True Alchemie

Sometimes, I wonder why anyone would want to come looking for a humble alchemist.

I sit, appropriately chastened for my sins, in a dolorous chamber. I scrape my sores with a potsherd and meditate on Marcus Aurelius. I play Tolga Kashif and the voice of Karen Carpenter through my Harmon Kardon soundsticks. I sing to myself. I read. I think about the writings of apostles, of dreamers, of mystics, and of those who sell their words regardless of value.

And do I change lead into gold? No, not always so, and if so, sometimes by accident. Like many quacks and master tricksters, I realise that as I teach, expound, discourse, and attempt to educate, I am merely scratching away a layer of dross which someone has used to conceal true gold. Yes, I have many awards, secret and hidden, cryptonomous and covert; but they don't mean that I am the master of the philosopher's stone of education. Rather, I have to admit, in humility, that those who I teach are already gold. All that is needed is the physical transformation of torturing the dross away — by fire, water and quicksilver, just as my illustrious forebears have done down the long centuries.

Rather, I employ a philosopher's tone — a moderate, moderating, mediative and meditative approach. Who am I, really, to tell them who they should be, where they should go, what they should do? Even the archapostle Peter was told that he would be taken where he did not want to go, and yet he was a great pillar of his church. Would he have been so if he had gone through the obvious forms of education and transmogrification?

I leave you with a little tale, as the farmer's wife said to the blind mouse.

Imagine Peter, fisherman and master of the lake. He strides with confidence along the grey shores of Galilee. He owns his ship, and his nets, and perhaps even his brothers and neighbours. He knows fish. A hidden watcher declaims from Olympus, "This is a fisherman. See his skill. See how beautifully he wields his art. He meets all requirements for promotion. Name him now, ex-fisherman; name him now, Head of Fishermen."

Years pass. The voice speaks twice more. Peter is now Prince of Fish, Director of Schools. He owns ships and men and nets and perhaps all the lake. He has been far too busy to note the death of kings, and of men who claim to be prophets, and of poets who claim to be both. He dimly remembers his neighbour Joshua, crucified for his pains. He hardly noticed that his brother Andrew (now in hiding) went off with Joshua and his gang of revolutionaries. Andrew will be crucified diagonally, James will be beheaded, John will die in exile on Patmos. But the business prospers, and the sign of the fish is on every amphora of salted jewfish in the Roman Empire. And Peter's story is not the one we know.