XXXVI.
There is a land way to the south and in another part of time, it says so
in several of the books I am reading, the books lain their pages interleft
with other papers, on the desks in my master's room. They speak of an
antipodean otherworld, described in terms of glowering and sparkling it
seems to me, the deep dark colors of freshly washed stones and yellow
brick roads leading in every direction to locations nowhere seen heard or
felt on the surface of the earth. It seems as I am reading that there my
master has taken himself and my desires lean thereby southward my head
bent over other books purporting to show in terms geographical the
relation of this time and space to that, but here and now has always
appeared my only existence and I find it difficult to imagine that other
places thrive in their own dimensions apart from the dreams which take
me nightly to others within myself.
Several times I have packed and unpacked my belongings those that may
be needful for a long journey to another part of the world collecting my
saved monies from the sale of harvest and publication in order to speed me
on my way. My need for action and the instinct to cleave to master driving
me to these measures, my need for bonds which in the past have staunched
the flow piece upon piece of parts of my constant companion the person I
comment upon the other in me flying off into space. Disintegration the
daily process I experience before too much is gone I tend yet my rooftop
garden looking at times over the parapet to the street below at the signal
it comes from where I don't know which tells me that what I sense is true
and that master is passing there if I could only catch sight of him as sHe
passes all would be well.
Tetsuwan comes almost daily to remind me of the craft I seem to have lost,
the state of mind of directionless direction he tells me. I have gone off
in all directions, he says, and must take up my practice again. The more I
think of attaining the target, I know, the less likely I will reach it.
But knowing and being are different and I do not know what I am. So I wait
and look down, the street loudly preened by passing trucks to remove the
stench and detritus of daily living of all those who pass in and out of
sight and smell also but in their absence what they do is produce more
trash to line the streets in tracing the path of their living before them.
New York City an organism encumbered with toxic wastes built up in
pyramids along the sides of the roads first one and then the other eaten
up nightly while I dream of Oz and my master's freshly shaven face. "You
are one day too late," sHe tells me, "The beard I grew only yesterday
removed. If only you had arrived sooner." I reach out my hand to touch the
skin of his cheek and find it is smooth and pale, his lips wide and soft
as usual, his eyes brown and gold flecked with sadness.
I wake and pack my belongings. They sit on the floor of the apartment,
while I go to sit on the window sill to take a last look at the cement
blocks of the sidewalk on the opposite side of the avenue. Heavy brocade
of green curtain I part it clings to my shoulder in desperation my home my
place my rightful juncture split and torn it tells me if you leave. I stay
in that place as the light glows yellower and the day passes again into
extended evening watching as the dogs on leashes are paraded by, their
masters faithful to them attached by umbilical cords to their necks never
to allow them escape or leeway. I stay and wait watching while small
pieces of my self drop silently onto the roadway below there to be swept
up and deleted as each night strains into the next day on the wheels of
waste removal a city's reason to be.