“I find you speak of the circularity of the Spirit World with all the certainty of a person who has returned from a visit to the Spirit World.”
“Each of us, Master, is a child of the Spirit World. Each of us has come from the realm of the Spirit World, and each of us will return there.”
“I hope you won’t think poorly of me, but the tribe’s intellectuals have complained to me that your infatuation with circles is suspect and distasteful.”
“I am sad to hear this from a tongue that usually is cleansed by the utterance of a prophecy.”
“I told you that this is not something I have said; the intellectuals have said it.”
“If it was the tongue of someone claiming a monopoly over the intellect who said this, then how remote these people are from the intellect and from mastery of the intellect! I don’t know how a person can claim mastery of the intellect while denying the roundness of the heavens, the Spirit World, or prophecy. So may the Spirit World grant us protection from an intellect like this! Beseech the Spirit World to shield you from an intellect like this as well, Master.”
He hopped. He hopped to his feet and disappeared into the gloom. The diviner called after him, “Not so fast! Not so fast!”
But he didn’t turn. In the wink of an eye, the gloom swallowed him.
6
That evening the Lover didn’t merely vanish from the environs of the diviner’s tent but from the entire settlement. He vanished from the land of the tribe. No one saw him after that day in the northern wadis, in the encampments of the neighboring tribes, in the distant oases, or accompanying any of the caravans in transit. He disappeared because he had fled from the entire desert. He vanished, as if he had returned to his homeland, as if the Spirit World had swallowed him.
After his disappearance, reports circulated widely in the tribe when gossips gave free rein to their tongues, as is their wont during such periods. They said they had discovered the Lover’s secret. They said that they had assumed he was merely a lover of stones when they called him “Lover” but that after he had fled they had discovered his passionate love for the Virgin. It was also said that he had told one of his construction assistants that he had kept his promise and built for his beloved with his own hands a mausoleum unlike any their cleverest forefathers had built in the desert. So what was the Lover to do in a land where he had buried his beloved with his own hands?
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9. The tomb.
VII THE DYADIC BIRD OF THE SPIRIT WORLD
Music differs from all the other arts because it does not express Ideas or grades of the objectification of the will, but directly the will itself.
He was not forgotten and the anguish of his lyrics was also not forgotten, because he persisted in seeking to create what was lost in sorrows.
1
The tribes knew another bird.
The tribes knew another bird in other times, and succeeding generations described it in praise poems that people still enjoy reciting today. Songs mentioned that he was a skillful singer and had only lost his marvelous body as a result of absorption in songs and fascination with melodies. But he was never absent from the world of the wasteland, because many blessed individuals saw him. Seeing him was a good omen for them, because they soon lost their bodies too and were liberated from captivity in the wasteland.
It was reported in histories that successive generations learned from experience that individuals whom the Spirit World favored saw its noble bird and soon shared its fate. They too lost their troublesome bodies and fled from the desert as the void became their homeland.
2
He arrived the way he always did, with the first breaths of autumn.
Yellow was garlanding the clumps of trees in Retem Valley, and the wind was variable. It blew from the East but then immediately changed and blew from the sea. Then it suddenly became so still that people in the encampments were sure it had departed to distant lands. Next it blew from the North at dusk with even greater force. Plants throughout the desert were agitated, the scant grass seeking the earth’s protection swayed back and forth, and retem tufts and acacia crests responded with fervent trembling. The desert was singing with delight at the change of the seasons.
The bird came from the Unknown to sing his song as well.
He came to sing about the sad change in the trees’ characteristics and to celebrate in songs of sorrow the mysterious, precious thing that autumn filches from the breasts of the wasteland’s people every year. They feel really sad at its loss, even though they have never perceived its secret. They often feel sad, but would experience a greater suffering if they knew that this lost jewel is called “life”!
3
Narrators disagreed about his size, color, and behavior.
Some said he was a little smaller than the mola-mola bird. Others said he was much smaller than a mola-mola. A third faction swore he was the size of a worker bee.
People of the wasteland also disagreed about his color. Some said he was speckled. Others affirmed that he was silver with wings washed with chartreuse. They said this made him look captivating during the fleeting moments when he darted from tree to tree and light deluged his wings. A third faction went even further and said he had no color, because it was impossible to discern the color of a being no one had ever seen. They also claimed that the people bickering about the bird’s size, color, or behavior were nothing but poets, who typically see what ordinary people don’t, hear what other people don’t, and say what others don’t.
But such a claim did not prevent the tribes from arguing about the bird’s behavior as well. Narrators said that he was terribly fond of valleys and preferred to hide in retem groves that autumn’s yellow assailed, hiding for a time by the trunks of these shrubs before breathing through his pipes and beginning his amazing music-making. Others said he only descended into the lower valleys toward the end, because he sheltered in the crests of the acacias on the higher plains and stayed there for longer or shorter periods, slipping into the valley bottoms only at the appointed hour for singing.
Skeptics, however, attacked these narratives too. They said that the desert people still suffer from an ancient illness that antiquity itself named blindness! The proof is that they are still incapable of distinguishing between what is true and what is false, between what is good and what is evil, and between what is visible and what is hidden. If suffering this ailment had not been an everlasting curse for them, they would have been able to discover easily that the bird they describe isn’t the same bird that fascinates them with his song. The bird they have always thought to be one bird actually visits the settlements in the company of another bird, his mate. Everything the tribes said about this songbird’s size, color, or conduct does not apply to the bird of the Spirit World but to the bird’s mate, which they typically view with the eyes of blindness.
4
The skeptics further discussed the bird and said that each body is divisible into two parts: the original and its shadow. They spoke for a long time about what is visible in the wasteland and what is hidden. They concluded that the shadow of a being is what the being’s eye sees with its blind vision. The original of the being is what is hidden from the eye of blindness and perceived only with the eye of the Spirit World. The people of the desert are wretches who have brought incurable ailments to the desert. They are incapable of distinguishing between these two types of vision and are equally incapable of distinguishing between all the weighty contradictions.