Many Musics, Ninth Series, Part 5

[cenacle]

Continued from here:
http://www.spiritplants.org/forums/the-library/many-musics-ninth-series-part-4/

xxxi. Sleepers Now each of you is shown the origin of the world, its source in Emandia, & how arrives the Gate to the Island. Now each of you is given practice to devote to your art, time to feel how real it seems through the Dreaming. Was not always so. We lost many, in mind or entirely, early on, thinking it would be quick, we knew so much, the Hum that signaled the Gate through time, the juice created to pursue it, piece together the fall. We believed it was a series of acts, a finite number, they could be shifted, like levers, like Time itself a great calculating machine we could tinker to a better end. We would find these acts, in space & time, & settle one of our sleepers near each one. But tell it otherwise, no, what happened was that the Hum shifted. The Gate eluded us & we could not use its power to repair our history. We found ourselves at war with the Gate, losing men & women, helpless to know how to prevent our collapse. I sought our answer dream within dream within dream. Eschewed the Sleeping Capsule, the potion of my own hand I trebled, in strength. Did not wake & would have died but for a friend. My old mutt retriever would not be so long kept from me in my Tower offices. He found me & licked me & nudged me & dragged me back to him. I held him despairing. His quick breaths, his swift beat. How he tended me close & how in other times I had tended his wounds & ills. And then I realized what should have been simple. Not a machine with levers. History is the stuff of of blood & bone. Save its body. But more. The Gate is history's heartbeat. It could not save the flesh within which it lives. We had to learn what had been broken & by what manner to heal it. This would be our way going forward: bind the wounds, tend the wounds, heal the wounds. The days & weeks & months & years tired me, as I saw human history heal but not recover. It was not enough, the world was failing to sustain us for our countless ruining hands. I wondered if there was something else, a potenter magic to be seduced. I began seeing the Hum as something else. A thread. A thread through an impossible way I needed to travel, through Time itself, past it, what Emandia was, what we are. I would go myself, if needed, as sacrifice or Hero. We could not fail. ****** xxxii. Sing the Island Is it silence or is it song when it begins? The world, the next one, the countless next one, blue-green, another ocean planet, waiting to fire, waiting to bloom, waiting to burst. But then the Hum, the arrival, just barely not silence itself, & yet, & yet. Low singing, so low, searching music, searching this new watery planet, sniffing like a Creature for the place to arrive, the place will sing to be the Tangled Gate. Arrives the Island, a Beast covered in trees, arrives & sings the Island, sings it soft, sings it promise, sings it lure, accept the Gate, accept the Gate, accept the Gate. The Island will growl, demur, beckon, let a little, let a little more. Sing the Island a vision, a vision of what to be, what will emerge this union from new & old dreams, sing the Island a vision honest of old despair, what has failed before, whyfore this new song. Sing the Island till the Island pleases no more, & love fires this universe once & future again. Now comes the Gate, comes the Gate, comes the Gate now full & hard, sings unto the Island, arriving, arriving, mating, binding, let a little, let a little more. Grasping, binding, joy. Now a conjugal song, happy wedded Hum. The Gate grafted to the beauties of this Island, to the new truths of this world. The Gate crafted to sing through time, love every last Creature of this world. Every last one. ****** xxxiii. And the Creatures What found on the Island, who came to the Island, how the dreams of men fired through it all. Always the Creatures, on every world Emandia sought new home. Always were the Creatures there, half-found in what the Island itself grew, but more. It was agreed she would come first & if needed lead them all away again. She was arted for this purpose, & so first. It was the quirk in her animated nature that caused them be. Committed to this new world, unremembering any other, these would be her clue. Given her kind's yearn, their love of music, these Creatures would live in the caverns beneath the Tangled Gate, at the beginning. What found on the Island, who came to the Island, now the dreams of men fired through it all? These Creatures would also leave the Island, scatter through history among the world's homegrown men & women, clues, like their dreams. If you slept with a Creature in your arms when small, dreamed the untellable, woke wildly, the night big & silent, you were close. As you grew, & made your ways through the mysteries of want, & men's answers, you were further away. Rightly yearned those wild, silent nights. Yes, there was unseen music. When you no longer wondered their fate, long given to attract to taller icons & thicker books, they continued too. What found on the Island, who came to the Island, how the dreams of men fired through it all. When the world began to run down, it would be again Creatures to your console, in one form or another, loving you, leaving you this time. For she would summon them back to her, from all places & times, remembered some things, & time to move along, little Creatures, time again. So the Architect taught the Sleepers, find the Creatures if you can, remember which ones you knew when small & the feeling the wild, silent nights, the unseen music, find them when you can. When you are near, it helps to hum, it helps to sing, it helps to smile. Be ready to dance as they are. ****** xxxiv. The One Who Disappeared There was only one. She should not have been sent. She knew everything. How it begins & how it all ends. She thought it was funny, like a game. A very old man had told her when she was small, "If you can stay awake in your dreams, & begin to look around, you will learn strange things." She told nobody, it was funnier that way. She found her Creatures in dreams, of course, & they welcomed her, of course, with a dance & a song. Her first lover, chosen more by whim than thought, let her down, unable to sleep awake in their tangle of blankets & candlelight. Her next lover seemed to know, to touch her keys & make a better music, but shied off her harder harmonies, liked her to moan his night but not caterwaul for all creation. Alas. She came to the Sleepers with big eyes, a little smarts, a show of tit, a little wit. Among the first group sent across the Dreaming, hers was the least hard task. Thus easiest to elude when she did not return. She pulled herself whole through the Dreaming, no potion had brought her to. Taking the smallest form seemed best plan for her travels & games to come. A simple dress, big smile, laughing eyes. Laughing, perhaps call it like a cackling too. ****** xxxv. Preparing for the Dreaming I was the first to cross the Dreaming. I'd done so years before anyone else, had created a loose network of knowledge & contacts before the rest knew, as they still leaned on leaders & the learned to stop the crash. I was busy. There had to be powerful Sleep Capsules, hundreds of them, constructed in a deep cavern, below leaders & the wars they reluctantly tried to slow. The capsules would gleam white in the lamps upon them, stoned mined in the high mountains where the workmen labor up single file with heavy coils on their shoulders. It would ride in slabs down steep tracks to where I would ferry it along. There had to be allies who knew we were coming, & why, who had already traced on to our dilemma from their seeds, some of many, & would give us both shelter & cover to operate. I found Travelers in many places & times, beautiful sober faced men, eager-thighed women, these would tender & teach us too. Crossing the Dreaming was exhausting, double since landing was usually in the sea. I caused the building of a simple Pensionne with doors from many directions. I caused its gardens raised up, rooted it all in many centuries & places, open to all, but especially our Dreaming kind. I did not cause or coax the White Tiger to come. But when he came I knew we weren't alone, & my efforts not so desparate. I knew further by stories of a Tramp met at the Threshold of the Dreaming, a tattered man with secret advice. There was one I regretted leaving behind, one Sleeper I felt an oddness for, she never mentioned the Tramp. When I decided to leave, I weakened into her arms the night before. I wanted her to take over, her to protect them, comfort them if I failed. She was a woman with even scanter trinkets than the rest, but a single white shell. She'd listen to it for hours. These are my only regets. ******

[cenacle]

*** Many Musics, IX, xxxi, "Sleepers," "History is the stuff of blood and bone" - more than books or famous names, but visceral moments accumulating, feeding, affecting, forward and back...
*** Many Musics, IX, xxxii, "Sing the Island," a sort of cosmic marriage and creation poem ...as far as I've seen thus far...
*** Many Musics, IX, xxxiii, "And the Creatures," a poem about the secrets so close yet often go unseen...
*** Many Musics, IX, xxxiv, "The One Who Disappeared," yet another variation on the Imp who is in many of these poems in different ways...*** Many Musics, IX, xxxv, "Preparing for the Dreaming," the Sleeper are heroes who travel through time from far into the future, trying to save things, heal history of its fatal wounds...

[cenacle]

continued here:
http://www.spiritplants.org/forums/the-library/many-musics-ninth-series-part-6/