The Rivers of Mongo

The willows of thought

Turned out it wasn't rivers at all … but wave particles … from the world around us … that made connection … with the different places and people … in the Kingdom of Mongo. The Americans had named the ruler of Mongo as Ming the merciless. I dunno about that … I met him recently … he seemed fine. Okay … maybe I ought to start from the beginning.

I bought a scythe yesterday … the small kind … with a short handle … to cut the weeds in the garden. After clearing them … I sat on the park bench … that I had placed on the patio … to catch my breath. There's a willow tree … that's grown to about 12 feet … that the old man … a former tenant … planted at the gate. It seemed overgrown with dead twigs … and branches … that were twisted and curved in many directions. I rolled a cigarette … and had a gulp from the coffee mug. I realized then … that the tree was reaching out to me.

I'd heard a lot of stories about the willow tree … especially from Western sources. Much of it refers to ghosts … and unexplained happenings in the lives of people who came into contact with it. I put that out of my mind … and simply looked at it … as it waved in the breeze that had suddenly picked up … in the afternoon. It reminded me of the eucalyptus trees in Australia … sometimes with little teddy bears on it … that was in reality … koalas.

What can I say? The swaying leaves … reminded me of the fragile looking Oriental girls … in the neighborhood … who come to the cafe for drinks. I realized then … that I was feeling something in the manasa … that resembled … well I dunno … the girls or the tree? It was subtle … but sharp in relation to my sight. It was related to my sexual energies … and contained an embarrassing lot of my dreams and ambitions … that were either cast aside … or were reprimanded for being forward.

So I was starting to feel uneasy … and that's when I got the idea to trim the tree. I wanted to shape it so that I didn't feel hidden and embarrassed in my self conscious experience in the manasa. So I took the scythe to it and took off some lower branches. My manasa straightened out suddenly … because there was more space between the branches … and it started to feel … less clamped. So I climbed on the low granite wall fence … caught the metal railing on top … and took off the bent branches.

When I sat back on the bench … and viewed the tree … my manasa breathed easier … responded to the upright gait of the tree … and stopped being defensive about girls who were fragile. It was starting to feel curious … and I suddenly felt uncomfortable … that the female phenomenon of the tree … was standing up. So I got up … to lean on the granite pillar on the patio … and simply looked at the tree … with my hand on my hip.

Kawabonga! … I wondered what my webber pal in Harvard … studying lucid dreaming … would have said about this. So as I sat down today … to put out a story … I started to think about the comic strip … Flash Gordon … and the tv serial of the same. And in connection with the sexual impulse … my thoughts traveled to the ex-wife … about 400 miles … to the east … and was wondering about … the silly things she'll say … during our marriage.

I'm looking at it again today … after the failure of the marriage … and I seem to recall how she was … in that way … like the first light of my eros impulses. How my manasa … had associated my dreams with her … and that of my youthful idealism. Come to think of it … not all of it was a load of yak dung. Our early times … now a little distant … were like the swaying breezes on the pastures … in Mongolia … with long views of the horizon and sky … and the lone yurt … pitched at the foothill … of mountains that reached up to its snowy … cloudy peaks … in silent contemplation.

It felt a little like how I might have … brought my eros impulses … to mix with the lofty notions in my mind … about dreams … ambitions … and my hopes of the future. But I was a young man then … and all I could do with that gift of insight … was to juggle them … up in the air … like a circus performer … pleased with the flexibility of mind to do so. There was the pillar of Hercules … the cone of kundalini … the bat and ball … the ' no diff ' kid … my thoughts about them … the sound of language … numbers … and me … or at least what I thought was me.

In retrospect … I appear to have handled them like so many balloons in the air … and all I was doing was to make sure … they remained afloat. But when the sky fell … in my growth into adulthood … they lay where they had fallen on the ground … and I had no way of relating one to another any more. Certainly my career … created a movement of some kind … that brought me past each of these artifacts from my archeological past … but it wasn't much more.

That landscape where my balloons fell is still in my mind today … connected to wind chimes now lying on the ground … that sound off … when I'm making contact with issues. But I've also learnt to walk up to where they lay … and spend some time each day … healing the bruises … and persuading them to get up … and to relate to my physical environment … in the world. Its worked some … but I guess I could do more.

Turns out … the ' no diff ' kid … is the evolving specie life in us … and he's been keen to help … with some contribution. But there's an awful sense … of how man is innately intelligent … which is a garrulous thorn of contention … with many people in my Mongo landscape. It makes me want to stop my studies on occasion … and there's this irascible sense of aggrieved passion … that insists … that a really intelligent man will just know … and not have to rely on the information highway of the world.

I think that personality … is from the future … that's not yet here. Here … in the world today … we learn … when we realize we don't know … and I have to make space for me … as the learning kid on the landscape … without being embarrassed … without feeling bullied … and holding on to my own beliefs. Its getting easier … and … I think I'm gonna go out for some air. Its a beautiful Saturday afternoon.