The year is 1976. I am standing on the steps to the library reading the front page of the newspaper. It is my second year of university at Massey. Pro-abortion marches are the big thing and a march in our very own Palmerston North the day before is front page news.
“A very great thing,” says a voice behind my shoulder. I look around to see who it is. “Freedom in action,” he says.
I look him over. He is older than me, with reddish hair, and speaks with an American accent. “What if reincarnation is a fact?” I counter. “Then you’ve got a trillion babies wanting to be born. I doubt if Buddhists are big on abortion, just off the top of my head. Who knows what trouble we cause?”
We talk some more. It turns out he has a degree in comparative religion. He has to be somewhere, he says, but it’s rare to meet someone willing or able to discuss matters philosophic. I agree. Can we meet up, he wants to know? Sure. He tells me what: Bring a bottle of wine. He’ll cook dinner, tomorrow at seven, and we’ll continue. We’ll run the gamut. All the time in the world. He lives on campus, in the librarian’s house. Seven o’clock.
I turn up with my bottle of wine, red as I remember. He’s in the kitchen, already cooking. I put the bottle on the bench. He pours a couple of glasses from a bottle already open. We don’t mess around. Like an examination, time has been apportioned. Start now. He keeps cooking. We start at the start: God, gods, non-gods, demigods, devils, death, futility, thought, evolution, devolution, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianism, Confucianism, Islamism, Zoroastrianism, Hermeticism, Nihilism, Plato, Socrates, Cavemanism, Aristotle, Alexander the Greatism, Danteism, Shakespeareanism, French nuns, alcohol, Goethe, Joan of Arc, Homer, Gurdieff, Solovyov, Dostoyevsky, Nietzche, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rudolf Steiner, Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong, the guy who invented homeopathy, the Romans, the Germans, the Goths, the Greeks, the Russians, the Egyptians, the Incan, the Maori, Aryans, Africans, the Eskimo, the Jew, Noah and the Ark, ice-ages, dinosaurs, gravity, temperature, relativity, women, friendship in general, not in general, superstition, drunken singers on Friday nights, cars, lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners, comets, beauty, Californian waitresses, time, affection, deafness, Jung, symbolism, the non-symbol, the pseudo-psychology of the late twentieth century, heart attacks, caffeine, squash, foodism, untruthism, the law, the mafia, boredom, Buster Keaton, specific hats, Rabelais, listism, title-ism, the curriculum, individualism, evilism, Manicheanism, moneyism, Mozartism, improvisation, John Lennon, Novalis, Rouault, the troubadours, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Revelations, the future, karma, fate..
Before we know it, we’ve eaten dinner and are onto Irish coffees. Talking of fate and karma, he says: “well, this is fate. Here we are, we two sitting, having eaten dinner, right now, talking about karma, drinking Irish coffees. This is fate!”
For the first time in the evening there is a gap in the conversation, and I immediately realise I am drunk. So much drinking, so much thinking, I go from stone cold sober to stone cold drunk in three seconds. He continues to look at me from across the table.
“Who are you?” he asks.
but I am dead
quite along with these
other wayfaring dead
naturally, it is so
that we ever die
& walk on our feet
so it is
we dead mountaineers
climbing down
this enormous cavern
in a three or four wide queue
quite mesmerised by
our upcoming
judgement below
and i all the while
knowing
that when it comes time
i will say
let all these people pass
and pointing to heaven, say
show me to hell
This all takes place in a split second.
My friend has a bemused look on his face, as if I haven’t properly answered his question.
But I feel sick. I need to lie down.
My friend pulls out a mattress from the wardrobe, and I put myself to sleep on the living room floor.
and no, dear reader
nothing happens
during the night
except for my friend
trying to climb into bed with me
well, maybe i misled you
on that point
just a little
but it seems that even i am fooled
whereby, waking up
decades later
to the unbearable boredom
of being tortured
by the very souls
i somehow thought fit
to point in the wrong direction
this being now
10:37am
a wednesday morning
here on the porch
i drink to remember
my friends
the very few
who don’t believe
they know me
nazdrave!
i say
salute!
kampai!
being
all the while
glad
the thirty two years
of research
for this poem
is over
It’s a rough, rough, cruel, cruel world.
Everything comes in doubles.
In the morning, I get out of bed.
It’s a beautiful day.
I didn’t die.
Even if I did.
People don’t necessarily believe in visions anymore.
Possibly because they don’t have any.
Or, more likely, they don’t know they’re having them.
It is, in reality, quite possible to have a vision just by opening your eyes.
