It has been raining for days. It is cold, dark and wet in the desert.
Apocalyptic fires are burning in Alberta, Canada. An entire city has burned, almost 100,000 people evacuated. The skies have been night-like for days over Alberta while burning amber fills the thick air. The smoke from the blaze has traversed the continent and now can be seen in Florida.
So, I put on wool socks and fired up the fireplace. Not only for warmth but also for brightness. The skies are dark and the flames give the feeling of protection. My dog curled up under my chair to warm up his aging joints.
It was a day for poetry and contemplation.
… Yesterday, when the rain stopped for a brief moment and the sun appeared, a magnificent rainbow shaped in color and hope. So, while staring at the fire, I recalled a few lines from “Song of Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
My oldest force is good as new,
And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
Gives back the bending heavens in dew.
My oldest force. Perhaps because it is Mother’s Day today that I thought about my mother, my oldest force. I recalled, as a child, putting my head upon her knees and asking her to run her fingers thru my long, curly hair. On this cold and rainy day, I had the feeling of a phantom limb running over my head.
Somehow, I thought of an 1850’s poem by Stéphane Mallarmé
Qui jadis, sur mes beaux sommeils d'enfant gâté
Passait, laissant toujours de ses mains mal fermées
Neiger de blancs bouquets d'étoiles parfumées.
(Who, in the blissful dreams of my happy childhood
Used to hover above me sprinkling from her gentle hands
Snow-white clusters of perfumed stars.)
Mallarmé. I have read many of his works when I was fervently a Baudelaire fan. The most challenging poem by Mallarmé is called “Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard” (A throw of the dice will never abolish chance) where he used visual organization of words, letter fonts and their special arrangement to allow for many interpretations. A line has stayed with me over the years:
“cadavre par le bras / écarté de secret qu’il détient” (corpse by the arm / unattached to the secret it holds.)
A body that holds a secret. A secret that lives within a body. And the phantom hands of my mother that reached my head from the l’au delà, the hereafter.
… A throw of the dice will never abolish chance. A century later Einstein used a similar thought to describe the cosmic determinism he believed in. When criticizing quantum mechanics and its suggestion that probability and randomness are inherent to the seeming order and determinism, he said:
“God does not play dice with the universe.”
But if God (however defined) did play dice, Mallarmé suggests that the rules of chance and probability would not be affected. That we would continue to be subject to certain randomness no matter how we act. Or, as I understand it, our indeterminism is pre-determined!
… I must have chuckled loudly at this thought as my dog woke up, looked at the dark skies outside, looked at me, re-positioned himself and went back to sleep.
So, there is determinism, but it is not absolute. Like rivers that search for their sea or ocean. Is it the destiny of a river to find its sea? Can a river be a lesser river if it does not find its ocean?
A few lines by Jorge Manrique came to mind:
Nuestras vidas son los rios
Que van a dar en el mar
Que us el morrir
« Our lives are the rivers
That empty into the sea
That is our dying”
Are we the rivers determined to find our sea? A sea of tempestuous loving? An ocean of vast emptiness? Is our journey our identity before it gets transformed into a grander find? Or it does not matter if we throw a dice, just for the fun of it?
… Living in Arizona and through Native American songs/poems I have discovered a new wisdom about nature and our relationship to it. Many of these songs are associated with rituals such as initiation rites, planting or hunting. Recently I read the lyrics of a Navajo song that on this rainy day in the desert brought together my wandering thoughts back under the rainbow:
Truly in the east
The white bean
And the great corn plant
Are tied with the white lightning.
Listen! Rain approaches!
The voice of the bluebird is heard.
Truly in the east
The white bean
And the great squash
Are tied with the rainbow.
Listen! Rain approaches!
The voice of the bluebird is heard.
… Yet, the rain will end soon. I will take off my warm socks, let the fire exhale in the fireplace, and wake up my dog. Then together we will go out looking for a rainbow.
May 8, 2016
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016
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