From: Youssef
Alaoui <alaoui@speakeasy.net>
Pot of Bees
We are of the river.
The river, then, is us. We flow and change and yet still remain. Conspicuously
indestructible yet inscrutably fragile.
Siddhartha Gautama
met the riverman first, and importantly so; because, as he left the
life he knew, the river was the most important lesson of his voyage.
The riverman said, pointing to the river, This vacant beast is
an allegory for time: what was past, what is now, and what is our future
coexist simultaneously, in a single bed, NOT AT ALL PLACIDLY, as one
heaving miraculous continuum!
This river bears memorial
to all people past and present, all creaturesflora and fauna; everything
borne of it and murdered by it.
To understand the
river is to understand that we are brothers and sisters every one of
us; over time as well as geography.
It is not only a monument
to other things, but a monument to itself. It is an icon of itself;
a relentless flexing brown worm, braying at the fences; king of indifference
and the continuum.
To this one can pray:
a simple butte at its crown, smacked into life by a clear rivulet fanning
out from a crack in the earth, maturing into a liquid temple the size
of fifty human cities, raging in continual impermanence. It is nothing
less than a locus wherein we could lose ourselves in life, in death,
in lesson.
When finally you let
its mass wrap you up and carry you off, and as the pressure of one hundred
thousand gallons of water a minute peels your significance away from
you, and when lovers clutch and groan against one another, sliding by,
strapped to a stick raft, skins scorched by the sun, and when gazed
upon by Ambrose Bierce laying crouched up on the shore, sobbing into
a patch of reeds, blubbering, Forget Twain! Forget the steamboats!
Forget your bastard legends of negroes snoozing on the dock, dangling
a fishing line off the toe! Bury your fantasies of crayfish!
THIS WATER WONT
CARE FOR YOU!
Your reality
is not a shady island where you hide from your stupid parents. They
tried their best for you. It is not they, it is you who is mistaken.
If you made it this far youve gone the wrong way. Theres
a corpse at the head of the road affixed to a tree. It bears the face
of your brother. A misfit band of drunken vigilantes has beaten him
to death, filled his eyes with lightning bugs and flexed his finger
to gesture the path you should be on. Its no use! My basket is
empty! Ive been here all night... wont someone throw me
a fish...? This is when the flies sing a quiet melody, much like
a sigh of relief, as composed by Gyorgi Ligeti.
The rivers song
is alluring. Mystery sparks the imagination. Tragedy sparks compassion.
Stability sparks the rebel. Death sparks life.
That is the lesson
of the river.