|
|
Canyons
A Spiral Dance Essay
i.
I am standing on the edge of a canyon, as broad and deep as the
Grand Canyon on Eath or the Valle Marianis on Mars. On the side
of the canyon opposite where I stand, I can see what awaits: I
can see the promises fulfilled, all those things that I am told
over and over that will be achieved, by virtue of my creative
gifts and my acquired skills. Greatness. Influence. Fame, either
major or minor. A comfortable income. Respect. People who love
my art and music enough to support me in its creation, by whatever
means that support will manifest.
But there is no bridge between where I stand and that other side,
and the canyon is very deep and silent beneath my feet, an abyss
of shadow. I am filled with despair.
I don't know how to build a bridge. I don't know how to get from
this side to that side. I don't even know if I must. Perhaps that
is all illusion, shadow-play, a dance of translucent leather puppets
lit by a flickering oil lamp. The world is Maya, illusion. Some
days you just want the illusions to cease, nothing more.
Hoping for an end to chaos is also a fantasy. There is nothing
but change. Sometimes I want to step sideways to the world, which
I can easily do, slip into that Other World that I can see so
clearly, and never return. Sometimes I feel I already have. Sometimes,
especially when I'm as exhausted as I am right now, I just want
to stop. Just stop.
But there's no stopping. The wheel rolls on. Either you keep up
with the cart, or you get left by the roadside. Escapism is just
a cop-out, ultimately, and potentially addictive.
Do you see? Every clue, every indication, is for the brass ring
to be achieved, for all my dreams to be fulfilled. The promise
is there. But when? It's always a few months in the future. The
goal always recedes. Xeno's Paradox: it's always just a lttle
further away, and you can't catch the turtle. The canyon yawns
at my feet, and I'm told I will get across it, but I'm not told
how or when.
How did I get here?
It seems my whole life has been aimed at this point, both the
successes and the overwhelming failures. The biographical details
dont matter, even though they played a major role. What I believe
doesn't matter, because my beliefs--those received wisdoms so
comforting to so many over the centuries--have long since been
ground under the wheels of experience. I don't "believe" anything
any more--and I find that word largely useless--rather, cosmology
follows ontology, while ontology follows experience.
Experience teaches us that institutions--be they governmental,
religious, spiritual, educational, or other--have inertia proportional
to their mass. Mass is a function of age times established social
influence. Abuse of power comes as no surprise. I got beaten up
and beaten down enough to learn to keep my secrets to myself,
most of the time. Letting out the truth, as I am doing now, is
only going to Disturb The Universe--yet once again. But letting
out the truth of my creative life--the art, the music, the poetry--is
why I find myself on the rim of this canyon: the world is begining
to notice my work, yet I find myself unable to step over, so far,
into that world. I feel exhausted at the prospect.
I was raised by a Lutheran family in a post-Vatican II Lutheran
congregation with a smart set of pastors who liked the idea of
re-introducing mysticism to the mainstream (which was the gift
of Vatican II to the world: the unveiling of the secret history
of Western mysticism). Lutherans are if nothing else liturgical
and logical. So re-introducing some mysticism was a great idea,
and I have many fond memories of moments of transcendance and
deep Mystery evoked by worship services at midnight on Christmas
Eve (lights on), and on Good Friday (lights out). But still, no
one knew what to do with a young man who could see angels and
talk to rocks and tree; mysticism was for the prophets of the
Biblical past, and had no place in the modern scientific age.
I tried to talk about it a few times, but gave up when it becamse
obvious no-one was understanding my very tentative and feeble
gropings towards a label. So, I kept it inside. Inside, though
I didn't have the words to describe it at the time, I was a panentheist,
a shaman, a mystic.
Growing up rational in science and religion, raised by a cultural
Tribe that praised creativity--as long as it wasn't overly messy--was
mostly a good thing. It gives me some secure balance between the
physical and energetic realms. But much suffering comes from the
failure of the rational mind to understand or explain the world
and its Mystery. God doesn't conform to our rules, and we hate
that.
Growing up was further complicated by a fluid sexuality, one day
this, one day that. As a teenager I wanted an adult man to love
me, and I also wanted to date girls. (I got a little bit of both,
but wanted much much more, and was usually frustrated by my own
shyness and timidity; because of which, my life has mostly been
a sexual desert.) Most people categorize me as gay, but I'm not.
I'm not bisexual either. I'm pansexual: everything and everybody
is erotic, in different ways, to different degrees. I admire Kate
Bornstein's gender outlaw stance, and the way the Radical Faeries
play with identity on a moment-to-moment basis. Few others recoginze
and acknowledge this innate fluidity of being. Nevertheless, the
stigma of being Other was there. The things you can't talk about.
The love that dare not speak its name. After you've heard people
tell you that you're wrong for a long time, you find it hard not
to believe them--simply worn down by attrition. So, again, I kept
my mouth shut most of the time.
But coming out as gay--even as imcomplete and provisional a label
as that has turned out to be--is nothing compared to coming out
spiritually. Being open about the spiritual seeds that God planted
in me has been far more terrifying, exhausting, and sublime. As
Rilke said in the Duino Elegies, "Every angel is terrifying."
And it is true. Nothing makes me feel more vulnerable than to
talk about my spiritual experiences--which is, after all, perhaps
the most important thing that there is to talk about. Even now,
I can't really detail the seeds without feeling weird.
Being a prophet is exhausting. Everything has to dissolve before
it can be built up again--or abandoned as a path mistook. Elijah
in the desert. Jesus in the desert. Mohammed in the desert. In
the three great middle-eastern religions--Judaism, Christianity,
Islam--there are two landscapes that are repeatedly written about
as Divine soulscapes: the desert, and the mountain. Even better
is a mountain in a desert.
Better, perhaps, for me to wander in the desert, preaching to
the crows. I feel more at home in the desert than I do on the
rim of this canyon, watching the shadowy images of what I may
never have. It's a canyon in a desert, at least.
Spending my earliest childhood years in India, my family sponsored
by the Lutheran mission--my father was a doctor who ran a hosptal
and taught and performed medicine--I grew up with people who had
a Calling. Having a Calling, a Big Purpose in life, was the norm.
It was just an everyday mission. If I ever felt inadequate, it
was because I didn't know what my Purpose was, or how to realize
it. In later years, my purpose has become more clear, and as a
result I know this: My artwork is my activism. My music and my
art are meant to help heal the world. My own evolution is a pathfinder
and waymaker--with all the loneliness of the separation from the
pack that is involved--is necessary: someone has to build the
roads that others will walk on. Along the way, I have become a
Reiki Master, and a few other things: all tools to assist the
journeying.
But I also grew up, without really being conscious of it, in a
place of many gods and many streams of spiritual evolution. Without
having the words to describe it, I could "feel" the Presence in
many of the places we visited in India--the ocean shoreline, the
great seaside temples at Mahabalipuram, the cave-temples of the
north, and along the roadsides, year-round. Driving by a field
of hot red peppers drying in the later afternoon sun. The wheels
of the Jeep nearly drowned in the mud on the way to the train
station during the monsoon.
This all lies behind me, on this side of the canyon. It is part
of my story, and what got me here. Where is the bridge?
My urges towards creativity and healing are not separable from
my sexuality. It is all One Force, the Eros that is the Power
under life, that gives life its energy and motion. The force that
through the green fuse drives the world. Do all these various
manifestations of the One Force color each other? Of course; they
must. But I am not a "gay artist" or a "gay healer," although
when I read Malcolm Boyd's book "Gay Priest" I recongize myself,
just as I recognize myself in the cultural detritus of Dead Gay
Artists such as Haring, Warhol, and Wojnarowicz. Even more clearly,
I see myself in the greatest poets of the Mystery: Rumi, Rilke,
Elytis, a few others.
Who are my mentors? They are all polymaths, who like me could
not decide which art to pursue to exclusion of all others, so
in their childlike wisdom remained open to all possibilities.
They are Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, John Cage. WHen
I was a teenager I was drawn to Gordon Parks because he was a
photographer, poet, writer, filmmaker, composer, and musician--with
no contradictions, good at all those arts, and brilliant at some.
I saw myself in that, even at the age of 8 or 9, when adults first
starting telling me that I would have to choose between doing
music, art, and words. I have fought that insidious narrowing
of focus for my whole life.
This side of the canyon rim is in sunset light, shadowed by mountains
and trees, while the other side seems flooded with light and purpose.
I have spent so long yearning and hoping that I have learned to
abandon hope as a traitor, a tease that sets you up for a fall.
The promise is there: I am supposed toa arrive there. But when?
The answer is always, "Not yet. Soon." Till I have turned my back
to my own angels and petulantly voiced my desire to quit God's
service. Can a priest be un-consecrated? Can you take it all back?
I will invest no more energy in platitudes or wisdom, or uplifting
stories that end in transcendantly happy endings. No such shadow
illusions are allowed; no fairy tale endings; no bon mots, no
morals to the story.
If life is one thing, it is messy. The great Modernist writers--James
Joyce, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Samuel Beckett--all in their
own ways, in their work, knew this and evoked it. Their writings
were controversial and "experimental" and upsetting to the cultural
powers that be precisely to the degree that they told the truth
of human experience in the modern world. Though the world tries
to co-opt them, and subsume their arguments and messages back
into the cultural mainstream--after all, everyone knows Joyce
and Woolf, but who actually reads them?--they remain untamed.
Case in point: A current novel and movie called "The Hours," purporting
to be a meditation on Virginia Woolf, fails miserably in that
it merely repeats the classic stereotypes of the Misunderstood
Artist, sub-variety Self-Destructive. Perhaps the cultural accolades
awarded both book and movie merely reflect our current Tribal
anxiety about our ongoing post-Modern cultural rudderlessness.
But neither book nor movie captures the essence of Virginia Woolf,
and as a meditation on life and being an artist, one would do
far better to read Woolf herself, say, "To The Lighthouse" and
"The Waves."
So, chaos never dies.
My own chaos never dies. It never seems to go away. I prayed some
dangerous prayers along the way, and I am reaping the whirlwind.
The most dangerous prayer you can ever pray is: "Thy Will Be Done."
The second most dangerous prayer you can ever pray is: "Remove
the veils, so that I may see You more clearly." Trust me on this
one; I know.
ii.
A few months alter, I had this Dream:
There is a bridge, as sharp and cold and clear as ice, stretching
across the canyon. It is evening, the sky a rich clear indigo
shading to royal blue on the western horizon. I am standing on
the edge, then I step forward and began to go across. I am not
alone. Some of those I cross with I know, and some are strangers.
We achieve the other side of the canyon. I step onto the ground,
which is polished stone, with excitement and joy. There are no
other people here, other than those of us who have just crossed,
but there are buildings and streets as open and as densely woven
as a maze. Brightly lit storefronts like theatre marquees are
everywhere, and the place glitters with light. It took time to
cross the bridge, because we were walking; the sky is now filling
with stars. The group of us scatter into the glittering streets,
to each explore in our direction.
I have a feeling of completion, of answered prayers, or excitement.
I have no idea what's going to happen next. I have no plans, and
no expectations in the dream. I feel that first the new land is
to be explored, then whatever gifts I am to receive will come
forward.
Now, a year later, I can say this: Change has happened. The answers
do not always come in the shape or form in which we hope and expect
them to come. They do come, but when we expect them to take a
certain form, we are bound to be disappointed.
I discover that the City is not always ugly, and not always beautiful.
The City is infinite, perched on its cliff above the canyon and
the river below. It is a place where anything can happen, and
will.
I don't know what it means. I don't know how it reflcets on my
waking life. I know that there are connections; it is all a webwork,
a net of connections, forming a Unity beyond logical definition.
Where do we go from here? I don't know. Let's find out.
A Spiral Dance essay © 2003–2004 Arthur Paul Durkee / Black Dragon
Productions.
|
