Where Seas and Fables Meet (2 page)

You want to jumpstart vision. You want to take the nerve- edge of solitude, the keen point of loneliness, and make it so sharp that it cuts away the veils, and leads you on into the greater teeming world-soul. Only by mutation, a break, can you hope to swerve out from under the traps you've made for yourself.

You want to look back on loneliness like a voyager gazing over your shoulder at the departure point from the sea that has now become your destination. It's important to get lost in the wilds once in awhile.

Murmur this, to yourself and your friends: don't confuse us with the facts. The light is on, experience is shimmered with light, all things are: candour is more important than facts.

He'd spent so long deep in the forest that, when he at last came to the clearing, he didn't recognize it. He stood for an hour in that place.

Days went by. He ate berries and drank water from a stream. He slept under leaves. Eventually he stayed so long in the clearing that he saw it begin to be over-run by bushes and grass and weeds and leafy trees.

Over time it began to resemble the forest.

He thought he recognized it now: it was the familiar woods. He set off again in search of a clearing.

To the Jungians: I'm not an archetype. All my dreams are on the surface.

To the Freudians: I'm more than my drives.

To the agnostics: I'm too sceptical to be an atheist.

To the theosophists: I may not be the reincarnation of anyone.

To the Manicheans: I'm not a person of an either/or.

To conspiracy buffs (a): sometimes a coffee at Starbuck's is just a coffee.

To conspiracy buffs (b): we can have coffee here today (Friday); no one is following us. Conspiratorial gatherings take place only on Tuesdays.

To the modern Narcissus: beware of falling too much in love with this current version of yourself, because you will surely change.

To the literalists: the book and the printed word are artefacts – part of our communications' spectrum.

To theologians: the spiritual imagination, like the poetic imagination, must submit to natural law.

To scientists: natural law has a limit, and that is the infinite imagination.

To ourselves: the law of complementarity – the law in quantum mechanics that states there's a yin and yang in all processes – implies we must stake our journeys between the twin poles of the imagination and natural law. The breach between imagination and natural law is false: each depends on the other and is the other's boundary.

“The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality.” – Samuel Johnson

The use of the imagination is to deregulate reality by mental travelling.

To the yogis: if I only focused on the here and now, then I'd have nothing to look forward to.

To the aesthete: he accessed splendour through the beauty of his sentences. Every day he strove to make a beautiful sentence. Just one would do. He guessed that, when he succeeded in making a beautiful sentence, he'd added something new to the world.

To mystics:

Once there was a girl who liked to sit outside her home talking to the air.

This took place in the south of France in 1885. Her name was Grace. She lived in a small town with her family, and she loved to sit on the front porch of her home in good weather and smile and talk to the air and say: “All is well.” People passed by and asked her: “Who are you talking to?” Grace smiled and replied: “Mary. All is well.”

Her parents loved her deeply. At first they smiled at what seemed like a harmless eccentricity. But when it became obvious that their daughter wasn't doing much but talk to the air they became concerned. She was their only child. Their concern was restrained by the fact that she helped around the house, cooking and cleaning, tidying up, washing clothes, preparing meals. She did this with a smile and the words: “All is well.” They had to admit that her conversation was limited. But they loved her presence. They smiled when she helped them. But when she wasn't helping she sat on her wooden chair on the porch, or on a chair just inside the front door by the front room window when the weather was bad, and talked to what seemed like nothing.

Grace seemed happy when she talked to the air. She returned to her work around the house with a smile. Her parents began to wonder if she was an idiot. Problems like this didn't run in their family, but her behaviour could have been the start of a fault-line. Their concern turned to fear. What if she was crazy?

One day her worried parents took Grace to their parish priest. The town had a fine old church. It had many statues of saints. The dominant one among many was one of Mary. She looked on people with her compassionate glance. At her feet people left flowers and gifts in baskets.

When Grace saw the statue, she said: “Ah.” And she smiled. It was a form of recognition. And the girl whispered a prayer. Her mother and father told the priest about their daughter's behaviour. He was an old man, thought by many in the town to be wise, but whose primary qualities were patience and kindliness. He was gentle with the girl. He sat her down in the rectory office and asked her questions.

“Who do you speak to when you're sitting on your porch?” he asked.

“Mary.”

“Does she look like our statue?”

“Yes. Only more so. She's all in white. And she shines.” “Does she have a scent?”

“A what?”

“A smell.”

“Yes. Of flowers. I don't know what kind. She smells very sweet.”

“What does she say?”

“She tells me of the world and its pain. She tells me about people. And she talks about God and about the saints. Sometimes she mentions angels. She says: ‘All is well... all will be well... all things will be well... all is well...'” “Does she tell you to go against your family?”

“Never.”

“Does she ever tell you to preach against the church?”

“Never.”

“Does she tell you to break the law?”

“Never.”

“Does she tell you to do anything you desire?”

“Never.”

“Does she tell you to make the weak and the poor of heart serve the strong?”

“Never.”

“Does she tell you to be afraid?”

“She tells me to be brave.”

The old priest nodded. He patted her head affectionately and told her to return to her home. Spontaneously he asked for a blessing. She blessed him and asked him for his blessing, too. This he did. Afterwards he felt very happy. The priest talked to her parents. He said: “All is well. She talks to Mary. There's nothing to worry about.”

And he smiled.

“Please bring her to church more often,” he said.

Now her parents were even more alarmed.

Their daughter must be delusional – deeply sick. And the old priest couldn't help them. (At least he could have performed an exorcism, or something suitably dramatic, to return Grace to a semblance of normalcy.) Maybe the priest was too old. Had he gone soft in the brain? They had to find medical help.

So they went to the psychiatrist who had begun to practice at the hospital. He was a representative of a new and growing field: the science of the mind. A young man, brilliant and dedicated, he expressed his concern for the girl. He offered to meet her and to observe her.

The doctor met Grace at his office in the hospital in town over many weeks. They talked for an hour at a time. The doctor soon came to the house to study her closely. He saw her talking to the air, and took notes. He watched her help around the house, and he reflected. He consulted with his fellow psychiatrists. They listened, and took notes, too. They conferred with each other, and muttered about the strangeness of this case. The doctors began to trade opinions.

The psychiatrist spent months studying her. He liked the girl's innocence. But he became more and more concerned about her singular behaviour. She rarely varied her routine. And yet she seemed happy.

Finally, the doctor came to her parents to talk of his findings and recommendations. He said:

“After observation and investigation, I've come to the conclusion that Grace is schizophrenic. I'm sorry to say she's suffering from delusions. Her behaviour, alas, is not treatable by therapy or medication. She's convinced that her delusions are real. It's my belief that she will always be so entranced.”

“This is terrible,” her father said.

Her mother wept.

“Yes,” the young doctor said, solemnly and coolly. “It is.” “What do you recommend?” her mother asked.

“That she be committed to our asylum outside of town. She can do no harm there, either to herself or to others. We can continue to observe her behaviour. By studying her we may one day be able to help her.”

Her parents were sad, but they believed in medical science, and they wanted to help Grace. They loved her very much. They agreed with the doctor that this commitment to the asylum was for the best. They signed the papers and took her to the hospital for the insane. Sorrowful, they returned to their home. It was terribly quiet without her.

Grace went happily to the asylum.

Once she was there she began to help the other patients. She helped them by cleaning rooms and making meals, smiling and telling them: “All is well.” She found a bench outside the rooms, on the hospital grounds. In the good weather she'd sit and talk to the air.

In this way she grew to be a woman. She became a valued member of the hospital. The doctors and nurses commented on how she had the ability to lift people's moods. But the nurses and doctors also commented, with sadness in their voices, how she continued in her delusions. She was happy to confirm to anyone who asked that she was talking to Mary. Her schizophrenia, the doctors said, was permanent. Her parents slowly and stoically accepted this information. They visited her often. They did so even when they were becoming tired. Every time they came she said: “All shall be well.” They were grateful that there was some variation in her sayings. But soon they couldn't think of much to say, and their health began to fail.

The old priest died years after he'd talked to her. It's said that when the kindly old man passed on there was a scent of flowers in his room. His last words were: “All is well.” The psychiatrist became a well-respected physician who expanded on the theories of schizophrenia. He wrote learned papers and helped many people. He visited Grace

at the hospital, always finding their conversations, while simple, to be somehow enlivening. Over time the doctor came to value his time with her. He looked forward to the hour or two they spent together. While Grace remained delusional, he saw the beneficial effect she had on others. And so he didn't try to correct her symptoms. She was incurable, at any rate.

Grace grew old in the asylum. She never went outside the hospital grounds. When she died, her last words were: “All is well.” The doctors and patients and nurses and groundskeepers called her “Miss All is Well.” Some said this with affection, even respect. Others said it with derision. Still others just said it indifferently. Some said it with curiosity, wondering what it meant. The doctors thought of naming her favourite bench on the grounds after her. Other pressing matters took hold. Soon the idea was forgotten.

Grace passed into memory. The psychiatrist's files on her were placed in archives. He grew old, and found himself talking to her, at times, in his mind, when he needed cheering up.

The home where she had lived with her parents fell into disrepair after they died. It was soon razed to the ground to make way for new dwellings.

The moral of the story may be: be careful what you tell people.

The moral of the story may be: be careful who you talk to. The moral of the story may be: she passed on joy, in whatever form.

The moral of the story may be: all is well.

Heroes know where they're going. They carry certainty in the way they carry a sword or a gun. Heroes presume the blessing of God, the Gods, the Goddesses, or the Spirit. They'll found a city over the bones of their beloveds.

Pilgrims and knights never know exactly where they're going. They wear doubt as a shield against arriving too soon. Knights and pilgrims must learn to read the signs, pick up clues. They never found a city or a state, but they'll serve in one, if it's just. If it ceases to be just, they move on.

Heroes turn unjust if those around them no longer share in their certainty. Pilgrims and knights travel uncertain paths, heeding the call, in the way that they hear it. Heroes hack out paths, and sometimes become immune to any new call. They can become tragic.

Pilgrims and knights invariably end up being comic, or poignant, or both. (Think of Chaucer's Canterbury travellers, Don Quixote, Falstaff, the White Knight in Lewis Carroll's
Through the Looking-Glass
.) King Arthur returns to knighthood when he doubts Guinevere. Lancelot is never truly at home anywhere.

The problem with eternity is there's no end to it.

Minimalism is just too much.

Sincerity is the new irony.

Flaubert once said (somewhere) a writer should live like a bourgeois in order to write like a demon. Nowadays many writers live like demons in order to write like the bourgeois.

Travellers in the global theatre: they don't have accents. They just put them on whenever they think it's necessary.

She must have had narcolepsy. I know this because every time I asked her a question, she fell asleep.

Deep down, he was profoundly shallow.

The scent of an age: aroma wasn't built in a day.

The most serious story: imagine Don Quixote without Sancho Panza – visions unlimited. Imagine Sancho Panza without Don Quixote – parody unlimited.

“Everything I got for Christmas needs a battery.” – a 21
^st
- century child's remark

GPS: these days it's a luxury to get lost.

Animism: soul in the chicken soup.

Sterne should have been named Swift, and Swift – Sterne. Wilde should have had Whitman's name; and Whitman should have been called Wilde.

“It's not safe to ask this man a simple question.” – Groucho Marx

In an ecumenical family a grievance is dealt with in these ways:

the Christian forgives...

the Buddhist thanks you for the learning process...

the Muslim grants that all is God's will...

the Jew never forgets...

the agnostic says, it's okay, even if it isn't... the nihilist says, screw you...

the pluralist says, all of the above is true...