43 Ur

For much of my life I had goaded god so god had reached both of his hands into my back and gripped hold of my spine and shook me, first upside down and then right side up and then upside down again, hard, again and again until he had shaken me silly and had shaken all of my brains out, and my words, and my books and—

Now in some way it seemed I was insane, crazy and maddened, and my mind was always awake, wide awake one part of it always, even in my sleep, and my thoughts and my questions were buzzing and fluttering and slapping like houseflies caught between the windows and the screen or trapped in the heat between the curtain and the glass, the oppressive, humid summer heat thick, suffocating, still rising.

Out, out, out, out, out, out, out—

Zb.

I had sought it for eight years and now I had achieved it.

I had achieved constant thinking.

It had all come crashing down on top of me, inside of me, all around me, the edifice of civilized lies, falsehoods, secrets, concealments, apologies, justifications, excuses, half truths, reasons, purposes, motives, ulterior motives, rationalizations, ideas, ideologies of my time, place, and age.

All of it, all of it.

All—

How glad I was!

I was delirious with gladness, I was euphoric, ecstatic, transcendent in my delirium.

I could only shine.

Shine.

That was my function—

To shine.

So I did shine—I shone and shone and shone and shone and shone and did shine and shone and shined and shone and shined.

I could not have been brighter.

I cannot be brighter than I was.

I was brightness.

I was mirror.

I answered every question asked me, truly, not as before, academically, prudently, no, not that way, but carefully, listening first, listening as I had never listened before, hearing every syllable separately, every sound separately, hearing every sound within every sound, every word within every word, word within word within word, primal, elemental word and meaning, urmeaning and urword, the urword and crushing counter urword, the foreword and backword, the unword, the ache and break in every voice, just as O'Malley and Billy had taught me, hearing every stress and every strain, every pause and half pause, every silence, every silence behind every sound, every stutter and every stammer.

It seemed I heard perfect.

Ear.

I heard everything, the voice behind the voice, the urvoice, the mythic and prophetic voice, the realization of voice, the idealization of voice, the dead innocent and the dead condemned speaking out in the babble, code, and noise of the peoples of hell, living again through the living, through them confessing their tragedy and their horror, their chronicle of misery untold, and singing song, hymn, chanting their holy, sacred, forgotten and uncorrupted carol stifled for millennia, and praying and singing, too, for the dumb animal, the fish, mammal, bird, bug, and worm, and releasing the ancient groan and the ancient moan, the aching song and the breaking voice, the creation released, the captive free now finally forever, the beauty heard and known, the truth behind the truth, the truth beyond the truth, everything possible to be believed an image of the truth, Blake fulfilled, the prophet, poet, and singer all true, and Shakespeare fulfilled.

The lord come.

Ear.

I heard the lie, too, the half lie, the falsehood and distortion, the warp, the irony, the bend, the twist, the indirection, the omission, yes, even the omission because the omission was visible and audible in the symbolic shape and gesture of the realized body, in the audible pause, in the smile, frown, sigh, hiccup, tic, and grimace, in the motion and movement, in the cut and color of garment and apparel, in the style and fit of bag and shoe.

Eye.

I watched and listened.

If I didn't have an answer I said nothing.

I waited, I smiled, I grinned.

I remained silent, I said nothing at all.

I didn't squirm or fidget or apologize, I didn't duck or feint, I didn't parrot an old lecture or speech, I didn't quote an old dead poet or mouth a cliché, I didn't resort to professorial tricks and devices, I didn't fall back on authority, I didn't keep the ball rolling, I didn't sustain the old familiar social amenity and routine, I didn't say the expected, I didn't play along, I didn't join the conversation, I didn't join in.

I didn't try to smooth it over.

I didn't try to stir it up.

I didn't try to fit in or get out of it.

I didn't argue or fake it or act phony.

I didn't feel at all odd or embarrassed.

I wasn't at all uncomfortable with the long, unexpected, and unusual extended silences.

I just stood, if we stood, or sat, if we were sitting, and I waited and thought about the question or about the remark, listening to it, hearing it over and over and over and over again as it reverberated in my bigger, wider, deeper, ever deeper mind where it stirred; and it aroused and brought to life all of the words I had read in twenty-seven years of daily reading, all of the words and voices and meanings I had heard in thirty-two years of life, all of the experiences I had had ever, the memories, dreams, shadows, shapes, forms, and phantoms and buried unconscious knowledge which had lain waiting inert and hidden from me for all of those years, waiting for me to be quiet and to think like this as I was thinking now, urthinking, archetypal thinking, mythic thinking, mystic thinking, enlightened thinking, holy thinking, Taoist thinking, Kabbalist thinking, Christian thinking, Yogic thinking, Buddhist thinking, Jain thinking, Zen thinking, Socratic thinking, Platonic thinking, the thinking of Rama, the thinking of Krishna, the thinking of Nigantha Nathaputta, the thinking of Lao Tsu, the thinking of Socrates, the thinking of Plato, the thinking of Buddha, the thinking of Purna, the thinking of Jesus, the thinking of Christ, the thinking of Patanjali, the thinking of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the thinking of Tolstoy, the thinking of Einstein, the thinking of Freud, the thinking of Russell, the thinking of Gandhiji, the thinking of Krishnamurti, the thinking of King, the thinking of God.

Good thinking, true thinking, real thinking.

Perfect thinking.

Nonviolent.