Where Seas and Fables Meet (14 page)

Imagine. You've arrived in the garden of delight. This time you see it. You know where you are. It took a long time to get to this recognition but now you're here.

At the top of purgatory you emerged from the path that winds its way around the mountain. You did this, invisible guides whispering encouragements in your ear along the way; they kept you company. You see the garden and breathe in its sweet scents. After the long climb you feel serene. The pleasures of the roses and the trees and the streams and the breeze permeate your senses.

At the apex the stars sound. The stellar lyric plays. You hear the music of the spheres. The trees are lined in groves beside a stream. They sway in the breeze. You see there isn't one tree now: there are many. All around you red and white roses unfold, growing more quickly than your eye can follow, in the warm light.

You've arrived, after much. You feel the welcome in the garden and stream, in the music, the rhythm of the trees, the unfurling flowers, and in the welcome that was meant for you and for every traveller.

You imagine others will arrive. Some struggle up from the mountain path. Some are coming down from the sky. All will soon rendezvous. The message has been falling from between the stars for longer than anyone knew: your exile is over. The garden is yours.

But of course you didn't know this, and it will take a long time to learn how to live here.

When I was young – an iconoclast and an attacker – I wanted to tear words apart.

Criticism, I thought, was the highest state. To critique meant to stand outside. Over time I learned there is only deepest immersion: sensitivity and engulfment. I came back to the words I'd dismissed.

The old wisdom reached me. It was a voice that had been hard to hear. The voice said: “Nature will guide you, and now super-Nature (technology is a landscape, too). Follow and listen to the pathways of the soul. Experience has altered you forever. Study the words, on the page, on the wall. Read patiently so you see a great deal.”

The words speak on. Mysteriously they have a renewed life. Understanding comes in moments. The moments stitched together make a pattern. In the second-hand bookstores and shrinking libraries of the communicating globe, the words wait for you. They've always waited for you.

I'm learning how to be grateful to receive them and how to move from repudiation and critique to creation and wonder.

For María Auxiliadora Sánchez Ledesma Aquí allá ahora y siempre

B.W. Powe is a philosopher, poet, novelist, and essayist. He teaches in the Department of English at York University in Canada, and lectures at the University of Catalunya in Spain. He lives in a small town outside of Toronto, and in Barcelona and Córdoba.

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Legal Deposit – First Quarter

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2014950176 Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Powe, B. W. (Bruce W.), 1955-, author

Where seas and fables meet : parables, aphorisms, fragments, thought

[electronic resource]/ B.W. Powe. – 1st edition.

(Essential prose series ; 111)

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-55071-942-0 (pbk.).– ISBN 978-1-55071-943-7 (epub). – ISBN 978-1-55071-944-4 (mobi)

I. Title. II. Series: Essential prose series ; 111 PS8581.O879W44 2015 C813'.54 C2014-906216-8

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