Serpent

I left my shed for the cold and dark starry night. Eternal knowledge has become much to bear. I was afraid. Gigantic, ripening, full of fears. I paused in the darkness on the path to the house and looked up into the starry sky. And as I stretched my neck I inadvertently verbalized this small strain. And the noise startled me. Fear of my own shadow was the power this knowledge held over me. Too many millions of years of human ideas were threatening. Or I felt threatened. I don’t always work at night and less when the chill must be cut by the building and burning of another fire but the thoughts of late were calling me. Tempting me. The thoughts were tempting me. The serpent in the Garden of Eden pushed man to conceptualize divinity. The serpent awakened us. I felt it around me. The straining of my neck that forced a whisper through the vocal cords as I peered into the heavens felt like the serpent slithering up my skin. Small dots of light twinkling in the dark. Constellations. A moment of reverence not wonder. Reverence for the knowledge causing the fear within me. The eternal knowledge passing through millions of years. Modern man… how naïve. Looking down on those who came before us. We think: how little did they know and how much we know. As if our thoughts and theirs weren’t the same. As if Socrates didn’t see the same constellations when he stared up into the darkness. As if he didn’t feel the serpent slithering around his neck as he took in the light.

Slowly now the evening changes his garments

held for him by a rim of ancient trees;

you gaze: and the landscape divides and leaves you,

one sinking and one rising toward the sky. *

     So what does any of this mean? I felt an ancient fear. I was terrified alone in the dark afraid of my own shadow and inside leaning against the kitchen counter in the silent house trying to get hold of myself I see the eggs in their basket unwashed with smears of chicken droppings and Mama rises to comfort me with the image of yard birds like a cure. Pick them up. Pet them. Feed them. Collect their eggs. Watch them waddling and pecking around. Ancient domestication. And I think yes I could live just this way with my egg layers and garden kale and Swiss chard and broccoli and Brussels sprouts. What is different about these eggs than the eggs of Socrates? How long does it take for us to form ideas? And we dismiss the ancient ideas so quickly as if unlearned and unstudied and unthoughtful interpretations of Marx could hold a candle to the Bible… that ancient book of human complexity and paradox. The serpent said:

     For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. KJV Genesis 3:5

     And why would God wish to keep our eyes closed? It was the serpent, yes yes the serpent who pushed us to open them… Maybe the God you think you know isn’t the God that is. And maybe the serpent is the truth that cannot be unseen when it is seen.

     And you are left, to none belonging wholly,

     not so dark as a silent house, nor quite

     so surely pledged unto eternity

     as that which grows to star and climbs the night. *

     If we don’t understand what is peace how could we attempt to stop war? I’ve arrived at my own walled garden of sorts. I admit I admit I admit. Have you ever considered why there was a serpent in paradise? Or where it came from? Adam was not a man. Adam was MAN. And from Man male and female were created.

     So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. KJV Genesis 1:27

     The first story… And over the last many days and weeks and months and years… last night I’d never been more certain and I’d never been more confused.

     To you is left (unspeakably confused)

     your life, gigantic, ripening, full of fears,

     so that it, now hemmed in, now grasping all,

     is changed in you by turns to stone and stars. *

     Serpent and divinity and how many years will it take to destroy the Archetypal Man? …cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life… (KJV Genesis 3:17) At times this destruction weighs me down when I allow it to these daily threats dressed in neutral clothing… There’s a reason we build temples around the divine. So what reason have you for not making a temple of your body? Don’t judge a book by its cover… that isn’t what the Romans thought when they built the Colosseum and Pantheon or what the Egyptians thought when they built the pyramids or what the Indians thought when they built the Taj Mahal or the Brazilians when they built Christ the Redeemer or the French when they built Mont-Saint-Michel or… the Sagrada Familia or Notre Dame or St. Peter’s Basilica or Westminster Abbey or Hagia Sophia or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or… I’ll never understand anything unless I discover it for myself and do we evolve just to become capable of understanding the ever-growing history and what will become of our evolved selves if we misapplied such evolution or is that even possible no no no it is not possible to use evolution in any other way than it was intended no no our consciousness does not posses this power… so what’s happening out there? Everything we do everything we will do everything we are it may not have been planned but it is no mistake and here I am back to my place in a world without right or wrong no you will never destroy the Archetypal Man the parts of us that Are but maybe you’re the serpent in paradise pushing us to open our eyes. Maybe. Or maybe you’re just Adam blaming Eve and God itself.

*Evening (Rainer Maria Rilke)