BEYOND LIFE AS WE KNOW IT

I have gotten dizzy by mere reading! Gene Wolfe’s Severian speaks of many incarnations of one spirit and many spirits inhabiting one incarnation and I reel at real sensations of Popa, Leonardo, Vincent, anyone I have loved observing my life through my eyes at least as intimately as I have through theirs.

Ah, the ever morphing realizations of internet possibility … I looked up Gene Wolfe and found almost as many words about his writing as he’s written, with speculations, questions and extensions by all sorts of contributors from readers and authors. That he is as obscure as he is, and was to me before being introduced, must be due to the lack of true literacy in the English speaking public. Those that do read range from escapist dalliances to serious saturation as indicated by relative knowledge expressed by anything from frivolous ideas to a list of extensive references to prior works proposed to be influences for everything from speech patterns to philosophies, from creatures to entire civilizations. Amazing.

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My happiness sails upon the ocean I am. The waves and ripples and tides are my moods reflecting the winds of nature’s constant change and the islands and continents of my fellow humans’ actions and the orbit of my deepest love. The crests of well swelling require troughs of hell dwelling, for I could not feel so well had I never felt as poorly. The logarithmic comparison of such contrasts results in my happiness’ buoyancy. Attachment to pleasure and avoidance of pain amplify the deviation in such a way that confuses the location of my center amidst the storm at sea until I once again remember that my home port is my boat.

Dove, Love and Diamede

Okay, I can no longer pretend I am at this keyboard gleaning observations from my October ‘04 journal entries. The urge to come here was to purge myself of the all consuming awareness that the youngest of we four lovers of this home is no longer with us. After her usual nudging me into the playing stroking game, Diamede went back outside and left me as she found me, working on illustrations of topography in Java…Indonesia that is. The next thing I know, I hear strange cat sounds and a broken bottle from a shelf on the porch. I go out to find both Love and Dove watching in fascinations as Diamede is lying there as if asleep. When I go to her, she looks up at me and takes a raspy cough of a last breath. Her eyes never moved again. It is all I can think about. I suppose I am glad I am still so vulnerable as to take such a being so deeply into mine. It was no less than when my daughter died so young and suddenly. When mother died she hadn’t communicated with anyone for a week, she was so drugged, but she squeezed my hand in goodbye at the last breath she took. Diamede looked straight at me as her light went out. It has been thirteen years since I buried Ink and swore I would never go through that again. I know where the myth of the Flying Dutchman comes from … there is Love and Dove. Wisdom without sadness is at the shallow end.