I Am A Desert Stranger: Reflections on The Little Prince

Little Prince by Milan Cupka

“A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Last night, I took to reading the entire book, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I have been reading a lot into the similarities between Paolo Coelho's The Alchemist and Jewish-Algerian folklore, particularly the tale of The Sabbath Lion. With The Little Prince I have now found a third counterpart to the incredible comparative mythology and collective archetypal resonance which these narratives offer to a keen mind. I could of course go on and on about the engaging metaphorical richness solely within The Little Prince, however I will stick to a fundamental theme within three of these works. 

The desert is an iconic symbol for the immense solitude that opens before a life lived for oneself, or as Coelho writes, for one's Personal Legend. The desert is the ultimate symbol of regenerative emptiness that provides the ground on which the traveler sets out before ending a journey of the soul. The Little Prince itself, closes with a simple drawing of an imaginative desert landscape. That "single event" as de Saint-Exupéry says above, is the recognition that ahead of us lies an expanse of desert. And on seeing the desert open, our dreaming emerges. As de Saint-Exupéry says, "a stranger totally unknown to us" and as Jung says, "that there is someone else in my house". American expatriate writer Paul Bowles also illuminated the desert similarly in his book, The Sheltering Sky

See my related post: Desert Wanderings: Reflection on "The Sheltering Sky"

__________

There is talk of a global calamity. The sky opens our eyes to the inimitable beyond. The solstice night tempts our minds away into the cold dogmas of apocalyptic paranoia. And then, a shift. The star light bends in a waking instant. I see through the unmoving universe, to an orbital flux in the atmosphere itself. Our planet has moved off course! 

Planet Earth 2 by Lena Luss Luyken

I feel as the only one, risen up to unparalleled sight. As a shifty character in The Little Prince, I inhabit my own planet as a sole entity, unable to move from its narrowing horizon. But my planet moves, and now the cold begins to gather as our sun becomes more and more distant. I traverse the edge of the darkening atmosphere. 

Evening Prayer in the Sahara by Gustave Guillaumet

I see into the Sahara night. Young boys play soccer among the ancient ruins. An old man enters the edge of the desert from a ruined city street. Both ancient and modern meet at the edge of the desert, and lament the last orbit around a dying sun.  

____________

Second call missing
Unctuous pull from the umbilical poor,

My unending desire for a madness
Inherent within revolutionary culture and the curtain’s aftermath

Beyond ironic civil warlords and the innate lust for earthen ore,
Lore and gore,

Multitudes fornicating over oceanic test-tube breasts,
Blessing the fatherland journey past the mother’s nest
...

Out of time
Whereupon sits the cosmic being,
Presidential yet aware of universal law
“To correct the broken backbone of history
Civilization looted in the ashtray night!”
...

To calm social panic
And sweep our American blushing under the oriental rug of timeless intoxication

For a new sky,
Fine-tipped,
Seeded and reading to be…

excerpts from "Reading to be..."

Desert Wanderings: Reflection on "The Sheltering Sky" by Paul Bowles

On reading, The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles' most well-renowned literary work, I was easily spellbound by the way he writes of the desert. This man knows how to write about the desert. He challenges the very depths of language as a mirage over the ever constant reality of the desert wanderer, struggling to see through the inescapable immensity of emptiness. 

The book began with an allusion to dream in the very beginning. Where the main characters, three wayward American travellers, briefly converse on the topic of their dream before the subject is snuffed out by quick boredom and the shallow heart of extroversion at the dawn of spiritual tourism. The travellers seek to surpass the edge of knowability. Unbeknownst to them, to travel without is to travel within, likewise, to travel within is to travel without. Or, as Joseph Campbell wrote, "where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world." (Source)

I read this book to ruminate on the presence of my grandfather, stationed in Oran, Algeria in 1943 during WWII. Further, I was moved by the shifting sands of memory, as I reminisced on the fleeting clarity of earthly form, surveying the mysteries of the open Sahara on foot, on horseback, on camel, in SUVs, encamped, stoned, under a moonless sheath of stars, and under a fully electrifying lunar beam, reflecting on the moonscape shapeshifting quality of Saharan life. Now, I read with empathetic interest with the mutuality of a fellow American expatriate, while in colder lands.

The book was written by an author, who was first, a music composer (see my post Dreams That Money Can Buy for reference to a past collaborative work he did with John Cage and Marcel Duchamp), and then, with age, crafted a literary masterpiece. As Tennessee Williams wrote in an introduction to an edition of The Sheltering Sky, in reminding the aspiring literati that Bowles had given his words enough time to "cook" with the experiential maturity of a life lived with his respect to his writing.

_________

On the metro, I open a local paper. Full color imagery comes alive, mostly scandalous female body parts, all the rage staring at you through half-covered nipples. Open the next page and shockwave. The image draws me in, a direct witnessing. I am there in the scene.

The African countryside, in the midst of civil war, green-uniformed soldiers are torn from life and limb in a bloody matter of seconds. I can smell the blood, and unwavering with petrified overwhelming adrenaline heat, I seethe with unearthly stress. Massive antiquated tanks and rebels are on their way to massacre the rest of life in the general vicinity. I flee, sure to grab a sight-affixed rifle.

In the night, stranded in the vile hot foreign country, I sense a wolf is near. Hunting for food, I follow the wild canine, cautious as to not be the followed. As I point my sight in the direction of the unaware, sickly beast, I see a green sniper light through the misty forested pathways. Fearful, I continue on with my hunt, starving. The closer I get to my prey, the more I realize it is a docile, harmless dog. I can’t kill it. With innovative strength and penetrating sight, I turn the tables on my would-be sniper. The mercenary is female. I can’t shoot.

Trashing my weapon, I head down a gated outdoor corridor. An overgrown trench of weeds now marginalizes colonial architecture, rising gothic overhead. The sky is dark grey, almost of sable commitment to the opaque grandeur beyond atmospheric heights, mirrored in the abysmal abandonment of the colonial fringe.

As I pass through the empty corridor, an unmistakable presence begs me to look over my shoulder. Behind me, a full-grown, healthy cheetah of princely step, subtly notices me through the fog haze. A bitter second ensues, I sprint, uneasy into the mangled course of vines and metal.

The cheetah bolts in an instant, as the steam of boiled broth rises from a fired pot. Miraculously, I manage to break out beyond the corridor before the cheetah advances on my unwilling flesh. A fortified military complex is my merciless welcome. Stealthily, I glide through unseen and out onto the open plain. A train station stands, lonely against the outlandish veil of unbridled wilderness air.

________

Hunting

"If you dream of hunting, you will struggle for the unattainable. If you dream that you hunt game and find it, you will overcome obstacles and gain your desires." (iDream)

________

wanderer
navigating through bursts of fire
while swans pull in whispers from far off,
sinking whistles, incantations, coded and brief,
releasing and subsuming the night,
to walk alongside other creatures
whose origins have no life in this world,
ranging across times and spaces
in the vast maze, within perceived eyes,
following a vigor,
sensing hues and grays
figuring, vanishing,
erased across slick thought trains,
to appease the spirit of the land and renew Place

raised from pure desire into a high peacedom
prevailing and spanning beyond Earth
yet encircling the buried heights,
now wasted underneath urban pathways
leading to vanquished lore,
spun with vines
growing and curling
swift with a fluidity of inhuman passion,
to embrace and devour flowering tombs

gathering in the Name,
speaking in raw emotion,
devotees to spontaneity alive with independent, rousing energy,
gaining followers behind faint lines written in dust
saved in the memories and the trust of trickster cults

after every midnight round
to oust the villainous government
from outside neoclassical churches and new age rooms
cast in a shrouded light
that spawns frustrated, annoyed intellect
to gulp down dreams and swallow potion

excerpt from "they, a chalk-grafted many"