C. K. Williams, "The Tract"
1.
Where is it where is it where is it in what volume what text what treatise what tract
is that legend that tale that myth homily parable fable that's haunted me since I read it
I thought in Campbell but I can't find it or some scripture some Veda not there either
that holy history anyway from those years when I was trying to skull a way out of the flat
banal world which so oppressed me I'm sure because it contained me wherever it came from
it's haunted me haunted me lurking in everything I've thought or felt or had happen to me
2.
The protagonist's not anyone special just a man he's born grows marries has children
he's living his life like everyone else pleasure pain pleasure pain then one day a flood
a deluge roars through his valley sweeping all before it away his house his village the people
only he and his family are left clinging to a tree then his wife's torn from his arms
then his children too one by one then the tree is uprooted and he himself is boiled out
into the wild insatiable waves he cries out for his life goes under comes up sinks again
3.
and rises to the surface to find himself on an ocean a vast sea and looming far above him
is a god a god sleeping it's Vishnu if I remember Vishnu asleep swaying serenely like a lotus
and as the person gazes in awe the god wakes sees the man plucks him from the waves
and thrusts him into his mouth and there in that eternally empty darkness the man realizes
that oh all he'd lived the days hours years the emotions thoughts even his family oh
were illusion reality was this all along this the god huge as a storm cloud the horizonless sea
4.
Not only in depression does that tale still come back to attack me not only in sadness
am I infected by its annihilating predications though I've been sad enough often enough
mostly early on about love then political madness then work absurd writing a word
striking it out while all around you as the books of truth say is suffering and suffering
at first it would take me yes during desponds but even at moments of passion when everything
but what you want and the force of your want is obliterated except at mind's reaches
5.
where ancient mills keep heart and brain pumping and some blessed apparatus of emotion
and counteremotion keeps you from sobbing with the desolation that lurks in desire
a desolation I don't thank goodness feel anymore not during passion now does that story
secrete its acids through me but still it does take me I want to say when my vigilance flags
when I don't pay attention then the idea it postulates or the chilling suspicion it confirms
leaves me riven with anxiety for all that exists or has ever existed or seemed to
6.
Yet what is there in that no way plausible whatever it is that can still so afflict me
philosophically primitive spiritually having nothing to do with any tradition even the tragic
to which I feel linked if the wisdom it's meant to impart is that you can't countervail misery
with gratification or that to imagine life without suffering is to suffer I've learned that
and it doesn't make death more daunting I have death more or less in its place now
though the thought still sears of a consciousness not even one's own extinguished
7.
Not some mad mentalism then but something simpler yet more frightening about love
that the man has negated in him not only the world but his most precious sentiments
what's dire is that the story denies and so promulgates the notion that one can deny
the belief no the conviction that some experiences love most of all can must be exempted
from even the most cruelly persuasive skepticism and excluded even from implications
of one's own cosmology if they too radically rupture what links real lives one to another
8.
To release yourself from attachment and so from despair I suppose was the point of the text
and I suppose I was looking for it again to release me from it and if I haven't done that
at least I'm at the opposite where I'm hanging on for dear life not to a tree in a dream
but to the hope that someday I'll accept without qualm that the reality of others
the love of others the miracle of others all that which feels like enough is truly enough
no celestial sea no god in his barque of being just life just hanging on for dear life
Where is it where is it where is it in what volume what text what treatise what tract
is that legend that tale that myth homily parable fable that's haunted me since I read it
I thought in Campbell but I can't find it or some scripture some Veda not there either
that holy history anyway from those years when I was trying to skull a way out of the flat
banal world which so oppressed me I'm sure because it contained me wherever it came from
it's haunted me haunted me lurking in everything I've thought or felt or had happen to me
2.
The protagonist's not anyone special just a man he's born grows marries has children
he's living his life like everyone else pleasure pain pleasure pain then one day a flood
a deluge roars through his valley sweeping all before it away his house his village the people
only he and his family are left clinging to a tree then his wife's torn from his arms
then his children too one by one then the tree is uprooted and he himself is boiled out
into the wild insatiable waves he cries out for his life goes under comes up sinks again
3.
and rises to the surface to find himself on an ocean a vast sea and looming far above him
is a god a god sleeping it's Vishnu if I remember Vishnu asleep swaying serenely like a lotus
and as the person gazes in awe the god wakes sees the man plucks him from the waves
and thrusts him into his mouth and there in that eternally empty darkness the man realizes
that oh all he'd lived the days hours years the emotions thoughts even his family oh
were illusion reality was this all along this the god huge as a storm cloud the horizonless sea
4.
Not only in depression does that tale still come back to attack me not only in sadness
am I infected by its annihilating predications though I've been sad enough often enough
mostly early on about love then political madness then work absurd writing a word
striking it out while all around you as the books of truth say is suffering and suffering
at first it would take me yes during desponds but even at moments of passion when everything
but what you want and the force of your want is obliterated except at mind's reaches
5.
where ancient mills keep heart and brain pumping and some blessed apparatus of emotion
and counteremotion keeps you from sobbing with the desolation that lurks in desire
a desolation I don't thank goodness feel anymore not during passion now does that story
secrete its acids through me but still it does take me I want to say when my vigilance flags
when I don't pay attention then the idea it postulates or the chilling suspicion it confirms
leaves me riven with anxiety for all that exists or has ever existed or seemed to
6.
Yet what is there in that no way plausible whatever it is that can still so afflict me
philosophically primitive spiritually having nothing to do with any tradition even the tragic
to which I feel linked if the wisdom it's meant to impart is that you can't countervail misery
with gratification or that to imagine life without suffering is to suffer I've learned that
and it doesn't make death more daunting I have death more or less in its place now
though the thought still sears of a consciousness not even one's own extinguished
7.
Not some mad mentalism then but something simpler yet more frightening about love
that the man has negated in him not only the world but his most precious sentiments
what's dire is that the story denies and so promulgates the notion that one can deny
the belief no the conviction that some experiences love most of all can must be exempted
from even the most cruelly persuasive skepticism and excluded even from implications
of one's own cosmology if they too radically rupture what links real lives one to another
8.
To release yourself from attachment and so from despair I suppose was the point of the text
and I suppose I was looking for it again to release me from it and if I haven't done that
at least I'm at the opposite where I'm hanging on for dear life not to a tree in a dream
but to the hope that someday I'll accept without qualm that the reality of others
the love of others the miracle of others all that which feels like enough is truly enough
no celestial sea no god in his barque of being just life just hanging on for dear life
posted by The Stute Fish at 11:30
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