duhkha
If you know your own force, do not turn around and do not bother yourself to glance back; if you trust yourself, if you are not afraid of unknown whirpools, plunge then into the ocean of the impersonal Vedas and dissolve there; let all your sorrows be mourned by Kancheli’s wind; let Agni encompass the holy sacrifice you are offering Him; do not hesitate to penetrate the forbidden secrets of life; do not fear to throw and give everything away if necessary; be ready to leave your doors ajar for all mistrals and siroccos; do whatever you want to do – but! listen to me! hearken to my prayers and listen to me! never! never betray the dream of your life! never seek refuge in the realm of groundless illusions! never build castles of naive hopes! Go straight towards your aim, but never bertay your dream…
I have been dreaming of a second bicycle by my side, but I have betrayed my dream. I have spit on Cocteau’s mirror.
So… now… do you hear that doleful dirge again? Do you see hoofed people with hairy chests and legs gathering for the Black Mass? Do you realize what those satanic chants can possibly mean? Right: they are after me, hankering after my despised and doomed soul that dared betray the sweet ballad of two bicycles.
Do not imitate me: my example is rotten, but it is incumbent upon me to tell you my woeful story.
But why is that I to be castigated again? Why am I to drain to the lees all the sufferings of the meaningless existence? Why was that my lot and not someone else’s? Was it only because I had no patience to wait for the second bicycle finally to arrive?
Still that is my fate, I suspect, to become the Weltschmerz. Again! Reincarnation after reincarnation I manage to commit the same mistake! How come? to kneel before knaves again? to be preached by pagans? to learn music from deaf? to be lectured on paintings by blind?
I have not had enough patience, that’s true, so I decided to leave putrid cities alone. I was sure I would reach the limpid fragrance of forbidden woods where crystal tears are seen on the leaves bathing in the morning sun… And I had but one more road to cross.
Damn me! for I saw them on a sudden! One instant was enough to render everything pointless and meaningless, to kill all my internal sublime desires, to realize that the years passed without you meant nothing; to realize with double pain that the knowledge I had acquired had been of no value either to me or to anyone as you had no share in it…
As a silent reproach of my treachery, they kept riding on and on, tracing two irresistible lines towards the sahasrara of the blazing evening sun, leaving within me two ledger lines of the unwritten symphony we will never be able to perform… but these are not you and me pedaling away,– away, uphill, leaning tenderly towards each other, smiles being the only necessary signs to be understood…
Oh two bicycles seen in the distance… swaying away…
Can there be any more desired treasure than someone thinking the same way you do? Dubious it is… No pleasures of the seen and unseen worlds would ever be able to replace one humble human soul to whom only half-a-word suffices to tell you a five-hundred-page novel… Only half-a-word – and the Universe unlocks its secret safe-boxes for you both… I was too stupid and too blind like a mole to realize that earlier.
Day after day, I kept chasing smiling faces and tender arms, arms and faces ready to sacrifice themselves for me without a moment’s hesitation. How narrow-minded we humans are, if we presume we will be able to cope with everything on our own.
Oh egoism, oh all-penetrating egoism! How many a fate, how many a friendship, how many a love, and how many a great deed have been broken because of you! And I’ve broken mine, too. I was seeking flawless victories putting my own soldiers to death, blasting my own dugouts, and slaughtering my own devoted adjutants…
Do I expect any mercy now? No, I do not even want it. I want only an abject hut where I could lock myself up for the eternal prayer for you, oh second bicycle, for you, oh all the undiscovered roads I dared to betray. Let there be wolves darting about in the night in the groves surrounding it… Let them howl for me…
Formerly I thought everything was different; my fancies seemed rosy to me myself. I was cherishing them to discover later that they were not at all rosy and that they were but deceiving mirages. Now there are only formidable images of the broken past and decayed future dwelling within me.
So hear I am: weeping over my own cinerary urn, expelled and cursed. Hear I am, kissing the elusive image of the two bicycles, which was dissolving smoothly in the odorous essence of the evening hallucination. I wept and wept, and no end was seen to my tears.
To say that that could be you and me to reach the soporific Eternity… to say that there will be no more oscillating bicycles riding from one side of the Being towards the unwept Non-Existence, where Being of the World and Being in the World are of no further consequence…
No more roads! no more drowsy paths! no more muddy lanes running beneath hills and mountains! no more pedaling away together towards unfathomable mysteries of the Cosmos, no more dreaming of reaching the edge of the Earth – with you.
…Not for you and me bird-like bicycles will exist.
What can be more horrible than having no more roads to discover and take pleasure of? What can be more terrifying than an impassible dead-end I had lead myself into?
Only being lonely and having no more routes to make…
So burn me! let me be a second Jan Gus! a second Giordano Bruno! do not have mercy on me! crucify me! laugh away if you like to! I disdain your acrimonious laughter! poison me! with opium psalms! with marijuana verse from your hideous books! only condescend! dispel the last night for me!
Oh God. Please. No mercy on me.
Why do Thou seem not to hear me?
I guess there is too long a queue of those seeking your omnipotence.
Thou hast many a messenger, I know.
They seem to be tired, though…
God bless you, oh sacred bicycles.
I’ve seen you only once, but that was enough to remember forever your imperceptible chirping, it was sufficient to leave within me this ineffable souvenir.
Be it: I betrayed first. So, God, tighten the leash chafing my wretched neck, I deserve it. Do not get touched by tears standing in my eyes. But why are Thy eyes wet with tears, too? Oh, Thou, merciful Father, Thou are moaning over Thy own unfortunate creation…
There is no pardon for a traitor. And no more bicycles in sight. Sheol is my last dwelling place… I dare not lie now, and though I am trying to escape your shrewd eyes, they are everywhere.
Thou liftest me, Thou squeezest me, Thou let my soul meekly leak out of the body. No more pain. Only Thy all-forgiving smile and Thy soothing fingers wiping the scars off my wretched soul.
How canst Thou be so merciful? Definitely, humans cannot realize this to the full. They are stupid to perceive Thy wisdom.
So God bless all those riding upon earthly roads, God bless them twice if they are on their dipterous bicycles, God bless them thrice if they are two…
13 January 2004. — Prossié (Russia)