Meteorology
It rains again. It rains on the just and the unjust. It precipitates on all. This is the time of the monsoon. And as one master story-teller began his tale:
It was the season of rains...
It was well into the time of the great wetness...
It was in the days of the rains that their prayers went up, not from the fingering of knotted prayer cords or the spinning of prayer wheels, but from the pray-machine in the monastery of Ratri, goddess of the Night.
The high-frequency prayers were directed upward through the atmosphere and out beyond it, passing into that golden cloud called the Bridge of Gods, which circles the entire world, is seen as a bronze rainbow at night and is the place where the red sun becomes orange at midday.
Some of the monks doubted the orthodoxy of this prayer technique, but the machine had been built and operated by Yama-Dharma, fallen, of the Celestial City; and, it was told, he had ages ago built the mighty thunder-chariot of Lord Shiva: that engine that fled across the heavens belching gouts of fire in its wake.
These lines, of course, come from Roger Zelazny's epic 1967 novel, often said to have been his best, Lord of Light. And right now, as I surf the wet net, reading about the mundane complaints of men against water and foreign imports and longevity-mad emperors, I think about the sense of wonder we used to have, all mushed up and shredding into the flood like discarded tissue paper.
There is so little left to withstand the storm. It is not so much revival that we need, but growth. You do not plant saplings every few years as a defence against erosion; you nurture saplings into mighty trees with roots that dig deep. And to do that, you have to feed them well.
It was the season of rains...
It was well into the time of the great wetness...
It was in the days of the rains that their prayers went up, not from the fingering of knotted prayer cords or the spinning of prayer wheels, but from the pray-machine in the monastery of Ratri, goddess of the Night.
The high-frequency prayers were directed upward through the atmosphere and out beyond it, passing into that golden cloud called the Bridge of Gods, which circles the entire world, is seen as a bronze rainbow at night and is the place where the red sun becomes orange at midday.
Some of the monks doubted the orthodoxy of this prayer technique, but the machine had been built and operated by Yama-Dharma, fallen, of the Celestial City; and, it was told, he had ages ago built the mighty thunder-chariot of Lord Shiva: that engine that fled across the heavens belching gouts of fire in its wake.
These lines, of course, come from Roger Zelazny's epic 1967 novel, often said to have been his best, Lord of Light. And right now, as I surf the wet net, reading about the mundane complaints of men against water and foreign imports and longevity-mad emperors, I think about the sense of wonder we used to have, all mushed up and shredding into the flood like discarded tissue paper.
There is so little left to withstand the storm. It is not so much revival that we need, but growth. You do not plant saplings every few years as a defence against erosion; you nurture saplings into mighty trees with roots that dig deep. And to do that, you have to feed them well.
etched with acid at 9:12:00 am
2 Comments:
An allegorical tale.
It was dawn, and the day of the great distance race had come.
They gathered along the coast, and waited, and waited.
And the storm was already there, waiting, watching.
It played with them, let the winds seem to blow it away, yet just as soon as it seemed to be gone, it brought down its freezing raindrops upon them.
There was a retreat to the tents; yet soon those too were flooded as the waters rose above the grass. The storm continued to rage.
And yet there were others who sat upon their pedestals safely, unaffected by the storm.
Slowly, yet certainly, the situation descended into anarchy, as those who were on the ground, or rather, the flooded ground, took their leave, with or without permission given.
/Sorrows
I heard of this tale, and I think it was a rather cross country that gazed upon its rulers, resentful, wet, compromised, and with regrets for time wasted and a morning lost. :)
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