OPM 197, August 30th Meditation (2004 & 2014)

The legend continues…

Zarathustra has been moved, roused by Don Quixote, but is paralyzed by the overwhelming weight of the mountains that stand before him, “silenced and stilled by the landscape that now appeared like the rise of a great amphitheater.  The mist had completely lifted now, and he could see that in fact he was surrounded on three sides by a range of mountains.”  He observes the flight of two gulls and wonders “Could I be on the shores of a great Sea?”   The power of the landscape has confounded him, and he can not decide his next move.  “Suddenly he remembered the words of the one who had awakened him: ‘Wander and see the highest peak…Be…seized by the sublimity of this vista…find your way to the shelter from which you can see this wasteland for what it is, and from there also see what lies ‘beyond.’  Seek the cave high in the mountains…and find yourself mystified…”  Again, these are indexical references to Nietzsche’s character who we are introduced to on the morning when he is leaving his mountain cave.  The legend is an attempt to imagine the location Zarathustra ascended from: the wasteland.

The other indexical reference is conveyed by the power of speech.  He was moved by Quixote's words, which suggests more than his being directed to climb the mountain and seek the cave.  His identity as ‘speech maker’ was also put underway. 

“The plain opened up before him.  How long would it take to cross?  What would he encounter along the way?  Would this desert sand and rock give way to fertile fields?  What of water?  Zarathustra again thought of the freedom of flowing water, clear and cool.  He imagined himself immersed in the chill, then floating upon it, drifting, being carried by the tide.”   Here the indexical reference is to what I have called in this summer’s writing ‘the primal flow,’ which is a hybrid category derived from the combined resources of Heraclitus and Lao Tzu.   What power Zarathustra has yet to regain on his own accord is understood to be present in the mountain.   And like Thoreau who made his way to the mountain by way of rivers and lakes, Zarathustra remembers the freedom of flowing water that takes us to primal ground,  but only in a dream.

He remains in the twilight between consciousness and sleep when he wakes, again.  He is now enveloped by the dark and stillness of the night.   He says, without cause or reason, “The herd is back’…and was startled by the sound of his voice and the strange utterance.  ‘Herd?’ he thought to himself…” and here the indexical reference is to one of Nietzsche’s most lasting philosophical contributions: his critique of the ‘herd mentality’ of social conformity fostered by overbearing cultural norms. 

But Zarathustra is in a state of starvation, and collapses again, “upon the hard and unforgiving wasteland, a once proud beast rendered scraggy...”  This is perhaps a reference to Nietzsche’s parable of the three metamorphoses, but only in their dystopian form.   This is not the beast of burden becoming the raging lion becoming the innocent child, but the death of cynical and despairing man with no clear sense of faith or hope in redemption.  Lying on his deathbed he “entered the semi-conscious restless state of one burning with fever.  His ‘dreams’ were filled with strange sounds, howls, shrieks, buzzing.  A sibilant hum persisted…”   (…and as I revisit this writing from ten years ago today, I am reminded of Kerouac writing his poem while sitting in the dark of night on the bluff over the roaring Pacific in Big Sur. ) ‘While you sit here the wasteland grows! While you sit here the wasteland grows! While you sit here the wasteland grows!’  Over and over again, like a tormenting mantra, Zarathustra heard the voice of Quixote…Suddenly a flash of light appeared in the sky, and was quickly followed by an explosion.  Another flash, another explosion.”

Lightning, thunder.  Lightning, thunder.  

This is not indexical.  Rather it is a leitmotif.   So I recall three commentaries when lightning strikes:

157, July 21^st:  “reading Kerouac was like being hit by the proverbial lightning bolt.  It’s not simply the stream of consciousness narrative organized with some improvisational grammar and spelling, which is totally inspiring!” 

OPM 173, August 6, 2014.  The startling force may be delivered through the unexpected bolt of lightning, or the from the summit of a mountain, but the delivery over to Nature, to Being disclosed as Life, is the same.

  OPM 181, August 14^th Big, huge storm passed through Portland last night.  A deluge that included thunder and lightning.  I went out to my deck to watch and listen to the driving rain and wind.  No sooner did I go out onto my deck when a sudden bright flash  of lightning appeared above my neighbor’s house, so intense and, to my eye, no bigger than 8ft!  Less the classic bolt across the sky, and more of a flash in the manner of a camera…a very large and powerful camera!  The crash of thunder that followed instantaneously was nothing short of an explosion that nearly sent me diving back into my house!  The entire house shook!   Despite experience an intense moment of fear I stood my ground and stared at the spot where the event had occurred, wondering about the Incan cosmology and how they came to identify sacred spaces in the mountains of the Andes.  I couldn’t allow myself the license to do the same…I don’t have that  license, so it’s a moot point, and for that reason, in fact, I wondered about the move I was making yesterday, claiming that the epiphanic event could happen just about anywhere, so long as we were open and ready to experience it.   Today I’m back to my earlier premise that insists on the specificity of place, which is to say, there are some places that are special and lend themselves to the event of appropriation, which is to say these are places that draw us toward them, so that we might say the event of appropriation has a longer duration than the epiphanic flash it is usually presumed to be.  Mountains, specifically the ridges and summits, are not simply prone to be hit by lightning, but call us.  There is much truth to the old answer to the question, Why climb the mountain?  “Because it’s there.”   

The section of the legend written on 8/30/04 concludes with Zarathustra receiving the water he so desperately desired, in the form of hail, rain, and also in the form of his own tears:  “Soon a storm of hail the size of rocks was pummeling him.   Hands over his head, which he placed between his knees, Zarathustra sobbed until the hail gave way to a steady rain.  He felt cooled and calmed by the shower.  As the rain subsided to a light drizzle, he once one fell fast asleep.”