LIVING
AS I LAY LIVING
What could Vardaman Bundren have possibly meant when he said:
My mother is a fish You know the 8 yr. old Vardaman in Faulkner’s
As I Lay Dying His mother Addie has just died in her bed as an older
son works an adze for days Making the coffin that will carry Addie to
her grave
Just prior to Addie’s final breath Vardaman kills +guts a fish The 2
converge in his 8 yr. old psyche The dead fish + the dead mother In the
lore of the Fisher King the grail legend posits: the wounded Fisher King
is the healer the grail being one’s own personal healing elixir made from
suffering a life
What wounds you will heal you The gutted fish + the cancer ridden mother
teach the boy that there is only 1 simple truth And the fisher of men said it
best: the truth will set you free Fearing death is fearing life Life the bardo
state the in-between the waking-dream For who is truly alive?
The cuckholded husband who meets his wife’s lover +doesn’t punch his lights
out? And why not? He came to suffer the truth of what was missing in their
marriage The answer: feeling alive So get hold of the water of life +whatever
it is for you tie it in a bundle +place it on a stick
If it is music also memorize the silences These pauses before what is coming
are important crucial in fact to prepare you for the great wide open The
longest pause where you won’t have to: mind the gap That curious sign posted
as you step onto the subway Here in life no one wants you to fall through the cracks
Society is set up to protect you Mostly from yourself Should you get to know
yourself too well you might hoist the yoke +make a beeline Who then would
inherit the kingdom of heaven? Freedom is not for the meek But then you’ve
heard it all before: aging is enlightenment at gunpoint*
__
*But only if yer kicking+screaming
Learn to die and thou shalt learn to live, for there shall none
learn to live, that has not learned to die.
(The Book of The Craft of Dying Comper’s Edition)
Fall 2017 RIP John Lennon 77 today somewhere
