In, but not of, the words

Anne Atik

 Strange today, getting on the bus into town and whipping out my Kindle. I'd recently cleared out the downloaded library and not much was left, the biography of Samuel Beckett, "Damned to Fame" and a history book, "Rubicon", on the downfall of the Roman Republic. 

My library defaulted to the Beckett biography, right to the beginning. The author, James Knowlson, quoted a portion of a poem by Anne Atik, someone I had never heard of. I must have read this before but more than likely skimmed through it, eager to get to the actual biography. I did vaguely remember but it had left no impression. This time the words gripped, caught my mind/heart, spoke deeply of words, life - and having now read the biography - very much now of Samuel Beckett himself, his flesh and blood.

Samuel Beckett

The  excerpt:-

A Bible-reading man, he came and left between two holy days he didn’t much observe: 

the Good Friday of his birth, near the Christmas of his death.

His life between, a pilgrim’s progress with a smile

 for what he saw along the way and wrote of,

 oversleeping, age and hope and sloth.

Then saw, and wrote of, wrenched along the way,

 age and hope and helpless weeping. But he would have, reading those two states, rejected both

 as most remotely holding but one part or more than minute dose

 of the inexpressible, whole truth of how it is, it was.

He showed the shortest way to get across a line like this: 

crossed out such words as these to get to

 speechlessness. 

He crossed out rivers to get to their stones.

To get to the bottom, when the crisis is reached and truth-telling begins.

Whatever he knew he knew to music.

He found the pace for misery, 

matched distress to syncope, and joke to a Beethoven stop at the punch line.

But thought that he’d failed to find failure’s pulse.

What that says about failure, music, and us.

Where is the "meaning" of such words? Surely in relationship, hovering in cyberspace, waiting for connection, waiting for a mind/heart to hear and thus know a more intimate reality, a movement toward Buddha. The present moment is the only moment, but..........

"To get to the bottom, when the crisis is reached and truth-telling begins."

 Where and how does the truth-telling begin? What is the "one way" to the hidden ground of love that "has no explanation" - and needs none? 

Beckett was a "bible reading man", but not of the self proclaimed devout kind that drips a nauseating piety, one that sets each word into a pre-ordained theology taught and learnt from birth - creating certitudes that are equated with the "guidance of the spirit", leaving only a mind/heart of judgement of anyone or anything that would challenge the "truth" as now witnessed to and affirmed.

Thomas Merton - Sombrero......or halo?

And how do we get to "speechlessness"? My mind wanders again to Chuang Tzu, as translated by Thomas Merton:-

The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find one who has forgotten words? That is the one I would like to talk to.

Certainly, in this time of so many words, with so many seeking to convince, to indoctrinate, to ensnare within their system, how refreshing it would be to hear the one who has forgotten words.

How would they tie their shoelaces?