Two pomes in Paradise.

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Great Paradise, Placentia Bay, 1970:
[As I remember it Little Bona is down in Little Bona Cove - not between the Paradises as shown on the government map. One of the Heffern's still lived there - Ned? Albert? - I can't remember ... alone, gathering berries, fishing with 2-Pius in trap season ... and then one year, he died.]

Huarango: (which grows nowhere near Placentia Bay)

Tú: la más antigua sombra. Las tribus y los reyes a tu don atrajiste. Remo tallado viga cetro fuiste, dueño de las turquesas más grandes. Y en un verdón de los desiertos andes entre dunas y huacas floreciste. Martín Horta.   You: the most ancient shade. You lured tribes and kings to your gift. You were the carved oar, beam and scepter for the master of the largest turquoises. And in green on the deserted Andes, between dunes and ruins you flourish. (Thanks to Marta for assistance with the translation.)

 
[Chagall's 'Job' is a big canvas; Job's expression is ... not quite scriptural (but it was so long ago - at the Musée de Beaux Arts in Montréal - that I have forgotten why it moved me so deeply).]

 

Anoche cuando dormía soñé, ¡bendita ilusión!, que una fontana fluía dentro de mi corazón. Di, ¿por qué acequia escondida, agua, vienes hasta mí, manantial de nueva vida de donde nunca bebí? Anoche cuando dormía soñé, ¡bendita ilusión!, que una colmena tenía dentro de mi corazón; y las doradas abejas iban fabricando en él, con las amarguras viejas, blanca cera y dulce miel. Anoche cuando dormía soñé, ¡bendita ilusión!, que un ardiente sol lucía dentro de mi corazón. Era ardiente porque daba calores de rojo hogar, y era sol porque alumbraba y porque hacía llorar. Anoche cuando dormía soñé, ¡bendita ilusión!, que era Dios lo que tenía dentro de mi corazón. Antonio Machado.

Last night, as I was sleeping, I dreamed — marvellous error! — that a spring was breaking out in my heart. I said: Along what secret aqueduct, oh water, are you coming to me, water of a new life that I have never drunk? Last night, as I was sleeping, I dreamed — marvellous error! — that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures. Last night, as I was sleeping, I dreamed — marvellous error! — that a fiery sun was giving light inside my heart. It was fiery because I felt warmth as from a hearth, and sun because it gave light and brought tears to my eyes. Last night, as I slept, I dreamed — marvellous error! — that it was God I had here inside my heart.

 
Somewhere else: (but at least they are not alone)
 
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,” says Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost, Book I ~line 250. Unfortunately it's nonsense, wishful thinking - roughly equivalent to "It matters not how strait the gate ..." &c. (and the picture has a moustache).

A longish story: (finishing up on 'Velvet glove' posted previously)



I want a job that makes the world a better place too, but I need cash for the rent.


The boy wants to work with what he likes; his life is in grave danger.
He's been medicated; soon he'll go back to thinking about the only thing that matters.
Didn't I tell you Ana?


Kennel             Collar             Treats

I like the pills that make me love.

 

Upright Man     Wise Man     Greedy Man

A-and a short one:   Homo erectus, Homo sapiens, Homo graedum ... extinction! Or ... Homo agapiens?

 
Bottom line:



Paradise? "Before the fall?" they ask; "After?"; "During?"

Who knows just what an angel wielding a flashing sword looks like anyway? Either we are driven out and Paradise remains as it is, or the gate is a kind of cosmic worm-hole leading straight back where it comes from, but different, fallen (... or none of the above).

Frye imagines a collapse of time - a fall and resurrection constantly occurring - which definitely has appeal. Occam might map it all directly to birth & death - but his razor might not be infallible either. (Eh?)



It sorta seems to me - as an outlier, imagining an existent civilized society, culture, &c. - to boil down to suicide (individual, several, or collective), sedition (in the antique sense of 'a concerted movement to overthrow an established government') or ... grace?

But as Gwynne Dyer points out, there is no evidence - not even a sign - of any real action, rather the contrary: Russia, the Maldives, and short-term thinking on climate change, October 21 in the Georgia Strait.

The picture has a moustache and little Buddha there might be wearing a wig.

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