Call of the Sacred River: Pather Panchali and Dreams of Varanasi

Wife

"Let's go to Benares. Don't the orators make lots of money?"

Husband

"We can't go. How can we? This is my ancestral home; how can I leave it?"

Wife

"Why not? You were away eight years before. You left me at my father's and never wrote."

Husband

"Then I did not know you sweet you are."

Wife

"Save your compliments. This is my home, too. But look at it; it's like living in the forest. At night the jackals prowl around. There are no neighbours I can talk to. You are not always here and sometimes I'm so depressed. You won't understand these things. You live in your work. Sometimes you're paid, sometimes not. I had dreams, too, of all the things I would do.

Outside Their Door, An Old Lady Beggar Sings:

"Those who came before are gone / I am left behind, a penniless beggar / Day draws to its close, night's mantle descends / Row me across to the other side"

From the film, Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)

The same night I look back to Pather Panchali for a few words of wisdom on the experience of human dreaming, I coincidentally happened on the film, "Beyond" by NYC-based photographers Joey L. and Cale Glendening. The quote in the classic 1955 Bengali film Pather Panchali speaks to the luring effect that the ancient city of Benares commands, also known as Varanasi, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Indeed, it is impressive to see the holy tradition of sadhus depicted in the light of modern photographic excellence. The final scenes in Joey L.'s film are incredibly touching as a young sadhu teaches about how the world is made for peace, and all must be as the sun, seeing all beings as equals and offering the light of wisdom with an exuberant heart to all indiscriminately. Long Live Mother India! 

_________

As the world turns, dreams often fall into the abyss of earthly shadows and solar illumination 

The Jaws of Life by RK

We Are Not Above Extinction by RK

Light On The Little Road by RK

Bridge Under Serene Sky by RK

All Rivers Sacred by RK

__________

and silence, and nothing, and silence,
and how in silent searching , the wandering fades

a trespasser in the popular living happen-stance of  “honest” life,
stopped,
self-betrayed,
to tarry with biblical heat
and white-skinned eyes

paranoiac doom
in the aftermath of domestic civilization
...

calling back to the childless dream
Earth
...

returning from within
the simplest symbolic stare into the beaten human sigh
pointing downwards

upwards

west and east
with the surest of numbered lies,
telling children to fear death and bless the flesh with ungrateful ears, blocked
to the great mystery
that is not
that I am.

excerpts from "that I am silence"

To Dream in Red is to Uncover the Veil of Consciousness

Judge

"Yesterday, I had a dream – I had a dream about you. You were 40 or 50 years old…and you were happy."

Student

"Do your dreams come true?"

Judge

"It’s been years since I’ve had a really pleasant dream." 

Dialogue between the two principal characters in the classic filmmaking masterpiece "Three Colors: Red" by Krzysztof Kieslowski

Along these lines of artistic development towards a pseudo-scientific theory of colour, the iconic German poet, Goethe, produced a volume entitled, "Theory of Colours". While not being received as proper theoretical discourse by the scientific community, this was Goethe's prideful involution into the realm of human experience beyond the sublimities of intellectual life. 

Should your glance on mornings lovely
Lift to drink the heaven's blue
Or when sun, veiled by sirocco,
Royal red sinks out of view –
Give to Nature praise and honor.
Blithe of heart and sound of eye,
Knowing for the world of colour
Where its broad foundations lie.
— Goethe

(Quoted from Wikipedia article, "Theory of Colours")

Also, see my previous post: Reflection on Zbigniew Preisner's "Silence, Night and Dreams"

_________

I wake with eyes closed. I won’t open. I can’t look. The bed feels dishearteningly unlike where I know myself to be in my present life, yet strangely familiar to the one bedroom I never wanted to wake in again. It’s my father’s, and stepmother’s.

Bedroom in Arles by Van Gogh

Cat litter sheets and the nauseous sky pelt the window by my ear, as I smell the cheap havoc about in tepid condensation of humidity, a feeling of being too close to home, where abuse reigns on every familial plane, as a tree bespattered with the lifeless trembling of a deadly morning earthquake.

The woman at the window by Jozef Israels

I sink deeper, and the outdoors opens as an unsheathed bronze, polished and brandished for timely wielding about the nascent plain of equal hue, enlightened by the western sun. As a beckoning from Manifest Destiny herself, I trudge through the yonder horizon with a mind for exploratory happiness, in pursuit of the ear and chaff of corn and grain, the dizzying panorama of emptied wilderness, where the Vanishing Indian now only lives as a politically corrected name.

Westward Ho! by Emanuel Leutze

I tip my hat squarely to the north with scythe in hand. I wander through the flooding dusk lit pasture, a son of the mindless hate staring me in the back, now buried in the lightless flat of night’s self-awakening. 

This and two other dream narratives (21st Century Space Race of Sustainable Housing & Mindscapes Interpenetrate Dream with Reality) feature subconscious experience surfacing amid the sensual spheres of daily waking.

_________

The western pathway to slavery lies feebly
over the chasm
         As a vile whore reminds us
         to put grace before prayer

In motionless wonder,
personifying the lush diligence of an ancient society
         Dismembered at the plan of a cursed monotony
               To stare into the black façade
               and feel dreams slip through sleep,
                         In and out

excerpt from "Blind Daemon"

The Tempest of Shakespeare's Foretold America

Shakespeare's Tempest Title Page, From Walter Crane's Illustrated 1893 Edition

"...like the baseless fabric of this vision, 

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

Shakespeare's The Tempest Act 4, Scene 1

Miranda - The Tempest by John William Waterhouse

See Walter' Crane's Engraving for Act 4, Scene 1

This painting from the early 20th century depicts Miranda, the daughter of Prospero, who after being visited by a gathering of dancing nymphs, becomes irate before his children and lets out this oft-repeated quote in the final play solely attributed to this great English master of drama. 

I'd like to imagine that Miranda, alone on the coast of this strange, continental "New World" island, whose fate is the design of familial power, takes these words to heart, and envisions the great catastrophe of human ambition, as with the same vociferous sight as a sail ship torn in the tempests of the besieging, isolating, and finally, humanizing seas. 

I often hear this quote in my head at times, it speaks to me in the volumes as voluminous as the Earth's own oceanic body; a truism for the unconscious, subsurface flesh of all earthly necessity.

__________

At the house of my paternal grandparents, upstate New York, embedded the deep thick of hilly forests, I drift outside the family circle. A lump of earth appears as an ancestral burial ground, laden with the cornerstone of belief in a religious death through a life lived for the proverbial travesty of peaceful rest. 

Cauterskill Falls on the Catskill Mountains by William Guy Wall

In an act outside defiance, towards the inborn will to dream, I flee, bounding beyond the borders of the family lawn towards a new home. My brother, eager to follow in my footsteps, cavorts sheepishly in the pliant mud of earthly selfishness, and looking behind me, I see his devilish eyes smile with ghastly service. He raises a small pistol, and fires. I thumb a ride, and bound tirelessly through traffic, having skimmed the side rails of a merging highway road, a cop notices my automotive thievery, and at once I am caught. In my plea, they capture my brother close behind, warned of his homicidal designs. 

Highway-Byways by Paul Klee

In the police station, a lawyer sees us, and our family soon becomes present. They find him guilty. I’m barred from seeing him, yet the lawyer slips me a note, a suicide drawing, written with a chipped pencil within the frame of a bullet illustration. “Is he portending to war?” I wonder, free to feed my smaller animal the fun-loving pride of colourful satiation.

_________

America! Why have you buried your deepest, darkest secrets in whispers unheard? Yours is a truth disguised in a white blur as brilliant as the green-footed greed of mad industry. Why do you never step lightly off the strength of Europe's forests, onto world mystery reduced to cartography?

What is your name? And since when have you dreamed so shamelessly without thought to the diligent right to be in peace on Earth? Where is your life, if not in the decadent splendor of your shared riches? Why have you become poor with anger, and offered only suicide to your stout-hearted mob?

- excerpt from "America! America!"