NO TIME NO SPACE NO MIND
No time no space no mind.
A star falls.
A drop of water falls from a leaf.
Nothing’s diminished.
Nothing’s enhanced.
If you want to believe in something
believe in the silence
the stars dance to
and the trees when they’re trying
to grow like music.
How can the center
judge the circumference
of its own boundlessness?
Nothing’s enclosed.
Nothing’s set free.
Everything’s perfectly defined
by its lack of identity.
And yet here we are together
on planet earth
monadically living ourselves
as the embodiment of an intelligent species
trying to grasp its own mind
like the head of a poisonous snake.
But what’s the point of getting bit
by trying to take your thoughts by the tail
as they disappear down their blackholes
when you’ve already turned to stone
looking in the mirror
at the new hair-do
you’re sporting like the Medusa?
The snakepit fell into you.
And even when you have your tatoo done
by the fangs of the moon
to remind you of what you love
it’s still only as indelible as skin.
So many long agonizing hours
trying to figure things out
like a short thread in a labyrinth
or a long one in the Bayeux Tapestry.
And even when you put out to sea
like a disciplined sailor
on the theta waves of a guru
you’re following like a star
that’s shining in all directions at once
you’re still sitting in the corner with a dunce
wearing a sail for a hat
consulting a map to nowhere.
The world is in turmoil because we are.
The world is in pain because we are enslaved by ideas.
The world is impoverished because we have forgotten
how rich and generous it’s well within our means to be.
The world seems dark and hopeless
because we keep our eyes closed in the light
and open them at night like nocturnal flowers
mistaking the stars for bees.
We keep our mouths shut in the rain
and drown like fish in our own water.
Noah fills his mind like an ark
with two of every kind
and ends up selling real estate in Atlantis
with the morals of a praying mantis.
If you still think of yourself as a good person
wholesome as a homemade loaf of bread
cooling on a country windowsill
you’re not dying hard enough
to make your life credible
in the eyes of all you see perishing before you.
If you’re still running your constellations aground
like dolphins into the nets of your braille starmaps
that glow in the dark like dice and fireflies
then you might be surprised to learn
not just the truths
but the lies have their mystics too
and it’s dangerous when you listen to what they teach
and all you hear is you.
You can’t liberate your face from the mirror
or pick the moon’s reflection up
like a lily-pad from the water
or a stray dime by a telephone booth.
And eternity’s just a monstrosity of time.
But there are no chains of iron
no chains of gold to throw off
like umbilical cords that have been keeping you back
from being born in your own image.
Why perjure the witness of your own clarity
by trying to define who you are moment by moment
like the sea trying to predict its own weather?
You can’t distill the inspiration
from the expression like wine
anymore than you can kill time with space
or separate the mortal from the divine
like filth you can wash off with the stars.
You’re just falling like the rain into your own halos
and smearing rainbow lipstick on the blackhole
that seeks the light like you
but to different effect.
You want to feed on perfection.
You want to eat beauty and God and inorganic ideas.
You want to eat your paints like Van Gogh
so that you can become as they are
but they keep changing into someone else
you begrudgingly acknowledge is you.
And it’s impossible to know
what blackholes change into
or what they do with the light
they consume like krill
but my bet is
they don’t recognize themselves in the light
when the light’s so drastically deranged.
Both sides of the mirror distort space
when the moon’s estranged
by the water that reflects it.
Whales don’t listen to the prophets they swallow.
You stare into the infinite eyes
of the face behind everything
hoping to see your own
in a mirror that blossoms like water.
It shows you an orchard
you forgot to gather up into your arms
like a lost daughter that disowned you
for not seeing yourself in her.
It shows you what a failure you really are.
It shows you the flowers you want to see.
But no star.
No tree.
Nothing but the sad mystery
of a man by himself in a garden at moonrise
with eyes that are lonelier than an abandoned tv.
PATRICK WHITE
