I woke up today and did little but lie around. Read the rest of the Sword of the Lictor, only to find out there is a fourth volume I didn't know about and don't have. Have to wait to find out what Severian does next. I also read today that Severian is a big, fat liar. An unreliable narrator. Bummer.
Tourist season has started here, but fortunately for me, today it rained. Hard enough to keep many of the tourists away. I felt fed, no survival worries. I stepped out in the early afternoon for a walk and into a whole different landscape. A different internal landscape more than anything. It was a peaceful place, quiet and centered. I felt like I had finally arrived here and returned home all at the same time. I walked past the tourist buses by the museums and down around the 'ring.' More huge buildings. he Parliament, the volks garten, huge cathedrals. It started to rain. Lucky for me I have my little umbrella and I walk in it just fine. It was so quiet, few people, the smell of horses as carriages went by. I love the smell of horses, even their manure. Ambrosia!!!
I walked and walked. Felt like I was 'in Vienna' for the very first time. Enjoying it. I have been hearing Zhander's voice in my head throughout the weeks here. I wake up with the things he is saying wafting around in my head. During evening practice, walking around the streets, the voice winds in and out and around my mind. Not today. It was quiet in there today. We weren't supposed to think about practice today and I did as I was told. Just walked, got a bit wet. It was good.
I came back to my room. Did some stuff. Somewhere at some point, a picture popped into my head. Things often come to be in pictures, some of which I then sit down and draw out. I drew this. A simple picture, to be elaborated on when I get home. A picture of a small pile of wood, a fire burning, the air stirring into wind above it, the wind moving. A picture of energies, my energies. How they might work together, feeding and supporting each other. Water to grease the pipes, to moisten the air and green the desert. It's a simple picture, and it fits into how my body is put together. I can connect this picture to to the work we do in class, to poses and stances and movements. I can feel it in my body as I do. There are centers where these energies get generated, where the alchemy happens and these energies come together and one of them is produced and supported by the others. But then these energies run through my whole body, like rivers, and each of them needs to be working and supporting each other everywhere. Earth supports and feeds the fire, the fire stirs the air, the wind moves, the water keeps the air cool and moist. Keeps the rivers flowing.
I felt something opening. The glimmer of understanding. For the first time, I think perhaps, just maybe, I'm starting to unwind the knot that binds me. The puzzle that has eluded me. The one about how to live in this body. To not want to rip at it and burn away the skin. To tear my way out of it. To not despise it and hate it and feel confined by it. It is easy for me to find 'home' without the body. To step back and back again and then back again and find Home. But I have a different feeling of being 'at home' today. Maybe this body is 'home' too.
I have never cared about becoming 'enlightened.' My problem is the other way around. My question is how to be embodied! How to BE and be in a body, BE a body at the same time.
Somehow this picture I have, feels like the beginning of a bridge that just might take me between these worlds. The relative world, the absolute world, matter and spirit, body and Self. Because I know what I have always known. The true way home is not divorcing one from the other but finding the truth in both.
Here are pictures from my walk today:
3 comments:
Gene Wolfe is fascinated by unreliable characters. I especially liked his Soldier of Arete in which the protagonist has a head injury which causes him to lose all memories after 24 hours. FWIW, I found the Long Sun series richer than the Torturer series.
Congrats on the breakthrough. It is one thing to synthesize a bunch of ideas, but quite another to find one that brings everything together and also remains relevant for your own body!
Well, most first person narratives are 'unreliable' to some degree, since everything is given from only one perspective, which means things naturally are filtered out, etc. But I think it is more than this with Severian. I'll plan to check out his other works. I can't believe I haven't read him before this. Of course once I entered academics, most fiction receded since I didn't even have time for the books I HAD to read much less the ones I wanted to read!
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