Rilke's Roots.
In dreams things happen to you but this time I was in control
A mountain hostel somewhere in Eastern Europe, the weather calm and sunny. I'd climbed a little way up to a rise in the ground where I could see snowy peaks all round but the place wasn't suitable. Yellow earth moving machines were there and a notice saying, Keep Out. Returning I'd dug myself a grave not far from the door and was planning to be buried alive. Being somewhat wimpish I'd bought a couple of pills from the doctor to calm me down. They cost £1.50 and I dropped the rest of my unneeded change into a charity box.
There was no hurry. No one took any interest. My grave was homely with a candle holder on one wall, but the dry soil seemed sterile and all too neat and constructed.
I awake now, but the grave was waiting. There was no hurry. I'd been reading Rilke:
"But when I lean over the chasm of myself- it seems my God is dark and like a web: a hundred roots silently drinking.
Mien Gott ist dunkel und wie ein Gewebe von hundert Wurzeln, welche schweigsam trinken."
More I don't know, because my roots rest in deep silence, stirred only by the wind. They are in a dark ferment. They explore blindly, clinging to the rock. There is much to explore, lots of other roots, fungal hypha, wiggling nematodes and insect grubs. I am a neural network growing and sensing. Chemicals surge down from above. Some clinging roots have grown so large they see the sky.
"Whom should I turn to, if not the one whose darkness is darker than the night, the only one who keeps vigil with no candle, and is not afraid - the deep one, whose being I trust, for it breaks through the earth into trees, and rises, when I bow my head, faint as a fragrance from the soil."
I feel the wind. It is tearing me out of darkness to another dawn.
A mountain hostel somewhere in Eastern Europe, the weather calm and sunny. I'd climbed a little way up to a rise in the ground where I could see snowy peaks all round but the place wasn't suitable. Yellow earth moving machines were there and a notice saying, Keep Out. Returning I'd dug myself a grave not far from the door and was planning to be buried alive. Being somewhat wimpish I'd bought a couple of pills from the doctor to calm me down. They cost £1.50 and I dropped the rest of my unneeded change into a charity box.
There was no hurry. No one took any interest. My grave was homely with a candle holder on one wall, but the dry soil seemed sterile and all too neat and constructed.
I awake now, but the grave was waiting. There was no hurry. I'd been reading Rilke:
"But when I lean over the chasm of myself- it seems my God is dark and like a web: a hundred roots silently drinking.
Mien Gott ist dunkel und wie ein Gewebe von hundert Wurzeln, welche schweigsam trinken."
More I don't know, because my roots rest in deep silence, stirred only by the wind. They are in a dark ferment. They explore blindly, clinging to the rock. There is much to explore, lots of other roots, fungal hypha, wiggling nematodes and insect grubs. I am a neural network growing and sensing. Chemicals surge down from above. Some clinging roots have grown so large they see the sky.
"Whom should I turn to, if not the one whose darkness is darker than the night, the only one who keeps vigil with no candle, and is not afraid - the deep one, whose being I trust, for it breaks through the earth into trees, and rises, when I bow my head, faint as a fragrance from the soil."
I feel the wind. It is tearing me out of darkness to another dawn.
posted by johnthebarman at 10:41 am
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