bodies, mysteries and beyond
When I try to tell other people of my reoccurring nightmare it usually does not have the same impact or reaction that it does with me; waking in the dead of night, sweating and restless, my mind a dull ache of whirl. The German poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe once wrote, “Art is the revelation of the secret laws of nature, which, without it, would remain forever hidden” (Van, 13) Yes, these “secret laws of nature” are important … but they change as we change Nature. The wild woods of Germany's Black Forest are gone. The deep regions of the ocean are being fished empty. There are no more fresh bodies of water in America unpolluted from factory run-off, industry waste, city sewage. That “pure, sweet element” Thoreau bragged about is no more.
To talk about my nightmare is to talk about the absence of what use to visit me. For months, while living in Las Vegas, I dreamed about a shark; a pregnant Great White. My totem. Hesiod said, “In the golden age the gods, robed in air, walked among men.” They also swam. They are a rare creature in a world almost totally misunderstood by humans. They are a life force that, for the most of us, not one of us will ever encountered besides in movies (bad movies at that) and books (even worse), or if we have been blessed by contact it was the briefest of glances, a light touch at best; still, everyone has an opinion about them. I speak of the gods right now. But this spirit-shark (it must have been a ghost since we are in the process of destroying all last large predatory fish in the seas) stayed with me every night for nearly half a year. My dear friend Stephanie Dominique has asked me on many an occasion to move beyond sharks … I think I bored her to tears with my repetitive backchat … but how can you defuse an obsession? I could not then and cannot now.
Perhaps you have trouble understanding this? I am not Judaeo-Christian but 1 Corinthians 2:7 reads, “but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery.” That makes sense to me. And now that fiery presence is gone so I wake up at night both terrified and fretful. There is no more shark in my dreams for there is no more life in my dream-oceans; they are empty and vast and dead. I hated Rimbrandt's painting Evangelist Matthew (1661) not for the subject matter but because Old Man Matthew was still getting his boy Muse whispering in his ear. I was jealous! Years ago, back when only the erotic impulse drove me (you would've hated me then, I think), my Muse was the Other's body and there are bodies everywhere. How can you not tremble in the presence of such beauty? Kakuzo Okakura wrote, “in order to understand a masterpiece you must bow yourself low before it and await with baited breath its least utterance” (ibid., 151) … of the many bodies I bowed before (and as a beta male I did a lot of bowing), sadly, few actually uttered anything useful. Still, hustling (if that is even the right word) — the drive for money and food and comfort — filled my verse as I attempted to find significance; all this must mean something. It was a time when I thought everybody's body was a miracle. Perhaps they were.
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Now I find I am neither the Boy in the painting nor the Master. The “the secret laws” remain hidden and my inspiration is neither Pleasure nor the Other. It is a frightful, empty dream I cannot seem to shake. It is the end of days, apocalypse, the end of the oceans. “It is all rather odd and jumbly,” as Winnie the Pooh once put it, “when I try to explain it to anyone.” Indeed.
Once I read that Rembrandt had nightmares too
I stopped hating him so much. Raise the dream
to find him. I have just one. Dream I knew
as it was. As it is. And the blaspheme
was me — that softly mews in the painting
of Old Matthew and the Boy — a femme
boy like me. Need cash? Bad. Now. They're paying
three Gs a day, under the table, them
is the going rate, she said. I'm a boy
just not The Boy. You're a Master just not
mine. Make this into a novel, a song.
Make this glow like the old man's fierce joy,
boy. I crave for an Eden in me. What
this is, I see, is vast, barren and wrong.
Work Cited
Van, James. Spirit and Art. Great Barrington, MA: Anthroposophic Press. (2001)