Glastonbury Avenue

One wonders how the central themes of their existence are resolved in such elegant forms, destined to repeat the same pattern, following the lines of some ancient lineage through some dark inner compulsion. No matter how far each diverged from this original plan nothing could be grafted on to this ancient stock of possibilities."------Saul Bellow, The Dean's December

Our Holy Grail: the search to identify, to define oneself, to delimit a destiny, takes place when one is already lost. It is to close the door on certain possibilities of being. Do we choose what we are or do we only try to understand the range of possibilities, keep them open?Is our lack of free choice, our finitude, such a mis-fortune and why is the singualr road such a bitter-sweet one? (Bi-location:the ability to be in two places at once) .

Merlin, my namesake, is a liminal, ambiguous figure. Someone between the stable, illuminated and familiar world of the court and its rituals, the world of the king and ceremony, and the world of nature, the wilderness and contemplation. A trickster, a stranger, who cannot decide between the city and the desert, between love and the mind.

The poet could say:
"But if I had the choice again
and stood on the headland
I would leap from heaven or hell
with a whole spirit and heart."

I sit here, at five in the morning, still with stars in my head, the last dreams in the fingertips. Outside, the tangled thoughts of the tree, the curled-up being of the snail quietly unfolding itself, the slow falling back of the shadows into hiding, the world "thirsty for wine's deep mysteries". A black bird of no particular description stomps himself to wakefulness and I throw off the last coat of the night's intoxication.

In the morning I pass the squirrels, the Kashmiris of the animal world, with their timorous souls, their tree-ascent but the aspiration to become an angel, to escape the world of choice. I see a workman, diligently gathering then sweeping sand from one pile to another;inconsequential one would have thought, until one notices the utter self-absorption on his brow, the deep intelligence that comes from knowing one's place in the world, the steadfastness of his hands, the assuredness of his movements. As if here was someone, in the diamond of the day,who was conscious of the fact that each act means something in the scheme of things, the totality of events and the showings and evasions, the meanderings and tarrying and the flashes of direct revelations that go up to make the world. There is no grace in the movements, no formal eloquence, just a thousand years of English pragmatism concentrated in those square shoulders. All extravagance, all flamboyance has been whittled away by the repetition of the essential.

On the way back, after the deluge, the sun's last rays linger on amidst the lengthening, deepening shadows, like some unwanted guest whose time has come. The train cuts through a forest about to enter a dream and the dazzling,fluttering leaves sparkle despite the evening chill, like so many emerald gems that vibrate with the sun's gold. The day's final glint of understanding hangs on them precariously,like dew drops. The earth is expectant.

And then I make my way home, my brisk walk disturbing the courtship of two pigeons. In itself of no significance, but in a previous age that could have resulted in the unborn pigeon not carrying a message to the northern king,averting the massacre of the innocents, the birth of so many Mozarts. But then, as it is now, each step is still fateful, over- brimming and fraught with consequences that span out,forming numerous causal chains in a far-flung net that catches the most unlikely of collaborators . Had my indecisive feet stepped but the other way the universe would have been remarkably different...perhaps.Infinite futures canceled out at Glastonbury Avenue. One pile of sand grows, and not the other....