A Procession of Colorful Turtles

A somewhat longer, but perhaps worthwhile, "read."

A Procession of Colorful Turtles

Or a Dream Belonging to the Poet

And Possibly Many Others

 

Jean and Jean-Paul were fishing for crocodiles on the banks of a beautiful river in a land that seemed very far away. To Jean’s mind, it was the Nile Valley in the days of the sibling gods Isis and Osiris, while Jean-Paul believed their surroundings were more like the Girwa River region in the Indian wilderness, but long before the union of radiant Lakshmi and the four-armed Lord Vishnu. Yet, the two were of one mind about the gravity of their enterprise and approached its dangers with caution and apposite respect.

 

So there, in the benevolent shade

Of the graceful papyrus reeds,

They stood in alliance,

 

Casting their line upstream,

And allowing the bait

 

To drift where it would

With the great river’s current.

 

Suddenly, there was a quarrel in the water,

And the boys were engaged in a fierce tug-of-war

With a creature of enormous strength and will.

 

However, the line quickly broke,

And the brothers were left

To ponder their defeat

And try again �"

 

And again and again,

As the day passed on

Without success.

 

Finally, Jean-Paul said, “Perhaps the problem is one of inertia - our refusal to give ground to something greater and stronger than us. Next time, we should try moving downstream and possibly farther out, allowing the creature’s mass and energy to work against him. More importantly, we will be able to get closer to him without him knowing that we are.”

 

Presently, another creature took the bait, and just as Jean-Paul had suggested, the boys waded gingerly downstream as they gathered in the line. But as they brought their quarry to heel, they saw that the beast with which they struggled was not a monster at all, but a rare form of the pygmy hog, one that was both beautiful to behold, and remarkably poised, given its unseemly and highly unexpected situation.

 

Indeed, its countenance fairly glistened

In the sunlight, as the boys appraised

Its mien and present disposition.

 

Oddly, it appeared to be well cared for,

And its ample snout projected a kind of nobility,

As Jean removed the hook from its wounded mouth.

 

"It’s almost as if he wanted to be captured," Jean gushed,

As he gazed, a little infatuated with the creature he beheld.

 "But what shall we do with this little fellow? asked Jean-Paul.

 

"Why we shall keep him as our friend forever," Jean said,

As he gathered the pig and turned toward the bank.

 

But as he scanned the shoreline for his brother,

He saw that Jean-Paul now lay prostrate,

Breathing heavily among the papyri �"

 

His large eyes dilated and transfixed

On a procession of colorful turtles

 

That was entering the water

A few inches from his nose.

Jean released the pig at once

And tried to help Jean-Paul to his feet.

 

"You seem to be stuck where you are,”

He advised his strangely complacent brother.

 

"It may be that I am," Jean-Paul admitted,

"But it's not as if I’m stuck here for the long haul.

So, perhaps you should look after our new friend.”

 

-

 

But as Jean turned to regather the pig,

He saw only a violent swirl in the water,

 

And the wonderful creature

The boys had gained was no more.

 

"I saw what happened,” Jean-Paul scolded.

"You released our friend to the river,

And now I am stuck here forever.

 

I saw your sin, and so, I am doomed to share in it."

 

-P-

 

That said, there are some details about this dream that I failed to mention - Not because they are unimportant to the story, but because they were not a good fit at the time. The first is that when the boys were drawing in the pig and still thinking it was a crocodile, there was a momentary surge in the river’s current. The second is that, while Jean was removing the hook from the pig's mouth, he noticed that Jean-Paul’s hands were bleeding, even though he was oblivious to the blood that trickled from his own fingers. Perhaps these details are superfluous, but it is always best to tell everything when one of your aims is to determine a dreamer’s identity.

Now, as everyone knows, there are many ways to interpret a dream,^[1] but in this case, there happen to be only two that matter. The first belongs to a French nobleman named, Camille Du Monde, the narrator and primary character in “The Crimes of Mars.” His is the orthodox and more palatable view because it is rooted in common logic. Then there is a somewhat more nuanced and even mystical interpretation that I have come to favor. Naturally, Paris regards the two as equally valid, as he contributed heavily to the formulation of both and is ever open-minded to the opinion of others, particularly when the others are his beloved inventions.

 

Du Monde points out that prior to his dream, Paris was ruminating about the things he hoped to accomplish artistically in the story you are reading. His focus was on the character he would later call, Jean Ami. However, it was not long before he digressed into reading about the history of the Middle Ages, specifically, something called the Albigensian Crusade, which amounted to a series of punitive military actions taken by the Church against the Christian heretics who lived around Albi in southern France. What happened is that large numbers of Catholics, many of them women, had gravitated toward a radically different understanding of Christianity, which would later be called Catharism. Its believers thought that there were two relatively equal gods, a good one, entirely made of spirit, and one profoundly evil that fashioned and controlled the physical universe.^[2]

Of course, these beliefs were anathema to the Bishop of Rome,[3] but perhaps even more disturbing, the Cathars did not see much need to recognize papal authority and even refused to tithe. Well, you simply cannot run a gigantic institution like the medieval Church when a large segment of the flock goes its own way, disrespecting your office, and refusing to contribute to your goals. Vigorous measures were taken, as a leader’s ability to control the behavior and expressed beliefs of others is thought to be the true measure of divine favor in the material realm. And even when such lofty considerations are put aside, it is always better for you when your underlings abide by the rules.

 

Now since the Cathars had become well-liked by the Catholic faithful in the Languedoc,^[4] the Holy Father tried spirited debate with them for a time, even sending the venerable Domingo de Guzman to argue on Catholicism's behalf. But when these mild efforts proved fruitless, he decided to excommunicate the rebels’ primary protector, dispatching a legate to get things back in order. However, the legate was murdered a few years later, and the crusade against the heretics of southern France began. Over the next two decades, thousands of Cathars perished at the hand of an inspired nobility, which was promised new lands for its service, with the office of the Inquisition ultimately bringing the Albigensian movement to a tortured and fiery end in the years that followed.

 

Monsieur Du Monde believes that it was Paris’s reading of this material that inspired his mysterious dream, for like the brothers, the Cathars did seem to be “fishing for crocodiles” in their slighting of the pope and their refusal to tithe. Some would even say that like them, they happened upon something beautiful in their contempt for the physical world, only to lose it because of their preoccupation with it. But this assessment of the dream goes no further than that, and it does not address at all several important questions. For example, why does Jean-Paul get mired in the mud? And why does he believe that he shares in his brother’s “sin” merely because he beholds it?

I too believe that Paris’s reading about the nastiness of yester-year supplied an impetus for the expression of an emotionally complicated dream. But when Paris did the reading, he was also pondering the attributes of his invention, Jean Ami, a character whose lachrymose sensibilities are comparable to his own. Thus, a deeper statement about the poet’s inner world seems to have been made, as its particulars may establish a metaphor for the anguish the soul experiences in a harsh and demoralizing physical reality. Does not Jean gain something of anagogic value in his capture of the pig, only to lose it as he tries to help his brother to his feet? Are not his better angels slandered by the brother he tries to help? Indeed, is not Jean-Paul condemned for merely taking in the swirling images that symbolize the loss of something good? Paris contends that the experience of seeing evil can deceive us into believing that we are a part of it. But more of that in the pages to come.

 

For now, it is better to think of the boys as Christian truth-seekers, ones whose success or failure is determined by their ability to reconcile the precepts of their faith with what they actually experience. However, such efforts often amount to a fool’s errand, since even when the object of a quest is within reach, a truth-seeker is conflicted by the incongruity that exists between his fealty to a physically non-existent realm and his willingness to test the integrity of that relationship against the crucible of a small, and physically flawed intellect. Thus, any insight he gains is, at least in part, relegated to the status of an inscrutable oddity or bizarre exception to the rule that can serve only as an impetus to continue asking the same question. Whether he wrestles with the constraints of orthodoxy or the abstruse complexities of mysticism, his efforts tend to engender only a more nuanced rewording of the question he seeks to answer. Like the crowd in Edgar Allan Poe's, "The Conqueror Worm," he pursues a phantom that leads him in circles[5] to the “self-same spot” of his original suspicion because the question is, in essence, the answer.

 

In this way, the truth seeker imperfectly fishes

For the crocodiles that are occasionally

More beautiful than monsters.

 

This is so because the truth seeker is reluctant to embrace

What he has not already deemed to be a part of reality,

And he knows that anything that is taken

Into the unique realm of his beliefs

Has the potential to undo him.

---

[1] Paris was convinced that dreams are the expressions of a vulnerable inner-self that is temporarily given to the care of a physical self. It is the true self, and it is the only part of a person that matters to the Eternal. “Why not?” he asked. “God is said to be an amalgam of beings, so it is not unreasonable to expect that His inventions would resemble him in that way, at least in the interim of demiurgic (earthly or measurable) time.

 

There is an excellent hymn called “It Is Well with My Soul.” Its theme involves Man’s duality: “Whatever my lot, you have taught me to say, it is well with my soul.” Only the beast fears the dangers of the physical world and the mysteries of death because the Earth is all it has ever known and all it can ever know. Conversely, the spirit longs to go home.

 

[2] In earlier Gnosticism, the demiurge was a heavenly being, subordinate to the Supreme Being. It was thought to be the controller of the material world and antagonistic to all that is purely spiritual. To the Platonists, the demiurge was specifically the creator of the physical universe. (See footnote #98, page 237).

 

[3] Pope Innocent III - His papacy was largely about expanding the power of the Holy See. Many historians regard him as the most powerful and influential pope of the Middle Ages.

 

[4] Languedoc is a former province of France. Its territory is now contained in the modern-day region of Occitanie. Its capital is Toulouse.

 

[5] “That motley drama �" oh, to be sure / It shall not be forgot! / With its phantom chased for ever more / By a crowd that seize it not, /Through a circle that ever returneth in / To the self-same spot / And much of Madness, and more of Sin, / And Horror the soul of the plot.

 

Poe’s assertion that the repetitive “horror” of human existence is more the product of sin than madness is an astounding proposition for an agnostic to make. Perhaps, he means that the horror of human existence has more to do with our nature than what we experience.