LONGING FOR PERMANENCE

by Michael James,  April 2015

Through a small hole in a fence a child saw an iridescent blue butterfly land on one of those equally brilliant red ground cover flowers with yellow hearts. He moved for comfort and when again he stared at the flower through the hole, the visitor had vanished. Only its magnificence remained living in his mind: its big wings mirroring the sky when open; when closed, a self-effacing grey. For a moment it had been his to admire but now was only a memory to cherish.

As a boy, riding my bike down a long hill through the Ashdown Forest, I imagined I heard a huge musical chord swelling to a crescendo behind me, rushing to follow me helter-skelter down the hill, filling the woods with its magnificent harmony. As the chord reached me, it rose a fifth as if in greeting, then passing by, dropped again and faded into silence.

At a student party in the Berkeley hills, in my rampant youth, I danced to Caribbean music with another’s partner. We were wine-loose and free of limb, and we gave ourselves to the music and to each other with the controlled abandon of two dancers performing as one. And when the music ended we clapped for another piece which started us again on the extravagant monopoly of the floor. But I never got her number and forgot her name.

As a hearty youth working for the  US Forest Service in a summer job, I climbed Mount Shasta, alone as  it happened. There was a hut at 8,000 ft in which I slept for the night. But at three am, I was awakened by a party of climbers tromping around the little hut preparing for the ascent. They left; I slept. Later I passed them dithering about on the steep climb up to Red Rocks. They never did make it past the Rocks, on top of which I fell asleep after lunch and a half bottle of rose. When I awakened there were two climbers standing over me asking whether I was all right. The three of us slogged on to the summit in time to enjoy the magnificent view for an hour: the westering sun glinting on a sliver of ocean, unbroken forest as far as we could see, dark blue sky like looking down into the deep ocean by Molikini off Maui. On the way down, after we had made it to the bottom of Red Rocks, we wrapped our heavy jackets around our backsides, and took off sliding down a 3,000 ft glissade, feet in the air to prevent us tumbling or spinning, yelling at the top of our lungs like children on a roller coaster. 

 

The boy and his butterfly and the bicycle and the dancer and the climber, are all gone like the snows of yesteryear, les neiges d’antan, the only permanence being the ubiquity of change. Matter is an illusion, say both physicist and mystic: all is the energy of constant change. So we long for what we cannot have, at least not this side of the grave, the Faustian moment bargained for by Mephistopheles: “Stay awhile; thou art so fair!”

Faust was no spring chicken when he tired of change. We octogenarians came to the same state two decades ago, possibly when the increased pace of aging brought about unwelcome changes in our bodies. And now we face similar deterioration in our brains.

We stop sleeping through the night; we mislay car keys and wallets; miss appointments; miss being whole. But hale or not, we’d value change would bring us rain.

   Come now Aprille with your shoures sote

And perce old Marche to the rote.

Now bathe every veyne in swich licour

Whose vertu then engendre will the flour.

Come Zephirus eek with your swete breeth

Inspire flours in every holt and heeth

And leve smale fowles maken melodye

That slepen al the night with open ye.

Come now, April, with your sweet showers

And pierce old March to the root.

Now bathe every vein in such sap

Whose virtue will engender then the flowers.

Come West Wind also with your sweet breath;

Breathe into flowers in every grove and heath,

And cause small birds to sing

That sleep all night with an open eye.