Burning Twigs

Standing in my tower gazing down at the slums. Some king. This city goes forever. If I had a speed-dating service, 5 minutes meeting with everyone that lives in the range of my vision, could I complete the rounds in my lifetime? In an hour I’d meet 12 people, in an 8-hour workday, 96. 100 people a day. 500 a week. About 22000 a year with a few weeks off.. 220 000 in a decade. And in a lengthy 50-year career of briefly getting to know as many Bombayites as I can, I’d reach a grand total of approximately 1.1 million. Within the bounds of my vision from the top of this castle tower, modern day fortress of luxury, immune to the fracas and frenzy of the street-dwellers below, there are probably more than 10 million souls. Beyond the pollution haze and deeper into the Northern suburbs are probably another 5 million. There are too many souls to count.

No wonder they worship so many gods here- hard to imagine a single god’s army of answering machines, blinking like distant stars, ‘You have 280,161,544 messages’. Prayers flood upward, translucent puffs of smoke, rainbow in the sun like oil on tarmac, they grow thick in the stratosphere, oily, airborne rivers are born, cascades of invisible rainbows lost between here and space, angels caught in the prayer paste like cormorants in oil spills, slick and frightened, suffocating from the Earth’s truths, humanity’s silent desperation and terrible fate. Beings of light floundering in invisibility, broken by spider-webs where the black meets the blue. Couldn’t it be we’re fending for ourselves? Temporarily, at least. Ant farmers. Science project employees. Truth is, I’m no further down the road than when I started. Been through the Holy Land where some kids have bombs and some have guns, some live in mansions and others in slums. Where the world’s greatest prophets rose to the sky, and the people cry because they finally made it. I’ve been through the land where Buddha was born, bisected by the holy Ganges, the sustainer, lifeblood of Shiva and Vishnu and Brahma.

And I’m starving. I am dug deeper into my disbelief. I keep building this fence so high and I won’t be able to sit on it, gaze out, search for that truth on the horizon. This wall made of twigs I been tearing out of the forest. I’m screaming in this dark forest, the treetops are warm in sunlight and I’m scrabbling in pine-needles, tearing at branches and twigs, rippin em off the trees for firewood, for my fence, to keep warm and tall- but standing on a wall of broken twigs doesn’t bring me towards the treetops- I’m not closer. I just have lots of fuel to burn- this is what I’ve earned with my rational mind. If God isn’t on lunch, if he did indeed give me a brain, then why does it seem to lead me further and further away? The more I think, the more I look around, the more reasons I find to avoid this whole scene. And no, I’m not ignoring my heart, Joe Christ, it’s beating loud and strong, I’m fierce with my love and I’m listening hard. Wilderness of words here, I’m lost again.

It’s all or nothing, I think sometimes. I see the Buddhist monks in Ladakh- saffron robes and shorn skulls. I think of their quiet minds, their connection to the soul of the Universe which is their soul, their Middle Path, their truth and tranquility. And the next day I see poor boys who didn’t want to be farmers like their fathers, who spend their mother-given lives sitting cross-legged, eyes closed on mountaintops, so silent and alone that their minds play tricks and give them false paradises. While they never know the love of a woman, never see the sights of their planet or know the warmth of a stranger’s home a thousand miles away from theirs. It is All. Or Nothing. You want enlightenment, you better suit up and dive in- there’s no halfway. You think Jesus died for your sins? That a man, the son of God, took iron nails through his flesh and bone, hung in the heat with blood in his eyes until his very ribcage gave out and suffocated him- that a man did this as his ultimate teaching, his ultimate sacrifice- if people would only see it and rejoice in God? Then for you there is no halfway; there is no, ‘I like some of the things the Bible has to say’- Jesus knew it was the book of his father. It is the book. You better jump in. And yet I see the hate. And the one-track minds. I can see that people might say that they love their neighbours as themselves, but then they distrust them because of their culture, their religion, their sexuality. I see people who have jumped into faith, and from the top of my fence I see that I don’t like the way they behave. I don’t like how they see people, the world. How can I possibly jump in? Testing the waters with toes, that’s me. On the shore for eternity.

And so it comes back- I will look for the wisdom in these books made by man- these Bibles and Qu’rans. I’ll look for the wisdom in how holy people live, the recognition of the good in everyone, the soulful practicalities of having membership in the human beast. But it is all Wisdom. It is tied to the very earth by a spinal column and two strong legs. It isn’t whistling in the winds with the prayer vapours. It isn’t the singing spirit. That is all or nothing. And right now I’m busy burning twigs.