Touched the Grail--and could not swallow,
Wandered the far mountains, came upon a new Decalogue, and could not
lift the tablets to bring them down.
Prophet, maybe.
Pilgrim, perhaps.
But only in
the intellectual, critical, philosophical, evangelical
senses....
Happy?
The ego was often happy--his big ego.
At Peace?
He had tranquillity where other men did not and joy where they were
only confused; but, in their simple pleasures, it was he who felt
confusion, he who too frequently was but a spectator, he who failed
with his blood to pursue the truth his brain so lucidly, so uselessly
delineated.
Human nature, he decreed, need not be dishonest or dishonorable; let
us throw off this old-church myth, this pew-filler, that men are by
their very substance evil and undependable. Having said his say he
daily marched into the humanities and acted with a good deal less than
integrity complete. Like a very ass.
Still he believed it.
The truth shall make ye free.
Still he cried out that men are born for freedom.
And he died, a prophet without particular honor in the
home town of himself.
He shouted:
Forever learn the new
Down with everything as is
Seek God beyond his Holy Names
Behold yourself
(Intellectual, critic, philosopher, preacher)
The while, he beheld but morsels of himself, and--like
other men--admired them as if they were the fabric of reality
and not the gingerly scissored swatches of one awareness.
Well, go away now, Wylie.
It is the time, as you so intellectually predicted, for an
improved you or a better somebody to take over the problem.
Good night, sweet hypocrite.
Dauntless disappointment.
Oaf.
Of course, I argued with myself against self-condemnation.
I am a contemporary man, I insisted.
Too conditioned by father and mother, school, church, America, the
common law, and this and that, and you, and you, to expect in a single
lifetime (not too long, either) that I could, by whatever authenticity
of effort, penetrate thousands, thousands, thousands of years of the
unpenetrated stuff in my superego and discover the true whole of me
beyond: the conveniently overlooked, the misrepresented, the tabooed,
the forgotten, the unfrocked, the submerged structure of humanity
itself.
And I argued:
Even if I did this, it would be nothing.
What I said was reason, they would say was sacrilege.
What I said was love, they would call obscene.
What I said was truth, they would call nonsense.
My hope would bring them but despair.
My laughter would wring their panicky tears.
My God would also be their Devil.
And some of my ideals would seem un-American.
They would call my route to understanding a blind
labyrinth.
Their scientists would find me emotional.
Their priests--cold, analytical, and heartless.
Every instinct of my society would belabor me whenever I pointed out
its valid opposite. And when I said, These are but local, temporal
contradictions--seen together, they can be transcended, understood,
contained by a man who rises above them to look down upon them, or by a
man who shoulders them, why!!! All who live by the exploitation of one
side of any paradox, all the mighty engineers and all the honored men
of God, would jump at me.
And they would finally corner me somewhere, breaking my own rules.
The storm was upon the city, now. The oncoming cold front had won the
battle of the isobars. Lightning hissed and hit some nearby edifice,
accompanied by a blast of thunder. The hammer of Thor, the flashbulbs
of Zeus flooded the metropolis with pale, stroboscopic light. Buildings
quivered under the cannonade. Inside them the millions cowered and
crossed themselves or stood admiring at their windows, each, according
to his nature, responding to the grandeur of liberation.
The first drops splashed upon my parapet. My curtain stretched like
a flag. Papers blew. I shut the window and ran about in the pleasant
excitement of the arriving storm, making fast my small interior. The
world beyond churned in ecstasies of rain, din, and colored light that
showed no more than light's existence. My lamps glowed for a moment a
sinister red, and came up again.
I sat there after finishing my little errands, preoccupied with the
loud allegory in the street.
The psyche has its climate.
Every burning drought serves by its precise degree to lift the waters
of the earth for rains--and floods, too. Every deluge brings fertile
substance to the spirit's plains and exposes the rich minerals on
its crags. In the cold, the plants rest; in summer, they make ready
the ice-resistant seeds. The trick is not--as men believe--to become
but a willful rain-maker--endeavoring by rites, fasts, dances, or
sleets of solid carbon dioxide to alter the immutable for some hour's
advantage. This is failure; whatever such methods steal here must be
repaid elsewhere. The great accomplishment of man is to understand
the relationships of climate, appreciate them all, adapt his soul to
every temporal vicissitude--in the knowledge that whoever is free from
pride in this one good or prejudice against that special evil cannot be
engulfed, or eroded, or burned alive, or frozen into the sparse tundra
of intellect, of asceticism.
He--and he alone--conveys the mutations of consciousness who tends his
green valley undismayed by knowing it is the valley of winter shadow.
And could he own all the reasoning power of man--could his soul present
within him all that women know but cannot say--he would be as God.
After a time the storm somewhat diminished. The city hissed like the
embers of a great fire that resists hose and bucket.
Now, I was invaded by that projection of self-pity which Catholics
think is love and Protestants believe is duty. I saw Ricky and Karen
and my family, all my fond, patient friends--in sorrow. Great tears
glistened inside me and their tiny counterparts ran on my cheeks.
No, I cried. Spare me not for myself--I am reconciled; but for them.
I investigated such intricate delicacies in Ricky as I have not
attempted to describe here and I saw how sorrow would run through
them all; I watched the infinite loyalty of a daughter turned by the
slab of a tomb; I saw my family lifting up the load of their one more
bereavement and my friends kicking stones, not selfishly, but for the
world they hoped I might someday somehow bring my jot of meaning to.