not like a desert,

Cool air breezes in from a

Cold angry ocean.

Yet the coolness is fine,

And the Sun is obscured,

And the day is dark

And the sky is like a twilight

All though the day,

And into the night, clarity,

The clouds dissipate and reveal,

And then obscure,

Nightly skies.

 

Time. It stands still in this place,

The clouds speed overhead, and the

Stars gently drift,

As if they were made of water,

Spilling out, over a giant table called sky.

 

Time does not molest or harass here

In this place. There is nothing to stop it,

Nothing to check it.

It ebbs out, uncontrollably,

And unfurls

Like gravity, in space,

With nothing to stop it.

 

The sadness,

That was mine, has brought be here again.

But the desolation of this place, and the cool clear air,

And the crisp twilight of neither light nor dark,

Has eased that pain and has wiped clean those

Thoughts of darkness, thoughts like fire and heat,

Thoughts of hell which my mind thunders,

Are not present in this place.

 

And here I am again,

In the walls of my heart,

Ruined walls,

Which  protect nothing,

But give the illusion of protection.

But here I am again in the quiet solitude,

And there is no one,

And there are no animals either,

Just the cool, clear, dry air,

And the sound of the celestial sphere.

 

And I sink,

I sink against the wall,

Into the dusty place,

Where I sit,

Where I lie.

I am not one to die.

For I know that this place is

A fine refuge.

 

And no one will come,

Until the end of time,

But since time is limitless here,

That day is soon.

Yet, under a a gentle moon,

I am content.

 

I will resist,

Temptation in this place,

I’ll not be brought away from these walls

Into thunder, into violence, into lust.

So long as you are out there,

So long as you are walking,

So long as your eyes,

Are watching the same glistening skies.

I’ll resist and I’ll wait here.

 

And when you find your way,

And when you reach these walls,

I may be long dead.

But you must revive me.

 

And as I look up and I pray to God,

I open my hand, and the close them together,

And I breathe deeply.

And throughout my prayer,

You walk in the midst of it,

And your spirit walks within it.

 

And God hears it.

To be alone is not a sin.

It is inevitable, and necessary,

And it is right.

 

And your path may be made easy,

Or it may be made hard,

But you will find your path,

And you will find me.

 

And though I may thunder into anger,

And fury and my anger like fire, like oppressive

Clouds of misery, dense hot, yet with rain,

Without release.

And although my anger fires up like,

Like the snake, like the scorpion,

Like a thousand buzzing, biting insects,

Furious for blood.

I do not.

 

I do not, and I will not act in violence,

And I will not shout into the void,

And I will not demonstrate my power,

And I’ll not punish the Earth with my fury,

And I’ll not destroy.

And the peace comes over me,

As the tempest reaches its peak.

 

And for every arrogant thought,

And proud and selfish longing,

For every cruel and angry thought,

There comes first sadness,

And then breakage,

Breaking of the walls,

Crushing and destruction of those

Walls, out in the desert,

No water abounds,

But it is there beneath the ground.

 

And once in a while,

It comes down,

And the clouds break,

With torrid feeling,

And they release.

And great joy rises,

From around these walls.

 

These walls are here, still,

I said until the end of the age.

Perhaps this day may come.

When this day comes,

So shall you come also.

 

And although I am impatient sometimes,

And through that impatience, broods storms,

And Thunder.

I will await this time.

I will wait until you have found the path,

I will wait until you are inside these walls.

And I’ll not say a word,

And my anger will roil and torment,

As the stormy weather above,

Full of deep boiling heat.

But I’ll wait until you are here,

And I’ll not shout into the void until you are.

And I’ll not punish the Earth, with my violence,

And I will not leave these walls,

Until you are.

And I’ll not say a word,

Until you’re here.

Until you face me and see me,

And until your love,

Like fire,

Like flames,

Destroys these walls for good,

On the final day.

 

And when you are here,

When your love is like sticky mist

All around, and when you have found,

Your path.

And when you are here,

And the only sound,

Is a luscious silence between us.

 

Not until that day,

Will I say, a single word.

And you will walk in through

These walls.