The Book of Splendor

 

    On notebooks – my friend Derick always carries one: a hefty black sketchbook full of well-bound blank pages of substantial weight.  And another friend, when traveling, likes this kind of notebook too – one, which he says, ". . .will not come apart when sand gets into it."  A durable notebook for durable words. Words that will last.  Words to be read.  Important words.  Words that can make things happen.

            And then there is my kind of notebook: flimsy, thin, with maybe a month's worth of blue-lined pages in it, bound together by wires or staples.  Sometimes by glue, because I have a deep affection for glue, for how it works so hard to hold other things together.

            I prefer a notebook that comes apart at the seams, something that can be wrecked utterly by sand and dew, by rainwater and ferny matter, by the weeds I so often sit among to write in it.  I like opening a little book of pages and getting a fragrance of wood-smoke and rich loam, that up-rush of where I have been before. 

            What I understand about my words, even the moments in which something profound may surface in them, is how rightfully they belong on paper that tatters and frays and wears thin at the edges.  On something that falls apart.  Something that will not be preserved; something falling, under the stern hand of time, easily back to its most basic matter.

            All things, it is said, have lives and half-lives; all things are nuclear at their center, and I believe that, don't I?  Why put all the words I cannot speak aloud into books like these, let them live out their lives and half-lives as I do, let them fall again into nothingness?

                                                            ~

            It is a noisy, noisy world.  Let my gift to it be silence.

                                                            ~

            There was a time I wanted nothing more than to finish a sentence – just one – before someone started talking over me.  It seemed, to me, so little to ask, and such a great imposition for those around me.

            After a time, I brought only my silence to the table, to the conversation, the conference, the meeting, the party.  Why wreck further a half-wrecked heart?  The sorrow would do you in.

                                                            ~

            As with any exile, I learned in time to make a country, a homeland, of silence in which I could pitch my tent in peace.  I became its sea and its vessels, the rich cargo in every dark hold.  I became its mist-shrouded mountain peak and its valley of fog.  I became its meadow of children playing and its moon's littlest white fang, the prodigal and the return, the squandered inheritance and the fatted calf, being readied for slaughter.

            I have whole mornings now sitting alone on a sunny stoop, filling with sun.  What must passersby think of that woman in her flour-dusted apron sitting there, eyes closed, taking in the sun? Assuming they even see her at all.

            I think living in a kingdom of silence, I might also have become invisible.  Most days it seems that way.  Not a great loss to the world; not a great loss to me.

            Still, is it reasonable to be so startled when some stranger says, good morning or a friend writes, "a sweet and cunning smile" as he takes down the spill of your words?

                                                            ~

           I am The Fool in a deck of cards: The Querent, The Watcher, The One-Whose-Number-Is-Naught.

            Traditionally, the Major Arcana in Tarot cards are numbered with Roman Numerals.  The Fool is numbered with a zero, one of the Arabic Numerals.  When read aloud, however, the number is not read as "zero," rather it is read as "naught," – from the Old English root nauht, nāwiht, a word that translates as "nothing, a cipher (zero)" – meaning it has no number in a set sequence of numbers, but moves around always, at will, and cannot be pinned down. Slippery, mutable, but without guile or intent.

            But when Fool shows up, it is always to be the silent provocateur, to be the question posed. And then to vanish again.

 

                                                            ~

 

            So what is Fool's question today?  And to whom?

 

                                                            ~

 

    What tongue is spoken at the river's mouth?

 

    On what muddy bank does the ferryman wait and how many coins for the passage?

 

    Where is the long-lost map to the world?

 

    Who folded time and put it in its deep closet?

 

    Whose Voice speaks from the whirlwind?

 

    Is silence a sin or a virtue? 

 

    Is God just "holding His tongue," afraid of what might come out next?

 

    When God spoke the word gazelle and the horned and hooved thing of it leapt into being on the hot savannah, when He also spoke the word lion and it arrived there, golden-eyed, how long did the two of them stand there in wonder, stunned, and how long before hunger occurred to one and terror to the other?

                                                 ~

My friend, I am writing The Book of Splendor.  You are in its pages.  The chapter and verse of you.  The body and blood.  The smallest hosannah of you.    

 

 

Comments

[Grace Cavalieri]

This is the best "Blog" in the world. It truly gives grandeur to electronic literature. Never pull the plug on us ANNIE. Your words make silence shine and we say THANK YOU.

[Emily]

This is by far my favorite blog of yours thus far. Exquisite! Thank you for sharing and for giving me something to meditate on---your timing couldn't be better!

[Anne Caston]

Emily, how good, as always, to hear from you. Thanks for being a reader. My "good timing" must be really wild, posting at 3:30 a.m. HA! xo Anne

[Anne Caston]

Grace, I would never, ever "pull the plug" on you, my friend. You are going to suffer - to undergo - and be subjected to all the misery as long as you can bear it. Seriously, I hope Ken is recovering and you are having a grand time of it there, spoiling Freddie rotten, though how he would be spoiled is beyond me.

See you SOON. xoxo Annie

[Vivian Prescott]

Anne,

I love your remarks on silence. And I especially enjoyed the insight on notebooks. Something that can be wrecked by sand and dew. Beautiful prose.
I use mead half-notebooks with pockets. Notes fill the pockets and the pages are smeared with blue ink. Nothing fancy. Though I do like receiving fancy journals as gifts. I write in them too but not with the same enthusiasm or messiness.

[Anne Caston]

Vivian, so glad to hear you like the messier end of notebooks too. Much happiness and journaling to you as you move forward now. And congratulations again on your award.

All best,
Anne

[David Stevenson]

We are small hosannahs indeed! What a blur. I feel I barely saw you. Trying to rescue a lame gull. I heard the silence in your reading Anne. No small feat for the writer, thanks!

[Anne Caston]

David, thanks so much for reading and leaving a comment! I can't believe you had the time for it. Just returned from your camping trip with the residency folks?

A blur, indeed. But such a lovely blur! Such an amazing blur this residency turned out to be!

Look in on the little gray gull and let me know how she's faring, will you?

All best,
Anne