When music and unspoken prayer animate language, all proportionalities of being and non-being, genesis and history, are subject to a re-visionary focus.
The Wilderness comes into its own as extra-human territory which unsettles the hubris of a human-centred cosmos that has mired the globe since the Enlightenment.
The interrelationships between the sciences and the arts – that ancient humanity may have sought to nourish within its crises and difficulties – address diminutive survivors of holocausts (such as myself) all over again in new and startling ways.
I voiced these thoughts to console myself. I was bewildered by the sudden dawning light on the countenance of the sick patient in the Port Mourant hospital. He was arising from the floor now with the net in his hand. I was bewildered … How could I have seen that net before in Limbo Land – when he flung it around the Predator and saved my life – if he had suddenly acquired it now from the wilderness nest of the Virgin’s hair?
Was it the same net? Was it an old net? Was it a new net?
Such are the paradoxes of musical chords that compose a net in the language of fiction.
Was it possible that a deeply sprung chord of music is unique and untranslatable fiction and therefore both old and new? Was it possible that the strange density of the net – arising from the universal wilderness unconscious into the subconscious and the conscious – was of quantum linkage and differentiation and thus what was old was new, what was young was ancient, Virgin was child, child was ancient mother of humanity in the live fossil nursery of language?
I was so bewildered that I had no hesitation in setting forth my thoughts as if to plumb some tracery, however elusive, of the depths of unspoken prayer … I prayed to a disembodiment and an Apparition and an Abstraction that I felt I perceived in the sick man’s Christ-like face.
Why sickness? How sick was my projection of sickness, the archetype of sickness, into the huntsman in whose dawning light upon his face I dreamt I saw Christ? In such sickness I saw a dying age (though when that age would die, if ever, I did not know). Still it was implicitly dying and imbued with new elements of a re-visionary genesis of the hunt … The sickness of slaughter for slaughter’s sake was subtly evolving beyond fixtures of cruelty into a net to save me and hold the Predator at bay.
An enormous theme this was that I needed to ponder upon again and again and again.
‘Is it an insoluble net, Mr Mageye?’ I asked.
‘You must seek to understand,’ said Mr Mageye. ‘You must seek to visualize its tracery or traceries everywhere in Memory theatre. Remember, Francisco.’
‘I remember Limbo Land when I thought I would be crushed by the Predator but was saved by the huntsman. I did not see his face then even as I dream I see it now in a patient arising from a bed …’
‘You were caught in the same net that the huntsman used in bundling the Predator away …’
‘Why did he not kill him, make an end of him? Would not that have solved everything, Mr Mageye?’
‘Ah! Francisco, have you forgotten that in desiring the Predator’s end you were compulsively drawn to him …?’
‘Me? Was I?’
‘Yes, you! You were fascinated by his magnetic charm and terrifying beauty. Try to remember. A beauty that you compared – do you now remember? – to the marbled hide of the globe seen from the Moon. Indeed the Predator has no qualms in wearing the elements of earth and sky on his back. It’s not so astonishing. You, Francisco – and I for that matter – wear shoes of leather, the occasional fur hat, the occasional skin of a creature. Though nowadays conscience pricks.’
‘Are you suggesting,’ I cried, ‘that the Predator and I are equal prey – or shared prey (an odd way to put it) – in the huntsman’s net?’ I stopped and considered as Mr Mageye riveted his glance upon me. An odd kind of broken, uneasy conversation we had been having … ‘I remember,’ I said slowly, ‘that in desiring his end my heart grew faint as though his end could prove to be mine as well.’
Mr Mageye smiled as though to hearten me afresh in my fear of self-induced closure within the magnetic compass of the Predator.
Then he cried: ‘Surely you know, Francisco, that there are no endings to a Dream-book of creation animated by music …’
‘I know nothing. Not a damned thing.’
Mr Mageye suddenly grew grave. ‘I understand your pain, Francisco,’ he said. ‘But consider. Here’s the crux of the net. Crux – I can hear you saying – is an odd word to associate with a fluid net. There is no ending, no closure, to the text of the prey in which you reside, the text of the Predator that you abhor and admire. Mind you! I am guessing in the dark. For there’s a hidden text of elusive differentiations in Predator and prey that lies behind all “beginnings” and beyond all “endings”. That is one awkward way of putting it. But I must be honest. Those hidden texts may never – I would say will never – be absolutely translated. They are wilderness music. They infuse an uncharted realm, a mysterious density, into every chart of the Word. They infuse immense curiosity and vitality as well in empowering the vulnerable prey (such as ourselves) to seek for endless translations in time of differentiations within ourselves between prey and Predator.’
‘What am I to make of the huntsman’s intervention when he threw his net and saved my life?’
‘Spared the life of the Predator as well! Each creature tends to prey on another.’
‘Where then lies the difference between me and …?’
Mr Mageye held up his hand. ‘The difference lies in prayer.’ Prayer? I was stunned but I understood. I understood the jest or pun.
‘Unspoken prayer matches hidden texts. One prays that one is free to offer one’s body to another in sacramental love. One prays for such freedom.’
‘And the Predator?’
‘The Predator draws blood, the blood of lust. The Predator sometimes seems invincible. The prey knows he is vulnerable and even when he prides himself on being unscathed in the huntsman’s net his blood nourishes the sun. All this is susceptible to extremity as we saw in the late Mayan world when men’s hearts were literally presented to the sun. Hidden texts teach us to breach such frames, such literality … The ghost of the prey in ourselves, the vulnerable prey, that we offer to the sun, is an unfathomable inspiration of grace, hidden grace in all subject creatures, that transcends frame or literality or predatory coherence or plot. But may I remind you, Francisco! Dream-books are translations of the untranslatable. It is a vocation that may well take us through and beyond the stars into life’s blood on other planets.’
‘Why did not the huntsman intervene and save the people of Jonestown?’
Mr Mageye riveted his glance upon me again.
‘Come, come, Francisco,’ he said. ‘You know – you must know in all that you have confided to me in your Dream-book – how odd, how varied, divine intervention in human affairs is. It’s not easy to read the signals, to respond to the warnings. Our minds are often closed …’
‘Was mine closed?’
‘Of course it was. Habit dies hard. I speak of myself as well. Educators such as myself need to be re-educated …’
‘But … But …’
‘I know, Francisco. I am in your Dream-book and I know that your mind cracked a little in Jonestown. Your mind-set that is! But consider how charged and peculiar was your apprehension of intervention. You were driven to weigh and assess the shot that killed Jones in the nick of time, your own phantom hand on the gun, the pain of self-confession, self-accusation, numbness, numbness that erupts from one’s wounds, one’s traumatization that is built unwittingly into past weaponries, future weaponries, technologies … Yes, it’s all there in your Dream-book and still you are challenged to consider and reconsider the ground of experience.’ He was laughing all at once but I could scarcely fathom his humour. Was he laughing with me, at me, with himself, at himself? ‘Intervention by the divine cannot be entirely divorced from laughter at oneself, one’s refusal sometimes to read the signs until
it is too late or almost too late.’ His expression was grave, half Sphinx-like again. I was aware of his lightning shifts of mood.
‘Take your own case again, Francisco. The gun that Deacon fired seemed to flash into your mind as if it had been built out of the concretion of your own trauma, your own numbness. There’s a warning from which civilization recoils! Perhaps it is unable to read the signs! It refuses to countenance its own predicament in the light of technologies that are – at a certain level – an extension of the trauma of an age: a trauma that is building a void into sensibility. New technologies should bring into play profound and new literacies of the Imagination. They are sprung in part from ourselves, our defects, our deprivations however novel they seem. They may appear to be our slaves, our servants, but as in the Virgin’s El Doradonne cradle (do you remember?) – the play in the hospital – they are already becoming toys for the privileged wealthy, or well-to-do areas of civilization, privileged nurseries, toys that we are unable to translate into the genuine service of humanity. The signs are there, the necessity for a different comprehension of the language of reality. The signs of intervention, the intervention of divine furies, are all there, but are we responding? Will our response come too late? Will it ever come?’
Mr Mageye had stopped but his glance was still riveted upon me. Suddenly I wondered if it was he, my beloved teacher, or whether it was an extraordinary eye in the Camera beside him. Had his apparition frozen into a parallel spectre of technology? Was I witnessing a species of dual technology, apparition and frozen spectre?
Was this an intervention in my Dream-book to be weighed and sifted in returning to Jonestown in Memory theatre?
I recalled the Day of the Dead when I lay on my pillow of stone and arose at nightfall in the bushes. I recalled my half self-accusatory, half self-confessional response to Deacon’s intervention and to the Virgin’s intervention in moments that seemed my last on Earth.
I knew then how ill-equipped I was to fathom intervention through the masks of fallen angels and Gods and Virgins (all of whom themselves are surrogates of an unfathomable Creator), through hidden texts that I needed to consider and reconsider again and again and to match with unspoken prayer …
‘Intervention by divine powers,’ I said at last to Mr Mageye, ‘is a challenge to the responses it seeks to invoke.’
He sensed my bewilderment as I faced him, two-in-one dual being he seemed, apparition and frozen spectre, frozen into solidity.
He said darkly to me: ‘I shall break, I shall break into many extensions, I shall appear to dissolve, a necessary trick.’
‘No, no.’ I cried in desperation. ‘I need you, Mr Mageye. What would I do without you?’
Mr Mageye gave his warm and magical smile. ‘It’s not yet time for me to depart from your Dream-book, Francisco. A warning that’s all. We have much still to do together. Have we not? We are still erecting a Memory theatre.’
‘But why break, why leave me?’
Mr Mageye touched me without appearing to touch me. He was deeply moved in himself by my need of him.
‘One guesses in the dark, Francisco, about the nature of the Creator as a subject to be taught in the history of creation. Should we not perceive creation itself as an extraordinary fiction susceptible to varieties of hidden texts …?’
‘Translations of the untranslatable that move us to look through and beyond ourselves?’ I could not help laughing at myself.
‘Quite so, quite so, Francisco. Without a sensation of uncharted realms, extra-human dimensions, I am inclined to feel that one is destined to freeze or burn in an absolutely human-centred cosmos inevitably promoting dominion and lust as its hidden agenda. It’s simple really, though some will insist it is difficult. The paradox of extra-human characterization in your Dream-book which brings surrogate Gods, surrogacies of a Creator, is that the surrogates (kings or Gods or angels or phenomenal Jesters or Judges or whatever) may appear to stand on platforms in space, to walk on a wave or a vortex, or whatever, but they surrender a hidden agenda of dominion in fiction which takes its cue from uncharted reflexes built into space. Those reflexes are akin to the wilderness music of the Word. Thus the agenda of absolute command over all species and things breaks, and surrogate Gods – whether they are fully conscious of it or not – disperse their apparently broken limbs into supportive organs of disadvantaged cultures and a sick humanity everywhere.’
I was so excited I could scarcely speak.
‘It seems to me, Mr Mageye,’ I said at last, ‘that there is a sacred Wound built (if I may so put it) into the Creator, a confessional deity-Wound which matches the reflexes of uncharted space. The Wound is so mysterious that it cannot be measured … But it is this which authorizes at some level of hidden grace – in counterpoint to orders of dominion – the dismemberment of Gods into supportive organs everywhere.’
For some uncanny, emotional reason – some uncanny wound within philosophy that brings ecstasy and pain – I found myself laughing with Mr Mageye. But laughter ceased and we began to consider terrorizing and terrorized regimes, cruel natures. How does the intervention of the Creator apply? Can we read or translate such intervention within the dismemberment of Gods?
‘One is in the dark, Francisco. But I would venture to say that this is a question that runs beyond all man-made frames or realisms or commandments. We need to adventure into intangible graces in counterpoint with terrors in nature. Not beauty for beauty’s sake, or realism for social realism’s sake. These are often disguised kingdoms of dominion that we would chart in nature and in history. There are intangible graces that we cannot seize but whose tracery exists in a web or a vein or the music of a bird or some other creature. These may suddenly illumine the intensity and extensity of a shared Wound within live, fossil realities of space, the psychicality of the living fossil … Such traceries are of immense archetypal significance and they break through absolute predatory coherence or plot …’
I glanced around within the chasm of space, in which the Earth revolved, and back through veils and intangible resources into the Port Mourant hospital in which the sick man was arising from his bed with his dog or lamb at his heels.
‘Shared Wound! I understand, Mr Mageye. Tell me more please! Is the imprint or tattoo on my Lazarus arm an aspect of that shared Wound?’
‘If it is,’ said Mr Mageye warily, cautiously, ‘it means that you, Francisco – as you wrestle with the severity of trauma – need to revisit Jonestown. You cannot do so without the horn of the huntsman and the sound of the flute. The huntsman wears the mask of Christ. The horn and the flute are branches of the archetype of a numinous and pagan Christ who summons Lazarus from the grave. That summons will take us through the Wheel of Virgin space. Your fate – if I may so put it as I read the signs, Francisco – is to venture into the music that addressed Lazarus, the music of the womb of space, the music of remarriage – in your case, Francisco – to the people of Jonestown. How can one break the trauma of the grave and not find oneself involved in a remarriage to humanity? I do not envy you the task. It is a terrifying embrace to remarry a perverse humanity, a bitter task, a bitter threshold or re-entry into Jonestown. And yet it has to be done. I can promise you a genuine ecstasy nevertheless, before I depart, and the trial that lies before you – however tormenting – will prove a liberation … I cannot say more for, in some ways, as I read the signs, I am as much in the dark as yourself, Francisco. Let me say however that your projection of sickness upon the Christ-archetype is an unspoken cry for help, a cry from the grave into which you dreamt you fell when you lay on a pillow of stone on the Day of the Dead.’
How could I feel anything but sorrow and anguish in the light of such remarks? And yet I would not have relinquished the challenge even if I could.
‘None can respond to your cry, the unspoken cry of humanity, save the Christ-archetype upon which you project the sickness of an age, a sickness rooted in an eclipse of orchestrated imageries that bear on the enigma of the hunt, the eni
gma of genesis, the enigma of birth, the enigma of savage numinosity as much as phenomenal summons through dissonances and consonances to the dead … LOOK! THERE HE GOES, FRANCISCO. The horn sounds in the branch of a tree. The flute cries in creatures that we consume. Do you hear, Francisco?’
‘Yes, I do,’ I said quietly. ‘He also bears the net from the Virgin bride’s hair. And he holds a door ajar in the Wheel, a door between worlds, between ages, between times. That door cannot be seized. It is untranslatable space …’
*
Mr Mageye and I followed the huntsman through the door in the Wheel into Jonestown, early 1978, tropical Spring. We heard the noises of the town, a living town, unconscious of being hauled up from the grave in which it lay since the day of the holocaust.
‘I remember clearly,’ I said to Mr Mageye. ‘Would you believe it?’
‘Believe what?’ said Mr Mageye matter-of-factly. ‘Believe that the huntsman accepted statistical pay when he was employed by Jones around this time? This time! When one voyages back from the future into the past it is not just time that changes, it is the spatialities inserted into time that are different. He accepted statistical pay to mask himself as a Nobody.’
Yes, I saw now in Memory theatre that there had been something odd about the huntsman when he accepted the job in Jonestown back in the future from which I had returned to this Dream-book changed spatiality.
I remembered now the way his hands moved to articulate a spiralling touch upon the dollars that he received. He touched his pay as if it were sampled money in a pool of numbers justifying astronomical rewards to the managers of privileged companies and religious, sweatshop pay to someone like himself. Statistical justice in the pool of the marketplace! On occasion I had seen him come to the Carnival Circus that Jonah sometimes sponsored. I had seen him wave a single dollar in the air and convert it into a huge bunch of fluttering pieces of paper.
Jonestown Page 11
