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onceuponatime
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"A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.” -- Milan Kundera
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In the night a metal truck with jagged teeth crawled through the streets and bit out the foundations of the houses. It smashed in the windows and small wiry creatures dressed in black ran in to steal out the furniture and the photographs.
In the morning men in uniforms came and gagged the homeowners for disturbing the silence and they cordoned off the area with red and white tape. When a small boy ran over to ask what they were doing, they tied him up to a tree and blew up his house with dynamite.
An old lady wrapped in a shawl sat their in her rocking chair watching them all as she pushed herself back and forth with her foot. ‘I see them, I see us, I see what we are doing,’ she said, bleeding softly onto the ground. ‘I see our fear, our deep black panic; I see the fight we make to protect ourselves, but what I do not see is hope. Trust does not grow out from under the pavement in the same way as the dandelions.’
The graffiti came in the night, it crept over the broken walls and tiles and tunnels, it read, Where is the place that we can stand to build up and not break down? How can we be a part of the change when we’re still a part of the cause?
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Crossing lines I sat, and I said to him, it is like
the lines on her face are songlines but no one is reading the music. He looked over his newspaper, and he asked me,
but what is the liturgy of this space here anyway and where should it be written?
And the girl on the other side flipped her mirror and she said,
if everything is text then what is the texture of txt?
I think maybe,
she got her wires crossed, it’s the fault of the network -
but anyway,
besides, she said, continuing in her vein
all the sign-posts are pointing post-signs, but
if this is all words here, then did hope get buried under dictionaries? my house is built of encyclopedias, that may be true but the weight of the books can still crush a man, a woman, even a child
Look further down the track, the man replied, still perusing the news columns, there is the level crossing - they wouldn’t necessarily double-cross you but we may be star-crossed, who knows:
They say there is a microwave on the radio in the car on the road under the bridge over the river of sound in my ears beneath my hands in your hands,
and that somewhere in there is a subtle twist that underlines just how it’s all a giant card game and we’re all winners and losers and nothing really matters. Noughts and crosses, strike a line through and take it apart from the sidelines.
But I am just not so sure, she said, after a moment had passed
There is blood under the bridge, a child is drowning there and these words even stretched out will not make a lifeline.
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the story of the orb
As I was cycling down mill road yesterday, I saw some familiar figures. After a moment’s reflection, I realized that I was recognizing them from a time a few years back, when, as I'd been wandering along the same road, the whole street had been suddenly lit up by the appearance of a curious translucent orb which descended somewhere between the Al-Amin store and a particular lamppost. As it hovered there for a bit a fascinated group – including many of those I was seeing now - soon congregated round to speculate on what on earth it was doing there. When I passed by later, they were still there, having followed it a bit further down the road to a point just over the bridge – it was strange to see how they’d changed even since that morning; some of them had lit up and were glowing with a kind of faint orange colour, one woman was crying even as she was smiling. I asked them what they were going to do next. ‘We’ll probably stay with it for a while, follow it and see where it goes,’ an elderly gentleman told me. I thought this sounded like a very good idea. I went back some weeks later, and they were still there, with some new faces among them. I thought I could see the orb in the middle of the group, but as I got closer I saw with curiosity that it wasn’t in fact the original orb at all, but an almost exact copy, made of tin foil, chicken wire and silver-painted papier maché, suspended from the lamppost by fishing wire. I didn’t want to interrupt them, since they were so intent on watching it; but I nearly fell off my bike when ‘There – it moved!’ yelled a man I recognized, who worked at the post office. And indeed the object was swinging in the breeze. I left, somewhat perplexed as many of the group immediately threw themselves onto the pavement. I forgot about them for some time, until I passed that way again several years later, when there was not one but three separate groups each huddled around a model orb. All of the models looked almost exactly like the original, but each was slightly different. I wondered if any of them had managed to trap it and cover it up in their coloured papers and paints, or whether they were simply artist’s impressions. And then yesterday, when it happened that I came across the groups again, I was amazed to discover that the groups had split and grown again since before, and now there were seven separate factions. Some of the groups all dressed alike now; in one they all wore sashes of tin foil, in another most of them had lanterns balanced on their heads (this seemed to me quite impressive, although I could not work out the reason for it). In another they all hummed softly, and I thought that maybe I recognized the tune from the time I’d seen the orb so long ago. Every now and then one of the groups would build up chants insulting the other groups; I saw a lantern thrown and smashed and a crate of slightly soggy cabbages was distributed with some energy. And then I saw it. There was the glowing orb again in the street, spectacular and iridescent, slow moving and graceful. I knew they would all be delighted. ‘Look – there it is!’ I shouted, at the top of my voice, pointing into the sky. And at that moment pandemonium broke loose. All of the groups snapped at once from their positions and hurled vegetables and chicken wire balls and shoes at me and shouted that I was mad or lying or both. Somewhat terrified and quite astonished I fled at once, and somehow or another made it to the centre of town unscathed. They were still there when I came back, back in their normal positions, although I myself took the precaution of cunningly disguising myself in a sheet.
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the way of the pilgrim
I came back to that place three days later and he, the man Jethro, was still there – or had come back again, I don’t know which. As I sat down, he passed me some shortbread to share with him, and we sat there and watched the waves a while. After a bit, he pointed out a big house to me far to our right, on the cliff top, which was full of light and colour and music.
‘You know, I used to always want to be in there,’ he said quietly. ‘I used to sneak in the back door, pretend to be a Somebody. I’d convince them for a while - I can do a pretty good act,' he smiled, 'and they’d welcome me in, we'd drink champagne, swing in the hammocks.’
I watched the movements in and out of the house; it looked warm, inviting; I thought i'd like to wander up there.
‘But somehow,' he sighed, 'somehow they’d always discover, find out my real name, and turn me out again – I’d have to come back here.' There was a long pause, a deep and heavy silence. ‘This is my desert place, you know,’ he told me, ‘ – this bench. Here I’m always on the outside, I don’t belong - not anywhere.’ I nodded. I felt it; you could hear the noise, know you weren’t wanted there. ‘But one day,’ he continued, his voice distant, ‘one day I’d had enough. I couldn’t get back in no matter how hard I tried, I had nowhere else to go. It was night, I was tired, and I stayed; I just sat here. And the ocean,' he indicated the navy expanse spread out in front of us, lined with wild white surf, an alive thing, 'there it was like a great black pool, swallowing up everything inside itself. I wanted to run, to hammer on the door of the safe house to make them let me in, to conjure up images to hide it, to plug up the hole with some kind of chocolate-sweet relief… but for the first time I didn't run, i looked into it. And I waited.’ He paused again, and I tried to imagine the sea at night. It looked so calm now, but in the dead of night I could imagine that it could be frightening, isolating, horrific.
‘I felt abandoned,' he whispered, 'lost, nothing made sense. In the black pool I saw my aloneness, the meaninglessness of it all, my own fragility. I wanted to hide, to scream... but somehow I stayed. The people were gone; the lights in the house went out: there was just me and my mortality here, me and the night.
It was the longest night I have ever known; I thought it would never end. But there, in the morning, in the grey dawn with the sun rising white on the waters, there was the deepest stillness, the stillest silence… There was peace.’ ‘Isn’t it lonely, out here?’ I asked at last, slightly afraid of the answer.
He laughed again, as he always did, and waved up at the house again. ‘Do you really think they’re not lonely in there? We’re each of us alone, that’s the truth of it; and yet we’re all of us connected, more than ourselves, part of a bigger story being told… And look, here come my friends,’ he nodded towards a group, a rabble of oddballs, strolling towards his bench, chatting; they waved at him.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘Losers, weirdos, freaks…’
I blushed.
‘Like me,’ he said firmly. I couldn’t realize until I made this place my home, until I gave up knocking on that door up there. Oh, I can walk in there now; I have done. The walls don’t hold me out any more. But here is the place I want to be… you can learn to love the desert place, I think; to choose it. There’s terror in the beginning and darkness in the night but in the morning there is peace…’
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The wizened old man on the green bench sat there so long watching the sea I thought he might be asleep. And then at last he spoke. ‘It is complicated, turrible complicated,’ he said softly to the wind. ‘And at the same time turrible simple. If we was all to live as gardeners now… wherever we chose to be. And if we was say, to wander out there, looking for the good things… and where we was to find them, if we was to whisper real quiet now “grow little good thing, grow, grow…”’ And the man paused, and he looked back out to sea again, and he laughed, and he laughed and he laughed. | |
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I think prayer can be noisy, it can almost certainly involve words, it can be eloquent and it can feel like fighting. But by moments I wonder whether that thing that we're fighting, and pushing away; that frightening fear-and-shadow feeling that can make us fill spaces frantically with words and battle valiantly to push back the defence-line, could be the very thing to embrace in prayer. The simple act of climbing into the paradox, and sitting there in silence can wreck you, but I think that those moments could perhaps be more transformative than a torrent of a thousand words...
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