The lion is all the baggage that I have, I said. But that's all right. I'm country bred. I'm rugged.What would a book be like that was about a man who was not an alien? It seems that every story, every book (and my current adventure through A Hero With a Thousand Faces supports this) is about a person who does not fit in, about strangers and foreigners in their own lands, banished within. Is there a story about life within, not life without? Or is it some mode of storytelling that requires the teller to be outside, set off from the rest of the world?
America is so big, and everybody is working, making, digging, bulldozing, trucking, loading, and so on, and I guess the sufferers suffer at the same rate. Everybody wanting to pull together. I tried every cure you can think of. Of course, in an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too.
That's how it is, you bump into people casually by a tropical lake with crocodiles as part of a film-making expedition and you discover the good in them to be almost unlimited.
Curiously, I saw that he agreed with me. he was glad I had said this. Every brave man will think so, he told me. He will not want to live by passing on the wrath. A hit B? B hit C?--we have not enough alphabet to cover the condition. A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him. He shall keep the blow. No man shall get it from him, and that is a sublime ambition. So, a fellow throws himself in the sea of blows saying he does not believe it is infinite. In this way many courageous people have died. But an even larger number who had more of impatience than bravery. Who have said, 'Enough of the burden of wrath. I cannot bear my neck should be unfree. I cannot eat more of this mess of fear-pottage.
Sungo, he said, listen painstakingly, and I will tell you what I have a strong conviction about. I did as he said, for I thought he might tell me something hopeful about myself. The career of our specie, he said, is evidence that one imagination after another grows literal. Not dreams. Not mere dreams. I say not mere dreams because they have a way of growing actual. At school in Malindi I read all of Bulfinch. And I say not mere dream. No. Birds flew, harpies flew, Daedalus and son flew. And see here, it is no longer dreaming and story, for literally there is flying. You flew here, into Africa. All human accomplishment has this same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination! It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems! You see, he said, I sit here in Africa and devote myself to this in personal fashion, to my best ability, I am convinced. What Homo Sapiens imagines, he may slowly convert himself to. Oh, Henderson, how glad I am that you are here! I have longed for somebody to discuss with. A companion mind. You are a godsend to me.
If only we didn't have hearts we wouldn't know how sad it was. but we carry around these hearts, these potty damn mangoes in our breasts, which give us away.
Oh, you can't get away from rhythm, Romilayu, I recall saying many times to him. You just can't get away from it. The left hand shakes with the right hand, the inhale follows the exhale, the systole talks back to the diastole, the hands play patty-cake, and the feet dance with each other. And the seasons. And the stars, and all of that. And the tides, and all that junk. You've got to live at peace with it, because if it's going to worry you, you'll lose. You can't win against it. It keeps on and on and on. Hell, we'll never get away from rhythm, Romilayu. I wish my dead days would quit bothering me and leave me alone. The bad stuff keeps coming back, and it's the worst rhythm there is. The repetitions of a man's bad self, that's the worst suffering that's ever been known. But you can't get away from regularity. But the kind said I should change. I shouldn't be an agony type. Or a Lazarus type. The grass should be my cousins. Hey, Romilayu, not even Death knows how many dead there are. He could never run a census. But these dead should go. They make us think of them. That is their immortality. In us. But my back is breaking. I'm loaded down. It isn't fair--what about the grun-tu-molani?
You want to do me a favor, Your Highness, a big favor? The biggest favor possible?
Assuredly. Why certainly.
All right, then, this is it: will you expect the truth from me? That's my only hope. Without it everything else might as well go bust.
Henderson in Henderson is about as far from being at home as you can be: he is not even at home with the part of him that is looking for a home. Few books have a read with a hero so strangely, and perhaps obliviously set apart from the rest of the world. There are many points in Henderson where you will wonder just how blind Henderson the narrator can be. Don't be quite so sure he doesn't know how blind you are. Any hero who spends as much time clad only in whitey-tighties and a helmet has to have some very formidable insight into how the world works.
It just occurred to me that I am a horrible hedger. I think I try to pass for intelligence a continual and arch-eyebrowed doubt. If a book seems to be about a pompous, belligerent old fool, I say don't be so sure you aren't the belligerent old fool and hope you don't notice that actually I am the belligerent old fool. Unfortunate, but useful. I have a feeling I have duped a few people this way. As long as you keep up the facade and never give too clear an opinion, but always give clear doubts, you should be able to maintain a high level of seeming intelligence.
No comments:
Post a Comment