A man becomes part of the largest circle ever drawn by human beings
The Atlas of Curiosities: Part 19
It was in the evening and we were brought face to face with the reality of death. We had been in the back of a milk truck in Pakistan when we caught an odd scene towards the side of the road. An old tottering villager had at last been taken under by a flu, and his family members rushed round to prepare his body for burial. They washed him, and wrapped in in a white garment as prescribed by their Prophet, and lay him into the ground on his right side at the precise spot where he last drew breath.
Our host translated the grandson’s explanation. “Laying on his right side, he is facing Mecca, which is far away.”
“Towards what purpose?” we asked.
“The community is laid out in an array like this,” the young man said, motioning a circle shape with his arms. “My grandfather is now part of a circle that is magnificent and large, perhaps the largest circle ever drawn by human beings. Like rays of light we lay ourselves out from a single source: in life and in death. In life we are arrayed vertically, like the beams of the sun as it rises in the morning. In death we lie horizontally, like the sunlight hitting the clouds as it sinks in the evening. The array is only visible to God, or to your mind’s eye, but it is real, as real as the body of my grandfather who has been put in the dirt.”
We paid our respects to the man’s family, and moved on.
—-
Rumbling along on the milk truck, the large ceramic bottles clacked and clattered around us. The liquid within could be heard to turn and fall.
“We feel as if we have entered into a dream,” we told our host.
“Indeed you have,” our host said.
“That man who was laid in the ground, was he also part of our dream?” we asked.
“What do you think?” asked our host.
We clattered on in silence along an uneven dirt road.
We had come down from the hills and found ourselves in a cemetery at the foot of Bedford Street, and it was called Sleepy Hollow. Among those resting was Henry David Thoreau, whose grave was marked by a simple stone bearing his first name only: “Henry”.
Someone then remarked upon what Thoreau had achieved, and someone remarked upon how much there was to be learned from the man and his life.
As this when on, our host strayed away and sat on a small stone, no doubt also a headstone of some famous man’s grave.
We walked to our host, and asked the reason for this isolation and this silence.
“You have likely not heard of Thoreau’s music box,” our host said. “It is mentioned in the diary of Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, who knew Thoreau when he was a young man.”
“We have not heard of it,” we said.
“It was a magical music box, which Thoreau spent his life winding,” our host said. “It can still be heard today.”
We sat in silence, and the wind blew in the trees, rustling one thousand needles and shaking one thousand slender branches.
“What does it sound like?” we asked.
“Like this,” our host said. “Like silence and human voices. Like the spaces behind words.”
——-
We sat for a long time.
“We asked you before by what art mysteries are concealed from us, and you urged us to be patient,” we said.
“I did,” said our host.
“To us that seems preposterous,” we said. “We require answers.”
“Then ask the right questions,” our host replied.
We looked into the trees and the light was gold and grey. We looked down at the ground, covered in pine needles, and there was a rustle in the boughs of the trees.
Salah was one of my English students in Cairo. He drew lots of pictures, oftentimes they were about Sudan. When he finsihed he would hang them up in the refugee center, but this one he gave to me. It is a drawing of a village in Darfur before all of the trouble.
The bridge which became a point of interest during a grey month
The Atlas of Curiosities: Part 17
It was a grey place, a grey month, and the bridge was grey. The water was grey, and beneath it, grey stones were motionless. It was November.
On the one end sat an old man in a folding chair.
As pedestrians approached the bridge, he inflated a white balloon with helium and tied it with a ribbon. Before they crossed, each person was handed a balloon. Standing a distance away, we watched as one balloon after another quietly drifted over the bridge, seemingly without the aid of human hands.
“How interesting it would be to know where each balloon goes,” we thought aloud. “And how interesting to know the motivations of the elderly gentleman there.”
Our host smiled at this, but said “There is poetry neither in the past nor in the future.”
We retired to a coffee shop, and discussed the events of the day.
In which frustration is felt: The unexplained appearence of kites high in the mountains
The Atlas of Curiosities: Part 16
Though night was coming very quickly, the sky was still pale yellow, and the wind swept down off the mountains and blew our hair. We were high on a mountain pass in Afghanistan, and the next day we planned to cross over the large ridge that was now casting a shadow over the entire valley.
As we looked up at the ridge envisioning the next day’s journey, we saw a bright spot of color jump out over the peak, then another, and another. Soon, the entire sky over the ridge was full of dancing pieces of colors.
We called for binoculars, and looked closely at the colors. They were kites! Though we had thought that this area was uninhabited, it now seemed as if the ridge was concealing a village of people, and a festive people at that.
As we watched, we counting nearly 600 kites, though determining an exact number was extremely difficult, as even as we had gained an understanding of what we were seeing, the kites dipped one by one and spiralled down the ridge towards where we were. The people on the other side of the ridge, it seemed, had cut the kite strings, sending some kites higher, some lower, some spinning out of control. After several minutes, a few kites landed softly near us, and we found that they were exquisitely constructed and painted with lovely poetry in a language that no one could read.
Confused by the kite’s sudden appearance and the manner in which they were cut loose, we forced ourselves to sleep, knowing that we would need energy in the morning to cross the pass and meet festive villagers on the other side of the ridge.
We slept, and when morning came we climbed over the hill in search of the village that had made the offering of kites the night before. Crossing the summit ridge and looking down into the valley we found it to be completely empty.
We conducted a complete search of the area, but all we found were tracks, made, it seemed, by a simple cart. Following these tracks for some time, we came upon and old man riding on a donkey and towing a dilapidated wooden cart. Upon interrogation, he verified that the tracks and kites alike had been his doing, but he would not reveal the craft by which he had achieved this feat.
—-
We turned to our host.
“By what art did this occur?” we asked. “And by what art are mysteries concealed from us?” we asked.
Our host smiled, but eyes have a way of revealing hidden sadnesses.
“Write this down,” our host told us. “So when the time comes that the veil is lifted, you can remember what it felt like to not understand. “
“We don’t understand,” we said.
Our host just smiled.
“Write this down,” our host told us. “write this down.”
The time came that we were high on a mountain in China’s Szechaun Province, a place far away from the places we knew, in a time that seemed far away from any time we were familiar with. It was morning, and the light that was streaming down onto the peaks was white, unlike any we had ever seen.
As the hillside turned grey, scrambling footsteps were heard, and a porter was seen coming down off the high rocks.
Running towards us, he sent a cascade of rocks from beneath his feet, and his shadow moved peacefully over the slope, though his own form was tossed about by his motion. When he arrived, he was breathless: “He is gone! He is gone!” he gasped.
We were disturbed by his words, and asked him who it was who had disappeared. “The mountaineer!” he said. “He ascended too far!”
Confused, we asked for clarification. Indeed, it was on this day that a mountaineer was scheduled to climb Mount Gongga, known for its vastness, its solitude, its beauty and its danger.
Signing as best he could, the porter described the ascent. He and the mountaineer had reached the summit, when a great wind had come up, and blown snow off the peak in a great cloud. The mountaineer, we understood, had placed his spiked boot upon the pinnacle of Mount Gongga, and, turning back for just an instant, had leaned forward, pushed off, and continued his ascent.
“I was so frightened,” said the porter, “that I could not speak. He walked on the wind. He walked on nothing.”
Rapidly, we began preparing a rescue party. Surely the porter had become delusional at such an altitude, and surely the mountaineer was within reach still.
Knowing our thoughts, our host spoke.
“He is not within your reach,” our host said. “But do not be afraid. Where he has gone, one day you will go. Where you are, you must remain. Though what has happened is beyond your comprehension, you must stay for now.”
We looked up at the peak. Snow blew still from its upper reaches, and fell silently down into the valley below, no doubt becoming rain that would flow to the ocean.
Our thoughts turned to places far away, and we lowered our heads.
Here a man is praying in the Blue Mosque in Istanbul which is truly blue and big.
At nighttime in Istanbul, the imams in the Blue mosque and the Haya Sofia sing the call to prayer together and alternate verses so that their voices twist together like two big birds spiraling into the sky. It is very nice, Istanbul at nighttime.
Today at oh-seven-hundred, I awoke to find that robots had yet again invaded my website and posted all kinds of comments everywhere detailing which nude videos they had recently viewed, and promising links to these videos. What use robots would have for a naked Harry Potter, I do not know, but sure enough Daniel Radcliff, the young boy-wizard, was amoung those that the robots were targeting with their malicious SPAM.
Since this is a family site, I have taken Draconian Measures to prevent robots from posting on my website (I started using captchas). I am sorry Robots, posting here is a privilege and not a right, and until you prove yourself capable of engaging in useful dialog, the captchas stay.
Humans, feel free to pass this Turing test as often as the day is long, but don’t post links to nude Harry Potters. If people want that, they can find it on their own time.
UPDATE: I have tested my anti robot measures and as far as I can tell, they are sound. To be honest, the orbot messages on the site were very annoying to me. I could not figure out why robot took so many mood-altering pharmaceuticals. Now that I have solved this problem, SWC is back in biznass.
