The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

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What if Jesus never knew, what if did not know Who or What He was, what if, even unto the last, dying, He did not know, but then, at the end, at the End, at the Last Breath, at the Darkness at Noon, a Bardo–A Passing—

Not to Hell, at least not yet—though is that not an interesting twist of the tale as well–Avalokiteshvara–but to—someplace else—something else—He became More, He became It, He became All, Word. Word and Spirit.

Christ in the Bardo. The Bardo of Christ. All. Of course. Trinity. Unity. Three in One. Not just the Universe. Not just Life. Something More. A benevolence. And Idea. A structure. A form. In the formless. A form in the formless, a geometry in a union field—the fabric of the field–what can it do–wave—undulate–compress–expand–rise–fall–yearn–pull back–pull forward—so much–there was so much more—there was so much more–so much more then he ever imagined–so much of his life–suffering–being–smaller than he was—who had told him he was small–who had told him he had to be—no he was not small he was not small at all he was as large as the sky as numerous as the stars in the sky–I will make you–I will make you as numerous as the stars—so big–so big—he could feel his heart beating beating and exploding and ending and stopping–endless fireworks—explosions–crashes of light—explosions of light–where—where—pursue it—light—he rising a lightbeam—quasar—everything he had ever seen–buildings rising–wood—trees—wind—water—his mother—his father—his brothers—her, beautiful her, all that he would have done with her—he was the life he would have had—and the cold—and the dark—the void—and the suffering—a fallen bird—burying his dog—

And there it is—the Harrowing—who had he had seen die? What beloved uncle—beloved aunt—who had he failed to heal—perhaps it was his father—Joseph’s brother–what as his name? Michael? Died of a terrible wound in his stomach—some thing that could not be understood—

Two thousand years. Read the book.

The feature of the heart–the inescapable feature of the heart that was known to our Ancient Precursors–known before we were even human–is that we can place our hand against it, and it feel it beating—

We do not know where it came from, or why it beats–but we know that for all those who live, it beats, and for all those who do not, it does not–

We know that when we fear, it beats faster–we know that when we calm, it beats slower.

Our hand against it, our hand against ourselves, and under that hand, warm to the touch, a drum we did not put there.

If I fix you, will you hate me–

Phoebe.

I think of the inmates, too insane to kill, who, are made sane, and then, permitted to be executed. Isn’t that life?

It is the fourth anniversary of my father’s death. My mother wanted us to be together, but we weren’t–we went to Lancaster, recreating to some degree a trip we took back then–early after the diagnosis–we went to a farm, verdant view, we didn’t know the name at the time, I played catch with a rock with a border collie–Margaux had stayed there when she was a child–the owner of the farm, a woman Margaux’s age, said maybe they had played together–goats climbed on Margaux’s back–

Four years later. My father is gone. My son is here. Three and and a quarter. Cute as a button. Do the math. My consolation prize. My wergild from the universe. No one deserves to be this lucky. 

At the end, we took him and my nieces to a place called Tiny town, an indoor miniature play-city for children in Lancaster–small castle, garage, post office, hospital, market, etc., etc., costumes, props, etc.–I watched from the sidelines, with the other parents, alternating between watching our children and looking at our phones–phones, a new phenomenon–the black mirror, the dancing narcissus–

And I thought–I thought–is it possible–is it possible–is it possible that my father watches me, going through this world, even as I watch my son, even as I see him pause, lost, alone, looking for me, until his eyes land on mine, and he smiles, safe, loved, watched–

My heart wrenches at the idea of it–to be able to watch, forever, or for the rest of my life–watch but never speak–watch, but not be seen–it breaks my heart, I don’t know why–perhaps because I don’t believe it, I never have, the very idea of it–so tragic—

And you realize–I realize as I type it–if I were a ghost, if he was a ghost–we would not persist forever–we would not want to–we would just want to haunt our wife, our children–and would leave when they did–standing vigil, till the last of our children passes too–and then we would pass–then we would resolve–like morning dew, dissolving in the light of the morning sun—

A YouTube video, of a fish drowning in dry air, while a children’s song sung by a computer plays in the background.

What world is this?

Alone last night, in the den of my home, a converted bank barn from the 18th or 19th century, depending on which story you believe, I returned again to that Old Subject, the Death of the Soul, and thought of how its sting seemed not as deep, a surprise, to say the least, nearly three years after the death of my father and two years after the birth of my first and only child.

So I did the old trick, and thought, not about how I feel right now, but about how I will feel, when its happening, when I’m going, which is a euphemism, try again, when I’m ending, and I identified the emotion I will feel–sadness, a deep sadness at this, at not being with the ones I love anymore, and in it, in that feeling, I felt that this was an infinite sadness, a sadness that could not stop growing, a sadness that grew more sad the more one looked at it, a sadness so deep and profound that it becomes almost necessary to look away, but if you steel yourself, if you don’t—well then it grow and grows and grows and pushes everything else out of your mind and it is so deep and so real and so painful–

It seems like it would be enough to drive you mad, but it did not drive me mad, it just filled with me such deep and mourning grief–it felt like a dark ocean, cold, with me in it, floating on it, not drowning yet, but no land in sight, alone with my entire life, everyone and everything I love, and feeling pain and loss at losing every little thing, but most of all, the people–

I can understand why I would avoid that–

I think I avoided that even while I grappled with it, all those years ago–as if I was alone on some desert island, looking out at the dark ocean, but not in it–

Something on Social Media, posted by some water sign, a snippet of which I remember enough to ask the Digital Shaman–

It goes like this:

remember that you are water. cry. cleanse. flow.

The other elements have theirs as well:

Remember that you are Fire. Burn. Tame. Adapt. Ignite.
Remember that you are Air. Observe. Breath. Focus. Decide.
Remember that you are Earth. Ground. Give. Build, Heal.
Remember that you are Spirit. Connect. Listen. Know. Be still.

Other quotes about water, less trite:

Allons! we must not stop here, However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here, However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here, However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while. – Leaves of Grass, Book VII, 9

‘All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.’- Toni Morrison.

‘Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.’- A.A. Milne.

‘The deep waters of time will flow over us: only a few men of genius will lift a head above the surface, and though doomed eventually to pass into the same silence, will fight against oblivion and for a long time hold their own.’- Seneca the Younger.

‘The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book- a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice.’- Mark Twain.

‘When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come.’- Leonardo da Vinci.

‘They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.’- Hermann Hesse.

‘Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.’- Wallace Stevens.

‘I find myself at the extremity of a long beach. How gladly does the spirit leap forth, and suddenly enlarge its sense of being to the full extent of the broad, blue, sunny deep! A greeting and a homage to the Sea! I descend over its margin, and dip my hand into the wave that meets me, and bathe my brow. That far-resounding roar is the Ocean’s voice of welcome. His salt breath brings a blessing along with it.’- Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The story is an old one. Motherless daughter. From riches to rags. The precarity of position, especially on women. Did Cinderella have a daughter? Did her father die too? Was she orphaned?

Covered in cinders, because she was poor, forced to scrub the fires pits, and to sit close on, because of the cold and meanness of her basement quarters.

Hopeless, hopeless, and lonely. A mother, dead, a dead mother, whom she can barely remember. Protected. Meant to be protected. But not. Adrift. Without parents, she is overlooked by parents of others, seeking to advance the position of other children.

Who was the step-mother? With two daughters. Adrift. Alone. Set out in the world. Clinging for hope. Clinging, clinging, clinging for hope. An orphan too? How much similarity was there between Ella and Stepmother? And yet–strained–divided, across the difference in position.

And the cinders, the ashes, the ragged dress Ella wore–was that not the Stepmother’s Charity, the softness in the Stepmother’s heart–that kept Ella close, that did not turn her out, to starvation, or ruination–

The trauma–the trauma of loneliness–of true and terrible loneliness–the mind bends–the mind breaks–everything she didn’t have–splits, forms, resolving into a Spectre from the Unseen–A Fae–Oh, Fae, Oh, Goodmother–hear this wish I wish tonight–

Dreams. Dreams and transformations. The masquerade. The seduction. The Prince. A Truth Universally Acknowledged. In Possession of. In want of. Coming down the stairs. Brushing back her yellow hair.

El. Ella. Ella.

I think of my son, Prince Phillip. I think of being there for him, my wife and I. I think of what might happen if we were to be gone–

I think of the man he will one day be, of the women he will one day meet–will he be ash-covered? Will he fall in love with the ash-covered? Will he love the orphan? See past the rough–

What will the world be, for him?

Same, same, same, same as it ever was, same as it ever will, ever, ever, ever, on and ever, ever, ever after.

I am a child. Our family has driven out to the Brandywine River, to see the museum and the battlefield. It is a warm spring or summer day. Blue skies. We are at the park, having a picnic, my father and mother and my sister, maybe (probably) my baby brother, and my sister and I gambol down a hill, out of eyesight of Watchful Ma. We are playing under the trees. Ten minutes, maybe, pass.

My mother’s voice, screaming for us. Fear. The scream is not a holler or a yell–no, it is a scream–a siren–high-pitched but full in its strength–there is no weakness in the scream, though reflection suggests the scream of course comes from a type of weakness–no, the scream is panic, but determination, will–iron, strong, will–thwarted, frustrated, but not for long–no not for long–

“I thought I lost you,” she says, unreasonably, or something like that. Something like that. My father behind. Our eyes are on Mom. “Don’t wander off,” she says, or “Don’t you wander off,” or “I can’t believe you did that to me–“, or something like that.

“We were right here,” I say, or “We didn’t,” I say, or something like that.

The end of the scream–the relief in her of finding us–of finding us alive, not murdered, in a box, or something like that, some horrible news-story she saw on television or read in a magazine–it is primal, a primal release of energy, all the power and fear and terror and planning exploding, burning, raging, I imagine it subsiding, quickly, back to quiet, back to a stillness–as quickly as the storm came, out it went–

Thirty years later, at my desk, in my house, almost 40, a father, my own father dead now for almost two years, two strange years in which our entire world has been locked up and locked away because of the failure to stop a novel coronavirus from preying on the entire species–I cannot see this memory, not really–I cannot see my sister–I can see the shape of my mother maybe, I can see the blanket we spread out on the grass, under the trees, for the picnic–I can see the hill my sister and I went down, the trees scattered on it, the shadow and light–

It was beautiful, I should say. A beautiful landscape, a beautiful place, a beautiful day. My mother’s scream was not a part of that beauty, and, certainly, for a moment, shoved it aside, but just as it went, the beauty returned, the breeze in the warmth, the sun, the grass, the trees–I remember that–

I remember even then concluding that my mother had overreacted–that perhaps the fear of losing a child was understandable, to a child, even if, of course, I knew where we were, that my mother had bene quick to panic, quick to let the fear not only take hold, but drive out anything else–

I was too young to finish the thought, or even hold the thought–the scream was a sharp and rough primer in empathy for my poor young mother, but I could not hold both the child’s criticism and the son’s understanding together in my head, and could not arrive at the gap, that which was missing—trust. Hope.

Though the power in the scream was a promise of the animal to do anything to find the cub–it was not surrender–quite the opposite–but it was not hope or trust, but anger and battle and fight–

I did know it was love, that the scream, the scream was love. A raging terrified hopeless love. My mother’s love.

Katabasis. The voyage to the Underworld. Inanna went, and Odysseus, and Aeneas too. Gilgamesh went the other way, to Dilmun and Utnapishtim, seeking Eden and eternal life. Demeter raged and wracked the world, seeking for her daughter. Orpheus went, trusting song to soften stone, to bend fate the way he bent his strings—Hercules went, of course, another labor, bringing back a three-headed dog—Jonah went, and Jesus too, in the belly of the beast the first, the second, to harrow hell and free the saints. Osiris went, murdered by his brother, avenged by young Horus, weakness, thy name is—not, Horus, not Isis—Hamlet’s Katabasis was shorter, a jaunt to England and then a hop into an open grave, to rummage Yorick and stare at skulls—aye, preamble to the Second Falling, Third, when they strutted stage and exeunt. Avalokitishvara went, and Odin, hanging on a tree—

I went. Like the Trojan Refugee, I went, and walked, carrying my father on his back, we walked together, me, walking, he on his back, me, holding him up, laying him down, laying him down, in his bed, in the gathering darkness, stuck in that house, never leaving, never leaving, days longer, 48 days, marking time. Marking time. Climbing the mountain. Descending the mountain. I said I will walk with you part of the way, my father, I will help you carry this thing, weighing you down, I will walk with you part of the way.

He and my mother and two lovers were the only ones who read my scroll, my journal, my diary. He called it luminous. Before memory, I am told, I searched for stairs, we had none in our house, I would crawl and go to stairs, and he would run behind me, to catch me if I slipped, he was behind me, I would not have seen him while I climbed.