Outside, at dawn, this is same dew that was once a cloud, once a river, once a pond, once a ray of the sun, once a dust of the stars, and who knows maybe once a syllable of the Word. These ornaments of nature, ornaments of language, an exercise in style and sound and sight and everything that can appeal to what is latent in you, the reader, and I, the writer. We mistake our thoughts and words to be our own, but it is an acceptable mistake because it accounts for accountability. That which we mistake as ours, springs forth from a mysterious nothingness—which is not ours, for whatever it is that is ours must be something rather than nothing, must it not?
Professor always disapproved of my confused articulation. If you cannot say it simply, you must not say it at all. Young blood is masterful at finding incorrect, yet sweeping and magnificent metaphors to express simple facts in complicated language. It does not tell one anything about the fact or the thing in itself, but plenty about the one that talks about the fact or the thing in itself. Your articulation is not an expression, it is a confession, at least make it honest. Look at this picture, what do you make of it?
Professor’s flamboyant VOLT 5 top model projection headset lit up in a nebulous spark and projected onto the fine motes floating in the air a lightshow of colors and patterns and textures springing forth from the background of his mind momentarily floating in the air in a multiplicity of uniqueness and meaning only to then be possessed by my visual apparatus collecting the multiple bits and integrating them as one indivisible whole where symbol marries meaning.
A truly fantastic sight.
Professor’s imagination: unbelievably uncliched unconventional wonderful and original.
a brook flew advancing towards a military basecamp
a lonesome soldier stood facing the sky
a piercing sky tore up the vastness of Rocky Mountains
held in its grace a sun and a moon and a solitary morning star
a streak of blood just beneath the soldier’s feet
leading up towards the thorny bushes
where lay a little eyeless girl with her legs wide open
next to a pool of blood that seems to have grown an ashen rose
droplets of semen, sweat, tears dripping down to the passing brook
among crystals of morning dew above the grassy patch
a hazy amber holds the picture in its clutches
a hazy sound gives it its movement
—Look at this picture, what do you make of it? I suppose I have to answer.
I make of it, Kashmir—the yesterday’s ruin where the most sublime beauty met the most horrendous horror.
And the full moon turned a crescent, the rose a thousand petalled lotus.
I make of the brook—the time’s arrow that we once learned about in Physics lessons.
And a circular clock appeared in the air, but one without dials.
I make of the Sun and the Moon the dreams one sees at the rise of dawn where the day nd the night rule the sky in perfect harmony.
And a ruling kingly palm appeared behind the Sun and the Moon.
I make of the lonesome soldier and the girl my own sense of isolation, for I should have been happy with my solitude but it has raped my innocence.
And suddenly the image grew crowded with all sorts of friends—a fluttering butterfly, a squirrel running up a tree, a fox approaching, a carp fish jumping out of water, a scorpion crawling near the thousand petalled lotus; one thing right after another, and then a voice:
What do you make of it?
Our watermelon shaped Zorb had completed its orbit around the university campus. Everything spick span and just about perfect was the way Professor went about things, and that was why our floating Zorb was the suavest and smoothest compared to all others floating around the campus. The two of us being affluent and all, the Zorb was opaque, covered with artificial magnolia, and newly invented Cabiri leaves. What did it smell off? Oh, it was right at the tip of my—yes, lavender. Perhaps it was his mosquito repellent that he kept spraying everywhere he went. Everything spick span and just about perfect. I remembered I haven’t answered his question yet. What did I make of it? He is allowing my mind to wander, that is why he is sitting there without interrupting me. I allow my mind to wander, for that was my first lesson with Professor: always allow your mind to wander for that is where the gnomes of creativity love to play. You would think them banal games but such were the games that gave us fire in our motherland.
Our motherland, how lovely it is to think about her. They say we wouldn’t recognize her if we saw her three hundred years from today. Three hundred years. Three centuries ago. That was when our ancestors laid their first few steps on a corner of their mind sailing through the written Word. What was it, a project to the Moon, yes. Things were so different. Now it is only our language that connects us to them. How they must have lived without a cure for flesh! Professor says knowing about them is the same as knowing about us, but who understands what Professor says, really. A joke wants to come, how happy must our ancestors have been, how happy to step on the moon. Step! With feet! But the real inventors were certainly the ones to play with fire. After all, it was a game of fire, yes yes, for the purpose of our bygone flesh, but a game indeed that has brought us today inside this floating Zorb. Certainly, the only three talents that still matter: fear and curiosity and courage, a Tridev, a Trinity, they would call it, would they not? Fear and curiosity and courage for there is still so much unknown and the metaphors of our ancestors still so valid. A night so dark and dense, so troublesome, so uncertain, truly our ancestors had to turn a principle out of it for that is how uncertain we were! Back to the Professor’s question—my relatively cheap Borges X00 model projected the stored image onto Professor’s VOLT 5, and he instantly gripped it. Gripped it. Like a monkey. Hehe!
Fool! An absolute disgrace. Repugnant! Repugnant! Repugnant! How disgusting it is, like an ancient pig wrapped in its own feces. Like a possession of fungus oozing out from the very flesh of your organism. Such is the nature of your confession. Such is the way you choose to distort an image I held so dear. You vile disgusting beast! So much like the ones that have preceded us. Maybe not in flesh, but certainly in the very spirit of your being. So what, the fellowmen have helped you outgrow the turmoil of stale flesh, your spirit still bears the burden of the vile corpse on your shoulders. You cannot grow out of the spell of the dead now, can you? It is only the whispers of the dead on your shoulders that I hear from your image, this image. Not the life that flows through the “fountain” that they call youth. Youth, eternal youth. Held on one side by the dead and on the other by all the life that is to come. And this is how you choose to spend your youth, you repugnant cowardly meat! You want your youth guided by the whispers of the dead. They used to call the dead all sorts of names in the past—morality, responsibility, nobility, and many such words from many such languages. Nothing but whispers of the dead! Are you scared of looking ahead at the children about to come because their shape is uncertain, their fate unknown, the burden of risk too heavy to bear? Youth, eternal youth. One or the other burden. The burden of the whispering corpses, the burden of the pregnant belly. But even your children have grown pale, such is the power of the corpse you carry on your shoulders. Your newborns too come wrinkled and grey. And that vile whispering corpse has ruined my image. It is a confession of your pettiness, superficiality, disease and death. Your deceit—the worst form of deceit at that!—self-deceit; your dreams and your ruins and your solitude and your time! All but stale artefacts of mortal eternity. Did you not hear? Did you not hear their cries? In the cries your corpses whisper in your ears—did you not hear that this is no country for old men? Or old infants in your disgusting, delusional case. Dream better dreams, you idiot. When you are out of the university—this great university of ours, you will need your dreams. Not the whispers of old men speaking in old-men tongue, for clearly you understand that tongue that is so cold and vicious. There is a “time” for everything and this is the “time” for “revolution” the “time” to go “mad”. The corpse will only leave your shoulder when you give birth to the child, get it, you swine? And here, this was your lecture on the dark forgotten art of polemics. It is a tool you would need and therefore must learn.
I promise, I promise despite how difficult it was to document these cruel words of Professor, I did so—at my expense and effort, now what would come out of such an undertaking! Lord knows, if lord knows. That is a bit of an old-fashioned expression but old fashioned I am. That explains the usage of words to document these lessons with the Professor. My fellow mates would have chosen to live it again in all its vividness, and indeed it takes a lot less effort to simply live it than to document it using an ancient, worn-out tool. It has become totally out of fashion to use words. Then why do I do it? I suppose some types of people simply cannot do that which is fashionable. But there’s a lot to be learned from words. Afterall, these are our mysterious inheritances. Our ancestors have left these signs to us, on paper and on the mouth, this whole system of signs when it was impossible to communicate without speaking or writing out the words. How wonderful would that have been!, full of signs!, all sorts of signs to communicate without the means for direct communication! In my documentation, dear readers or listeners or knowers, I still use words such as “words,” “say,” and “express,” but all these are only ancient metaphors, now that our communication has become mind-to-mind and unadulterated. The confusion it has caused I tell you!
I have aligned myself with a counter movement to bring back the Word. The Word—this ancient vessel of the ethereal magic within us, the earthy foundation over which we now stand. This vessel, this weapon. Polemic, that is what the Professor spoke about. Hate the other so you can know the capacity to hate yourself, by bringing the other down you drag yourself to the mud, and only then can you know what your true self is. I suppose that was what the Professor tried to teach but who understands what the Professor teaches, really. He is the only one in the university to still use words—also happens to be the leading figure in the movement for Word revival. But no one understands him, his tongue is mysterious, and if you communicate with him, though very few do, you will see that his mind too is mysterious. Perhaps in all this confusion, the clarity is in the mystery.
Mystery reminds me of a curious encounter I once witnessed between the Professor, the Librarian and the Bonobo in our campus’ luminous library. They say the library is as old as the very first institution to store the written Word. It has all sorts of ancient physical manuscripts, yesterday’s new digital texts, virtual experiences etcetera, till the last texts before the official death of the Word. In the old world a place like this would perhaps be hailed as a temple. Being a student of the Word, I had to visit the luminous library every day and in one of those days I saw the three sitting around a large green table, that would otherwise emit a flash of all the happenings of the day around the world for students to know in a glowing standstill moment. A newspaper, if you will. Today the Librarian had shut the glow of the table, which meant something important was going to be discussed.
THE LIBRARIAN
THE PROFESSOR
THE BONOBO
I enter the empty library—its pillars (carved with faces and strange designs of ancestral men and women and animals in unusual poses, dancing and copulating and whatnot) as high as the eye can see, the marble floor shining so that you can clearly see your face on it, and if you looked hard enough, a few layers beneath the face too. I went and sat on one of the stools with an ancient manuscript in my hand—Septem Sermons, it was called, pretending to go through it as I overheard the conversation underway at the green table.
PROFESSOR. What can Anna Livia tell us at this hour of crisis?
LIBRARIAN. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Her nature has gone mute. Absolutely, thoroughly, fatally, mute. This is what happens when the balance is disturbed for such a long time. The authority—these institutions responsible for the proper functioning of a society become too tight, too constrained—and do you know? do you know? Too fearful! Yes, all this fighting and violence is a direct consequence of fear.
PROFESSOR. Fear of what?
LIBRARIAN. The fear that has forever bewitched us, Professor. The fear of the other. Of the unknown.
(Professor nods.)
PROFESSOR. I’ve sent the kids on the street demanding a revolution. This is what I’ve always done, you see. Send innocent kids to the revolutions, and not all of them come back. It is not safe. The battle is all inside of them. Defeat spells insanity. It is worse than death, as you know. How easy it must have been for our forefathers and mothers, to whom the enemy was outside of them. Someone always to blame, at least in appearance. How simpler must have lives been then!
LIBRARIAN. Oh yes, for sure, very simple indeed, painfully simple. These shapers and breakers of authority were both outside of men and women. There were heroes and there were villains and they cared, cared too much for the others, and that care was their hatred and love for the other. How foolish must have politics been then in such a world! How simple! Of course now everything is so different. Unrecognizable, yet oddly familiar. The battle is the same, only the players have changed. As always I suppose.
PROFESSOR. All these books have turned you into a poet, I see!
(Bonobo sniggered.)
PROFESSOR. But it’s good. As it is, the poets are dying.
LIBRARIAN. Don’t you dare say that. As long as we’re around poetry shall never die.
PROFESSOR. Oh, you’re too cruel! You force me to say it now, don’t you? So it goes—Hail the Poets!
LIBRARIAN. It’s a good motto after all. The death of science has anyway been so gruesome. Now we cannot afford the Word to die. This is our only way. Only way to look back and therefore ahead.
BONOBO. Ahead? Aback?
PROFESSOR. Perhaps he is right. Perhaps we’re only running in circles. But after all is said and done, who knows what to do, Bono? The best guess seems to be to fight. Now that we have abandoned reason altogether—
LIBRARIAN. Oh, this perennial mystery! Who knows what to do! The right thing to do! Let’s open some ancient manuscripts, shall we?
(Bonobo goes to a far corner of the library and brings back a dusty stack of parchment manuscripts.)
LIBRARIAN. Look at this! Stories, heaps and heaps of stories. Codes. Duties. Decipher. Voynich. This one here, thou shalts, thou shalt not, here—must fight for justice, liberty, rights, equality, well, well, wellbeing, happiness for the greatest number, such disasters everywhere! My good different from your good. Look at these gruesome monsters! Oh, I cannot go about it anymore! You see all this? You see the ugly face of what we’re fighting for? You see how ugly these words are! Now, you see how ugly they’ve made us! Let me read this. You’re an educated man, you understand ancient English, right? You will see what I’m saying. “Men are not inherently logical […] socialized […] intellectually superior to women and this bias […] privilege, power, capital, gender binary juxtaposes logic emotion men think logic equals devoid of empathy […] Russian anarchism plus Marxism plus the experiences of the European Labor movement made Lenin what he was […] determined to break with Czarism […] would have been no October Revolution […] hijacking the narrative of Freedom Fighters because they do not have their own.” Here! My favorite dead phrase for the right thing to do—”categorical imperative”—another one, this is particularly curious, “Nereus and Doris were the parents of the Nereids, the most celebrated of whom were Amphitrite, Thetis, the mother of Achilles, and Galatea […] Nereus was distinguished for his knowledge and his love of truth and justice […] the gift of prophecy was also assigned to him.” Truth! Justice! The law of Karma. Ethical imperative. Snake biting its own tail. Eternal recurrence. You see all this? You see what words have done? Where they have taken us! There’s so much more, this is not even a thin layer in the tip of a tiny iceberg in a vast ocean of letters. These new men may let the word die but the word that was once alive has done irrevocable damage! Irreplaceable beauty too, sure; but irrevocable damage too! We need to redeem ourselves from the damage before we can save the Word.
PROFESSOR. I know you want me to ask it. But I will not ask, no, you can take it upon my word, I will not ask. But I know you will tell it anyway, so now out with it, you riddle making rascal, what are you waiting for?
LIBRARIAN. I haven’t been sitting idle at this luminous library, professor.
At this point the Librarian switched on the glow of the luminous green table, and showed them forth something—something as luminous as the source of all light, source of all light that has brought us where we are; a blinding flash of light of meaning, a meaning the Librarian had gathered from being around these dusty old manuscripts, a phosphorescent meaning that he carved from the flesh of his own body, and that I, from my compromised view of the glowing green table gathered in my notes, in my own compromised, incompetent way, using the only tool of my cause available at my disposal—the Word.
“they said of all things the measure is Man,
measure of all things good and evil and un
known, truth is the light that shines forth
in darkness and action is the step man tak-
-es where the light shines. & there is no ac-
-tion in true darkness. no good and evil all
unknown—the light of truth informs all
action, out from the cloud of unknowing—
and not all truth comes equal, some truth:
more equal than others. but a truth too is a
measure of Man. Man ages, truth ages, its l-
-ight grows dim. and truth ages and dies &
darkness again, where there is no action no
good and evil all unknown—until another
truth shines forth from a Man. Man all the
measure of all things. & then the light if it
shines so bright, illumines the way for many
men to come but time—a measure of man
spares no one in the light reaching from one
man to many, the truth begins to age again
and soon it will be dark again, and on and
on and on and on running in circles, but the
wheel moves forward, moves forward from
all unknowing to all knowing, ever present
ever good, ever powerful, and forever active”
Soon as this glorious exhibition was over, the Librarian looked towards the Professor with a keen anticipation in his eyes as if waiting for an applause at his poetic discovery—that undeniable charm of his intuition, and a hint of the good old-fashioned ugliness of ambition in his eyes, that falling tendency of Man that comes when he reaches for the sky not to surrender, but to overcome. Bonobo, as wise as it has always been, looked out of the library window cluelessly, perhaps looking out at the drizzle that had just started and a pair of princely squirrels running around their kingdom that is the tree, always so familiar and confident. Professor remained quiet for an uncannily long while. At that point, even after having known the Professor longer than anybody else has in the university, I could not imagine what he would say. That long silence allowed me to make some guesses, however. Despite being the key figure in the Word revival movement, he always wanted the poetic fancy of the imagination to be supported on the foundation of neat and clean and proper and simple, and new, always new and modern expressions of that which is complicated and convoluted. There were far too many idiots in the university, at least idiots in my not-so-humble view, that stayed away from Professor, but they did not know that Professor was, in fact, working for them. These idiots were the reason he was doing whatever it was that he was doing, it was never for us, us the people that made his revolution work. Even though his fight was about the rebirth of poetry—with his strongest tool, the polemic, he never expressed anything strictly poetically, except on very rare occasions. Was today going to be one such occasion?
My guess was that it would be, since, if anything else, what the Librarian showed them forth was crucial to our revolution. From what he proposed it looked like he could give us the answer for the right thing to do. If this flight of the imagination was true, and true in the sense the Librarian meant it, it would mean, from what the Librarian said, the action—or the right action was around the corner. But what was it? So typical of Professor not to say anything now for such an important moment.
In a slow, sleepy, thoughtless manner, Professor got up from his chair and walked up towards the window, staring out, where Bonobo had been looking at a few moments ago. Bonobo and the Librarian now both looked at the Professor.
PROFESSOR. You’ve been inside this Library too long, my friend. These words, all these books, manuscripts, monuments, mazes. All of this that we’ve been fighting for. All of this that we’re trying to bring back to life now when our sons and daughters have lost the way. In the seriousness of this fight, of our cause—the Word, we always forget something. Something that was lost way before the Word, the Gods, the Science. Something that drove us to this fight in the first place. Something that you seem to have forgotten, yet as a Bookman you should be best at. That which we, of all people, cannot afford to forget.
LIBRARIAN. What is it? Tell me! Tell me quickly.
PROFESSOR. That with our faculty for language, we must also, by the same token, possess a faculty for silence.
(And so there was silence. A few glorious moments of silence.)
PROFESSOR. What you have just expressed I cannot reject; I cannot accept it either. What should we do with it? Store it up in this library for another student of the Word to come and decipher? And meanwhile mayhem may take over the world outside our library. And what good would it do if it can only stay within the confines of this store house? You consulted your manuscripts for the problems, you looked towards newer manuscripts—perhaps one that has your name on it, to give you the answers. But in this maze of questions and answers, when did you ever consult your silence? Or did it not occur to you to consult your silence at all because silence does not say anything, and when it does it is silence no longer. Or have you forgotten why we are doing what we are doing in the first place? It is not to bring back the Word alone, but through the Word the soundless, sightless, senseless, silence. We do not express, cannot express it, so have you forgotten it? On faith alone, my friend, I will do as you say. The right thing to do, as you said. But as a friend I ask you, what has become of you?
That was the last time I saw the Librarian in our university. Professor never spoke about him again. He simply grew quieter. The library was finally locked, there was no other librarian to be found. The students of the Word were terribly angry at the Professor for taking away our last bit of hope—our library. Soon fellows started quitting the Word revival movement until I alone was left. I met Bonobo a few weeks after that last day at the library. Bonobo informed me that the Librarian had gone on exile and that nobody had any clue where he was or how he could be contacted. That was when I realized that our movement was going to die, and that the limited time I have as the last student of the Word, I must spend with Professor, learning his strange ways, mapping the far corner of his mind, and learning more and more about the mysterious Word, this old tradition that is taking its last few breaths right in front of me.
Mukul is a writer, conceptualizer, social worker, and a student of the Sitar based out of Dehradun, India. He loves dried apricots and science and silence in equal measure. You may reach out to him at pfjschute@gmail.com.
Image: pxhere.com
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Heavy Feather Review 