STARMUD AND MOONWATER TWO

STARMUD AND MOONWATER TWO

 

letters to everyone in particular

 

              You want to know what I see? I’d be happy to tell you but it keeps moving on and leaving me here with my mouth open feeling deficiently alone. When I’m the butterfly it’s the net. When it’s the butterfly the whole universe couldn’t catch it if it tried. And I know it’s hard to throw a little light on black matter and the path to clarity is too often vague and metaphoric and what we say to each other in the morning doesn’t mean anything by the end of the day. Trying to grasp it like something you can hold onto is like trying to count the ripples of rain all the way out to infinity and beyond. Death is the muse that inspires all our desperate guesses at what this life is that we’re so afraid to lose without knowing what it is we have. Death, the Unattainable. Death with its unanswerable longing for life.

              Your mother is ill. Your sister tried to committ suicide. Fuzzy died. And something’s overturned the stone of the planet and left you with nowhere to hide. You want to know what’s going on. What’s killing all the angels. What makes the demons strong. Here’s a big clue. There’s nothing logical about the crazy wisdom that is you. Stop playing Leggo with your molecules. Stop trying to build the Taj Mahal on quicksand. Can’t you see how the stars got here without a map? And who could teach you how to be Everyone?

              What does not change is the will to change. Charles Olsen, a poetic mailman, said that. But that’s not precisely right either because change doesn’t have a will of its own. What does not change is change. Let’s go with that for awhile. A hand moves and the fire’s whirling takes different shapes. All things change when we do. An enlightened Zen poet said that. But now we’re back to go. Everything’s changing and it all depends on you. Now what do you do?

              When you cherish your doubt as much as you do the illusion of certainty. When it’s just as important to get the question right as it is the answer. When you can see your eyes in the dark mirror and not just the white. When you realize the great potential of emptiness that lies within your power. When you open your mouth like a door and all you can say is welcome. When you realize the positive isn’t the judge of the negative and stop trying to separate them at birth like Siamese twins. When you understand that creativity isn’t your invention and what’s original about this earthly existence isn’t at war with cosmic convention. When you stop praying as if you were knee-capped by celestial thugs dealing drugs to a church that didn’t pay up in time. When you stop asking for a front on your afterlife. When you drink and the wine gets high on you. When you look at the stars and their shining is you. When you gaze at a flower and you’re the one that’s blue. When the universe looks out into its dark interstellar spaces and wonders if there’s life on you. When you realize you’re the next habitable planet your mother is going to jump to when this one goes belly up. Who knows what you’ve amounted to even then?

 

PATRICK WHITE