Eden, NY

A meditation on love and marriage.

It came upon him as the garden must have come upon the first inhabitants of Eden. It happened with such swiftness as if he were carried along by fate, it being thrust upon him by the hand of God, and it was to happen not once but twice in his lifetime. In the first, it happened subtly and indefinitely, sketched only by a full moon’s light beneath an apple tree at the county fair. It was never kept wholly alive by Joseph’s memory, the sounds and feelings resurfacing only in the presence of raw apples or during the act of love. He often wondered whether it happened at all, or in what lifetime it had happened to him. This was the one moment in his life Joseph was ever sure was a product of pure naiveté, a quality he from that moment onward came to look on pityingly as a woodsman would look upon a snake-bitten man sure to die of the compelling poison if he were not a man of his own strength and will.

 

This first time Joseph felt the real strength of his bones. They, braced strongly against a firm and sustained bodily torrent, ached of things given to him, passed on from those who came before him, pushed onto him by them without his consent. This first time was surrounded by vague hints in the world around him, strategically placed pieces of dialogue he was close to fitting together after such sustained and intense effort. But when it happened these ideas were still not fully formed so that when the shame of being naked with another person suddenly disappeared and he found himself touching parts of himself with other parts of another, he could not say what it was that he did, or why it was that he did it, other than it being good.

 

But this first would also be the last time such a thing would happen to him in his life in such a pure and untainted way, free of all baggage that can come with such a presumptive act (such an invasion) until finally that day at the altar when it occurred to him, without accompaniment of an actual thought, that he must, if he wanted to live further and prevent his once foreseen slow and solitary decay, not let that rational part of his mind break fate’s momentum. From this first moment on he would never know what it was that lay behind every object’s existence, the pure and nameless stuff that Plato sought, until that day in the colored sun by the altar; with a gush of wind through the missionary, like the crack of thunder that must have announced Adam and Eve’s awakening and their immediate shame and consciousness, Joseph’s mind, which had always worked to objectify any social interaction, communication or exchange, was suddenly, viciously quelled and he kissed Mary without shame or guilt.

Author's Note

I hope something meaningful can be taken from this meditation.