Distant Joys

Persistently persuasive

An Indic song ( edited ) says …

 

' A joy that I saw from a distance '

Like a river of clouds become real 

Its the arts of a hundred ages   

Its the the vehicle for my love   

This song sings of you.'

 

' A honey coated voice and then the dance

Expressed in speech as my self

Maya … this is your drama

Came into my heart as my passions. '

 

' I called to you always my dragon lord

How will I compose a new song in a bustling storm?'

 

 

No doubt the man was a lover. Perhaps more than that ... he was devoted to love. Ah! … such devotion to melt the savagery of barbarians … turned into the appreciation of beauty … that gave up the life of the wandering cavalier … to nurture romance as the home of the householder.

 

The song is recent … 1980 … but the way Indics handle passions … it may refer to an original experience of the barbarian turned farmer and then poet … that's drawn from around the period 500 bc. But it refers to a new test today … in the post-colonial experience of the Indian sub-continent. He's obviously been asked to write a new song. In translation … that probably means to cultivate a new life … beyond what he always depended on.

 

The point of start to anything new is always … an experience of loss of something previously. Its like a storm whirling overhead. How then does one begin? The Purana of the Narasimha Avatar … tells the story of a man who valued learning … but was bullied by his father … into submitting to his father's view of the world. Driven to the breaking point … the man appeals to Lord Vishnu … who manifest as rage incarnate … in the man's disposition … and like a lion making bold his fears … tears his father to pieces.

 

We refer to it today as an act of patricide. Its serious! This is the man a young boy based all his love and hopes on. The one that he modeled his own personality. The friend who first brought his eyes to bear on the world with words and expressions. Who taught him right from wrong. But at the Narasimha point … his father had become too much of a burden. It imposed on him his father's knowledge … life … and love. That obviously wasn't him.

 

My view of the phenomenon … drew as much from the evolutionary nature of life … as it does the ways of a new generation … that has become too much of a gap … with the older generation. We have been saying that countless times … a young man growing up … needs to chart his own life. But the way it takes place … can be easy or hard. On occasion … the ways of the father sometimes creeps surreptitiously into … the silver lining … of a gloomy issue.

 

Young men from a background of divorced parents … or separated … find that opportunity … from within the well of regrets and misfortune. But they can turn it into an opportunity … with some awareness. A young girl blossoms into the experience of femininity … because she has to rely on herself. And how difficult is that … in these times of recipes … and how to tutorials … on the web? It would turn the face of a Cassiopeia … into a color monitor … with a window view of the entire world … but how different is that from father?

 

The folks who say … ' don't go to sleep angry ' … make a good point. A fight with the father … need not enter into the dreams of an individual. It persuades us that the hand of creation … made the rocks and the earth … the trees … birds and fish … and it did it without a father. Our dreams may have viewed our joys from a distance … but they are also outside on the lawn … when we view that from the verandah.

 

And then we realize how dreams turned into reality in us. The early man kept companions with hunting dogs … and eagles and he observed their social natures. Vedic man made objects of the world around us and fed it to the fire. The Kings made rules that required a compliance. A tramp … new to the neighborhood … makes his rounds daily … to take note of trees … buildings … homes … and abandoned shelters. Then he makes his home there.

 

A man of science takes the issue a step further. He sees in evolution … the imperative of the life of a creature … that must be served by its will and intelligence … for the life to be strong. Its the protocol of life … and the creature thereafter … seeks its opportunities in the life … to be able to do that. Zen discovered the aphorism in its studies as … ' what you want to do … is what you can't help doing.' But is that the problem we had with father?

 

And isn't that like the waves on the beach … gently persuasive … but persistent? Or those girls in the parlor … who are more beautiful than men? The head butt by two bulls on the range?  An Eros whose restlessness gives way to the hunt for the boar? The expression we draw from our passions … without peeping? The universe that clothed itself … because it was too transparent? Hide and seek.