by Harvey Lillywhite.
The ordinary, painfully beautiful world, beyond words—
those little cathedrals of imagination I live in: in the small garden outside my front door, an orange tiger lily, which was supposed to bloom in the early summer, just now, in mid-October, with the first frost in the nearby hills, blossoms radiantly, its 6 petals a silent chorus, if you listen carefully enough until sight and sound and comprehension merge into a feeling and you know exactly what the flower says, in this ordinary, painfully beautiful morning, beyond words—
those magical wizards that conjure uncountable realities: last evening, Venus shone beside the white October crescent moon, small and white, in a cloudless black sky in the starry dimension just above ours where, I feel, in a dimension just above that, swarms of beings we have no good word for (could they be angels? seraphim? you tell me) looked down and silently chanted joy and love for the miracle of this everyday cosmos it is our privilege to live in for a while, by accident, the ordinary, painfully beautiful world, beyond words—
those tricky hypnotizers with their analyses and explanation: here we are just people on the earth trying to get along…here we are just people on the earth trying to survive (nobody ever tells us, nobody ever tells us, how; nobody ever tells us, nobody ever tells us, why)…Buddah, Jesus, Yahweh, Celtic Gods, Polynesian Gods, Ancient and Modern Gods, the Gods of the pine needle, of the woodpecker’s eye, the slug and the butterfly, the whole holy gang of them all, named and unnamed, say, “don’t be greedy; you need to help the needy along,” in this ordinary, painfully beautiful world, beyond words—
those little politicians that slant my way of seeing what’s real, which is really beyond words, deep in the heart, all souls united, one nation of love, indivisible, amid the dance of opposites, endlessly turning the kaleidoscope, fall leaves, bare winter trees, of this so ordinary, so painful, so beautiful whirling world.
So here is the world, and these are some words: your seat. the screen in front of you. the big room we all must share. the wonderful expanse of our short life. touch it. here are the problems, one after another. here are our loves. we are just memories moving forward. nothing so special. the normal order of events, average common everyday hurricane routine unexceptional unremarkable glaciers melting usual not strange, in this ordinary, painfully beautiful world, beyond words—
With words I’m married to my thoughts: on my next birthday, I was thinking, I’ll turn 60. I could say that it feels as though I’ll move to the other side of the fence. I’ll be looking in on all the hubbub, the laugh-track, the iTunes, the important chatter that will start going on without me there in that huge compound inside the great fence—all the zillion marriages of words to thoughts. Out there outside the fence I’ll lose my words—first the names, then the nouns….
When I look in the mirror now, there’s a new me. I’ve grown ageless, I think. So soon I’ll be standing outside the fence, in a different body that I hardly recognize, ageless, the same spirit I was when I lay in my crib watching four scarlet plastic cardinals turning above me to a lullaby; the same spirit I was at 8 when I swerved accidently into traffic on my bicycle, and time somehow warped, and I missed being hit and ended up back on my bike, pedaling safely along the road like nothing had happened, horns honking and honking; the same me when I first experienced true love; the same me when my kids were born and I cried for joy; the same me that attended my dying grandparents and parents, forever, the same me, the same spirit, ageless, a new face in the morning mirror, my real face in the mirror in my mind, without words in this ordinary, painfully beautiful world. Who am I, I wonder? And when I see you, I wonder who you are? Do we know each other?
Slowly I’ll walk away from the fence, like a clown, juggling my last few words like so many bowling pins, effortlessly, thinking about tomorrow’s weather, feeling less and less concern for the colossal wrestling inside the fence, feeling more and more compassion, hoping that sometime this very day I can truly give up hope, finally let it go.
What fantastic nodes of energy and awareness we are, me and the green and white lichen on the north-facing side of the two dogwood trees in my front yard, the two dogwood trees dropping their red leaves on the grass, the grass clinging to the soil, the soil holding onto the rock, the rock floating on the molten fire, some part of a long-ago exploding star, some part of an exhale that looked like a big bang, in the midst of countless other big bangs, all inside the fence that soon, luckily, I will move beyond, without words. That’s what I was thinking.
But for now, I live among difficult people. I am myself a difficult person. With all the angels out there, with all the potential cosmic help—can you fathom it—I’m on my own here. I sit in slats of sunlight streaming in through the blinds; I play guitar hard and loud, eyes closed, screaming out for a vision, for some assistance, but when I stop and come back to the shimmering room, I see only the old spider webs in the big window and the few little spiders who sit with me every morning as I give thanks to nothing in particular.
Finally, I’d ask that you touch your face just before the rain; it’s bliss to feel at night how close we are to nothing, as pretty as flowers and hearty as chance, fortunately numb to the true speed of time—billions of years already whisked away like a magician’s scarf, white doves flying endlessly from a bottomless black hat. In night’s deep heartland, a few hours of sleeplessness could seem like forever, and is, or maybe is as close as we will come. Miles from any ocean, smell the salt air from surf spray risen from cliffs and rocks a breeze has breathed inland. Stand in a field in night-drizzle tasting what has fallen from heaven. Each night reveals our heart. A full moon, hanging on nothing, disturbs the ocean and pulls paradise from a little inlet of memory—a white crane lifting from the wet grasses makes the whole world a single room we all can share in an winter night’s bliss. If we could remain nightblind, without words, we’d hear a muffled world come alive—the feeling of being everything and next to nothing in the same moment—the ordinary, painfully beautiful world.