Just noticed that the welcome mat in front of the door upstairs has three arrows, two pointing west and one pointing east. Why arrows? Is this a sign of welcome among some tribe of people, the bow and arrow people, the people who go in all directions at once people, or the befuddled and troubled and bubbled up from nowhere people? Our mat just says welcome. And you are. Whoever you are. Look at my saddle it has a pommel. Look at my horse it has a rich white mane. And I ask myself what if the role of consciousness isn’t so much to enable you to do things but to encourage you to do things. Or to mind about things you otherwise wouldn’t mind about. At the Gombe Stream Research Centre in Tanzania, a chimpanzee was noticed emerging into the open in a thunderstorm and dancing and screaming and stamping on the muddy ground as torrents of water streamed down his back and lightning flashed. Is that not a form of ecstatic consciousness, a deeply rooted bond with the external world exploding in a rapture of fevered relation? Rapport. Concord. Reconciliation. Or is it more like King Lear, feeling the sharp tooth of ingratitude and wanting the blasts of a hostile universe to cleanse and awaken us to stronger, higher, more powerful forces? To feel yourself exist, even in pain, isn’t that the goal? Well then, welcome. Welcome to life. Welcome to string. Welcome to snow. Welcome to fire. Welcome to uncertainty and long trains clanking across Kansas. Welcome to Kansas. Welcome to Wyoming. Welcome to sludge and tiptoe and twinkling. Have you noticed? Friends tend to disappear. Death claims them. Ambition claims them. Children claim them. Duty and impulse and betrayal claim them. And have you noticed the excitement when the device on your lap buzzes? What’s that? That’s called expectation, and comes wrapped in a placenta of hope, like anything with a pulse, and a history, and a song to sing. And have you noticed how irritating and comforting folding clothes can be? How filling a room with heat in early October can lead to writing and wine? Or the awkwardness at being at a loss of words in the midst of a conversation that developed out of a casual encounter in a crowded room? Or the baptism of hot water on your face in the morning followed by the routine of brushing your teeth? Or the exquisite terror of a roller coaster making its first steep plunge? Or the imperceptible drop into sleep, which I’ve never been able to catch. That beautiful dissolution. That wonderful unraveling. And welcome mat at the gate of heaven.
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Rembrandt
Philosopher in Meditation
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About Me
- John Olson
- John Olson is the author of numerous books of poetry and (chiefly) prose poetry, including Dada Budapest, Larynx Galaxy, and Backscatter: New And Selected Poems. He is also the author of four novels, including In Advance of the Broken Justy, The Seeing Machine, The Nothing That Is, and Souls Of Wind.
2 comments:
I don't think Rimbaud was allowed into heaven. They have a welcome mat for arrivals to scrape off dirt, water, dust, grit, mud, slush, sleet, grass or rain, and manure. But Rimbaud was a green snowman; wherever he went he made a mess. However, he was able to make it over the gate whenwever it snowed.
Rimbaud sent me a postcard from heaven once. It began as a sensation in the skin of my hand then slowly formed an image: clouds gathering over the high sea, formed of an eternity of hot tears.
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