4.11.08

two suns

I return to Samsara's planet, this time for a longer stay. Don't ask how to get there - there's no easy way, someone from there has to open the way if someone from here is to go there. They are all from here originally, as I think I said. Or did I? It's hard to recall, because I am myself changing as I write. One thing I have realised is that those who have attained the alleged state of grace that loss of karma imputes are victims of a terrible ennui. The paradise of the siddhas, at least in the Thousand Ruby Galaxy, is a hell of regret. This wouldn't be the case if bliss were extinction but it isn't, it's translation. The two violet suns in the sky contend without ever prevailing: one is the sun of forgetfulness and the other the sun of memory. They light up the Onyx Lake with their double paradox: what you remember shall be forgotten, what you forget will be remembered. Samsara has asked me here in order to remember the forgotten and also to forget the remembered. This is what is called love. It makes the turquoise trees flame to a colour more like vermilion, because here all landscape is emotional in essence and in expression. Those white furred creatures slinking through the hollow grass have transparent heads that flash a wicked red when they make the death leap over the small winged things they hunt. When the sun of forgetfulness is dominant the Onyx Lake takes on a dull, gloomy, slate-like look; the remembering sun wakes emerald reflections in the shining black water. These waves of feeling emanate randomly from all the living creatures here and, equally, effect all of us randomly. When Samsara and I embrace in the shade of the turquoise trees, the disturbance races through the landscape the way an earth tremor might. Our gasps contract the sky. Sap engorges the reeds and flowers burst spontaneously from the lily pads on the lake. The skeins, webs, shrouds of karma spin wildly, not out of control but into it. What is it like here at night? I manage at last to say. Under what moon shall we suspire? Moon, Samsara whispers, we have no moon here. When our planet swings into the night it is a night of stars only. That is when memory and forgetting resile from their strange alteration. That's when intuition alone rules. Something that you cannot perhaps imagine: will you stay? Will you let me go? I say. She does not answer. Her eyes are emerald. Already I can see the two violet suns westing.


2 comments:

Elisabeth said...

Whenever I read your writing Martin, I have the fantasy that I can see the writing process at work. That which might normally remain hidden, at least for a time, appears on your blog. I love it. Have you read any Gerald Murnane? One of my heroes, not simply for the quality of his writing but for its content. He writes about the suburbs of Melbourne circa 1960-1970, and the angst of a young man struggling through. You write about future worlds or the streets of Sydney and the New Zealand landscape. They all blend in my mind into hidden places of excitement, begging to be further explored.
Lis

Martin Edmond said...

... that's probably because I just make it up as I go along ... read a bit of Murnane in the 1980s but haven't kept up. It was strangely compelling.