Discourse between the Button & the Seahorse

I am not about to examine the world in the way of programming computers and finegalling over tiny important factors, but I am sending out feelers to feel the world, to feel through the layers of clouds, and the clear air, and the fruit and leaves of the trees and animals and man, to suck out of things the succlent juices of life, and to know what it is to be living. And to send tentative tentacles into the vastness of space among the stars, listening, to see if there is anything, but that later. And to dive with fuzzy antenna into the deep of little things hidden and find what goes with them and ask why they do not show themselves to the daylight. But mostly I look at the things which are verily before my eyeballs, like books and clocks and trees and nuts, wondering what they are. For the world is things, and wherever you might look there are things in the world, and that is what it is made of. And if all matter is waves, and waves all matter, what matters it? For there is something.

But there are other things in the world. There are the feelings that change the appearance of things in the world like as to look through glass stained one colour and then another. There are great rages in beasts and men, rages that will come if the spirit is alive. And with this there are great terrors, terrors that make the horse run, and the teeth bite; the terror of death. But there are other feelings. There is the feeling of great joy, that all's well with the world, and this touches one at obscure times and lasts long or not. There is the feeling men have of being together, hoping for one another, fighting for a cause. And the spirit rises up in them and they know what they are doing, and they know what it is to win. And the feeling of victory enfuses them, and they dance in joy, for they have won. Nothing can mar this feeling. But there is the feeling of anti-climax, the feeling of depression, dark and mud-stained, that descends upon the spirit when the wave of victory has passed. And there is doubt, and uncertainty, and disgust, a crying for revenge, the desperate gnashing of teeth the rolling of eyes. It wants to rage, but nothing comes, and the feeling is drowned in a great self-pity, and nothing comes out. But with this self-pity there comes the contempt of self-pity and rage at the contempt which curbs the relaxation into self-pity. A great winding up of nerves follows, and the spirit screams silently in helpless rage, tugs against its chains, like the wild horse that pounds and pounds against the walls of her tiny enclosure, knowing she cannot get out, knowing the pounding will only bring the man with the whip.

And then all great feelings surge by like the tidal wave, blown on by the passage of time, the soothing sleep of the diversion of things to do. A calm resides, but yet this calm may become uneasiness, the resignation to the hopelessness of the struggle, the contemptable nausea, lackadaisicalness, apathy.

These are the feelings I feel in the world with my wandering mind, but most of all I feel a restlessness, vague at first, now growing stronger. A restlessness that portends of things to come, a great thing, a great being, a great event that will sweep over the mind's watchful spirit in a great wave—a great wave, startling and majestic, studded with pearls of foam, flying spray. Smelling of the sweet fragrence of the sea, of life, it will splash and crash across the shore with a great force, sounding the roar of a lion, and then it will wash the sands back into the sea, never to come again.

And so now, before the wave, I stand on a silent shore, watching a lifeless sea, watching and waiting for a column to rise from the surface of its grey-green flatness and come rushing toward me. I watch with joy in my hope for the wonders it will bring me, joy in the excitement of my watch, desperation that it has not yet come, frustration because I know not when it will come. And there is a hint of sadness in my watch too, but sadness not yet come, a tentative, wondering sadness. For once the wave has come and washed the sand and will not come again, what will there be left to do, to wait for, when all is past? That I cannot say. All I know is that there is an infinite sorrow about things lost forever, a sorrow that may exist at the same time as the joy in things gained, a true and wonderful joy, and yet sorrow still exists. Not lessening the joy, nor countering it, but alone and separated, for sorrow is alone. But now I am not thinking of that sorrow, I am thinking of the wave to come, restlessly pacing back and forth over the sandy sandy shore, my eyes fixed on the far, dim horizon. What can I care that perhaps the best time is waiting that there is more fun here than on the other shore which the wave has passed and washed away, where I will be left with no hope of the greatest to come. Little waves, like ripplets perhaps shall reach my shore; the great one comes only once. But I do not feel this now; all I feel is that the time is growing near when the great one will come; my spirit is singing strangely; the waiting grows oppressive, my thoughts scatter like wildfowl taking flight. I feel I will burst, but I can do nothing but wonder, wonder how the wave will come and when. And I cannot figure how this will be. And so, day after day, I stand on the shore of my life, watching the blank sea before me with anxious eyes, and waiting, waiting for the moment that is mine.

Discourse between the Button & the Seahorse

Bonnieland