(Three days before Machina)
This night I had gone to bed in a desperate, desperate state, more
desperate even, than I’ve been of late. For then I figured I’d lost, but that
was not my fault, I’d met everything, and I couldn’t understand.
I dreamed of being with my father, but this was not my biological
father; it didn’t look like him. My mother and sister were there too, in a
group, and our group was being prepped to go to four different sites or fronts
in a covert war where we would function as observers. These arenas were to be
traveled to by boat. I had chosen my site in my head where I wished to go; it
was the most covert of the four and intrigued me. It was a difficult decision
because my sister had chosen a separate site and while I was loath to be parted
from her I would not alter my decision for personal reasons, I would go where I
wanted to go. It was heartrending though.
At a quay (wooden piles, tree trunks like we would have in the west),
about to embark, there was an incredible storm gathering, layer upon layer of
grey dark cloud, and wind. Lighter wind, no galing.
“It’s storming,” I said, which couldn’t have been a more blatant
statement of the obvious.
“Yes,” the responding harbour man laughed. “This is
the storm they say is not happening.” (On the weather channel.)
But it was. On the horizon two bolts of lightning shattered the
stillness in synchronous accord, but there was no thunder. The storm was as
silent as its wind. The way it produced no waves. The shafts happened each at
the opposing periphery of vision, like images of each other.
Our boats were nothing like the schematics and plot plans had suggested,
nothing but little tin row boats. One of them was mine.
Setting sail lying in the little boat with others, I become fully aware
of the clouds. In truth they are filled with colours and light. The lower
peripheries are a pregnant blue but the upper reaches are shot through with the
golden light of the sun. They range from the pale into hues of blue and gold.
Some blues are almost mauve.
They are unlike any cloudscape I have seen, unnatural geometry in their
shapes, conceiving order. They have separate forms like vessels, layer upon
layer of their bodies, so the all you can see are clouds.
I conclude it is one of the most beautiful sites I have seen in my life.
I begin a hymn to the glory of God.
As we are cast adrift on the sea we reach the crest of the glorious
storm. At crest’s edge it is apparent; there is a host of galleons riding the
storm, they are the storm. The ships
are in full sail, their sails lit luminous with the gold of the sun, the
magnificent splendor concealed in the cloud.
All are arrayed in splendor sailing forth. I realize it is the armada of
heaven, that all of God’s forces are arrayed and sailing with us, the storm is
our force.
The hymn is taken up by all the boat members in unison, we sing,
faltering at points but in complete harmony of voice, as we arrive all at once
at the same words, create the same song for the first time realizing the same
voice. I carry the words and falter at points where I think I am losing the
others. But we carry on in the same hymn to glory. We sing then of the wonder
and grace of Christ our God, the same God.
And then our dinghy passed under a great ship, the flagship. The apex of
light was concealed in it, as if its blue hid the sun to save our sight, but
the rays still pealed forth. (Like how the sun’s rays are caught acutely on
camera, and create geometric prisms of light, little pentagons, glancing down
in a scape of blue, except that this was the center of all the geometry.)
And I knew it to be God’s flagship, for in it I saw captured His glory.
And in the face of this glory we sang our praise of one accord.
The dream was ended, I awoke in a basement with a bevy of youths who
began singing to the latest hit on the radio.
And my father stopped them by crying, ‘Wait, wait, we have sang the
hymn, the hymn had its form in the moment, it was realized, we must sing it
now, again, while we still have the memory, before it is lost to us completely.
STOP!’
And the youths were drowned out by his exhortation and turned and
paused, perplexed. But then they resumed their singing without so much as
shaking their heads in bemusement; resumed their plastic radio hit that was the
extent of their pleasure.
And the hymn was lost to them.
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