Sils Maria: Maloja snake in the Engadine (Graubünden, eastern Switzerland), “a cloud bank that winds its way through the Alpine pass like a river”.
Dec 28th 2015 From the broken shards of the self, Lying around me like a shattered pane of glass Dorian Gray’s mirror having been unable to sustain my image Anymore, The clouds of Sils Maria having filled the valley like a snake Meandering as if to engulf everything in its path With no curtains left to hide behind, How many more lows remain to endure?
The failure of self-is evident The lack of courage to be-is obvious The pure inertia to write and think-is stark We have no need to confess this yet again. But here we are nevertheless, And the tear wells up in grief, As the accelerating years pile on, And the deliverance remains elusive.. Deus ex machina long forgotten, We have banished the meaningless rituals, Forsaken the sacred texts that speak to a lost soul After years of mining that archive for those midrashim that “spoke” to my broken soul, And, waiting for godot, we hunger now in silence. Despite the cabin in the forest “Walden Pond” in the key of G minor, nothing bubbles up from the deep the brook rushes below, its healing sound gives peace the crackling fireplace makes the wood glow but the inner demons remain gnawing at the corners of the mind just below the surface of seeming calm water. The mature mind does have some advantages No longer rushing in to disastrous amours The deeper sense of compassion seems to now Hold the impulsiveness at bay (remember how Sean Connery lies next to Catherine Zeta Jones and refrains in a marvelous moment, realizing his age!)1 The release of the field of dreams, of work and career Allows for reverie in places hitherto unknown. Yet the sadness of what might have been Does not let go. The tragedy of decades of belief… To the inner conviction… That my intuition about love, life, and god 1
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Was really true Pervades my heart. All that effort to come to this place of self-destruction? Releasing these notions of truth, right, morality, theology, To the snake-mist curling though the valley Swallowing my dreams Now lying in shattered shards Around me below. The Divine? It is beyond me. There is no access. Love? I know less than ever what that means other than pain and torture. The tricks of language and interpretation seem banal now‌ The theology behind them lies in post-modern tatters, Worse, the certainty is forever gone, The comfort knowing the sacred text was always there for millennia And I might add to that tradition of learned scholars Might continue its tradition of exegesis Is no longer, And, as I listen to others, however brilliant, interpret, I no longer have patience. The liturgy has me mute Unable to produce the sounds from my lead lips. The words glare at me from the pages of the siddur like angry angels. My father turns 95 A figure of middle European kultur A Viennese Holocaust escapee, a kindertransport child, then a British alien internee, Quotes his Homer and Talmud effortlessly even now, Swimming effortlessly between cultures of Athens and Jerusalem He recounts his life and delights in his progeny Describing it as one of survival, gratitude and pride. Proudly asserting his Zionism without abashment, I listen and marvel and his produced narrative, ever aware of his audience, He speaks of the near death experiences during the war, The U-boats, the fear, the near starvation, the absence of the sight of a woman for close to three years, The discovery on return of the loss of his entire family The guilt of his survival I sense his unspoken sense of betrayal of parents on leaving the train station in Wien, And my very existence the product of his unconscious betrayal He makes no mention of my childhood years the intervening years of poverty and struggle The humiliation of self when faced with a spouse who lacked his Austrian Frugality, whose demands were beyond his capability.
As a child I suffered his humiliation I swore never to allow this to happen to me. All this is omitted from the narrative Or maybe his generosity of spirit disallows its expression. His life Its parts Its ending Its symmetry His narrative description All makes sense to him And gives him pride and satisfaction Seeing great grandchildren And adoring grandchildren surrounding him. My life however, seems the mirror image It makes no sense It has no overarching narrative It feels the lack and bereft of meaning It mourns the decades search which proved fruitless. I feel like an orphan Having combed the planet for master teachers-those of inspiration I find no one out there who might help me anymore And going inside Deep inside There is only the pain of childhood Torment, abuse, the secret moves of survival, the lies deceits and betrayals For self-preservation, And the character defects that point at me in accusation Proving my failures In this inner court of law. Yet in this snake of mist Lies wisdom For this very dark serpentine cloud formation Signifies the fallen angel of Milton Whose wisdom forced me out of the garden‌ And in order to return I must relinquish that very discerning Of good and evil And self judgment And bring compassion even to this dark space To allow a new consciousness to arise Percolate up from the depths of despair Until the sun burns the Sils Maria
And the beautiful valley emerges from the disappearing snake As if it has gifted its dying to me.