The Star Fisher Page 5

  “So our great work, in each life, is to reach true conclusions. Few do it. Many only go so far as assumptions they believe are true. Many live their whole lives by unproved, unprovable theories. But it is and has always been common and popular to do this, and so it will continue. Ignorance is one of the basic natural states and what is natural will continue. That a mind can become aware of its ignorance is the one hope to change this.

  “It is easy to imagine that each of us has a twin being of oppositional states. When angry, the twin is placid. When sad, the twin is happy. And wise to remember the twin in any state of being, so as to give perspective to whatever state one is in at present and know, it will change and sometimes that is good and sometimes that is struggle and there we go again with the oppositional twins, and the present moment sure has twins itself. That is what time is, just two twins, one good and one something else. The twin of life is death. The twin of death is life. All things are twined. Love itself is a twin value judgment and the happiest and best of love is reaching the same conclusions most often.”

  She ended, “The only destiny any soul is chained to is to someday miss that which they love. All the most important knowledge of life is bound in this. Call for your age of wonder. Complete your destiny while you can.”

  He left her that day and returned home. He had begun his trip to see an ocean and to forget the rest of an old dream and had instead discovered something bigger and deeper and more beautiful than any ocean. He did not wish to see the ocean any longer. He had went where it was meant for him to go.

  The Flushes of 1937

  After the first kiss they refused to spend a single moment of their free time apart. This caused her father to be concerned she was putting all her eggs in one basket, which in fact, was exactly what she wished to do. Nobody can know what is or is not most right for the future, even parents. Maybe especially those. But parents will be parents and so it came that her father forbid the Star Fisher to see his daughter except on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, and on that day, only for church.

  But they knew best what was in each other's hearts and young minds are inventive and they soon found a way around this temporary obstacle. They would write letters and she would set her letters in the bushes by her window and he would retrieve them late at night and replace her letters with his own. They called it a “flush”, after the practice of hunters who flush quail, pheasant and other game birds from the bushes. Each Tuesday and Thursday at school, as they parted ways from the old brick building, her last words would be, “Flush tonight” and he would reply, “I'll be there”.

  The father discovered their secret of the flushes one night when he had gone out late to smoke a cigarette. He said not a word about it but by that, grew to understand better her love for the boy, so he then changed his mind and they were allowed to see each other all the days of the week, and so, by that, each day made holy as only love can make it.

  Three years of love's scholarship

  1960-63

  Three years passed and they did not see each other, but they wrote every day. He would check the post first thing and each day a letter from her was waiting for him wherever he was. He would read it and respond to it and then she would check and each day, a letter from him. On Mondays there were two letters, to make up for the loss of there being no post on Sunday. They made a pact not to ask many questions, so as to keep the mystery of each other alive for the next meeting. They merely talked about common, every day things and what they did. She would tell him about the rose garden she tended and he would tell her about the rare bird he saw fly east to west. They talked about each sunset and described their own for the other. They came to feel as if they were not apart, but standing next to each other through the days passing so quickly. Not a single day had been allowed to pass without each writing to the other.

  In one of her letters she asked him to write a poem and make it rhyme in spots, and in others, not. And to give to her the formula for love, for she was a mathematician, and found joy in mathematical formulae and he was a poet, and should know this formula by heart.

  So he did.

  A poem for you

  Yours, and eternally

  I am and are

  A whispered wish I wish for

  And a whispered hope I wish for

  And love I would pretend to forget,

  Is love that would kill me yet

  And of love that is true

  Is love that cannot be forgot

  Unless love, it is not

  A whispered wish is a hope relentless

  And to speak it softly is to hope

  The loneliest night is when love stands alone

  And the saddest soul is to love great, but unknown

  Love is like a songbird, that flies best with two wings

  Love is like a songbird, that sounds best when it sings

  I stood, and I thought that I should

  Begin to walk from my place to her place

  And then I thought that I could,

  That if my eyes can see a star,

  Then could not my feet walk near as far?

  In whispered wish is hope

  And unvoiced hopelessness,

  In wish is sad memory

  And things to be missed

  In dream and star

  Are two things that are far

  In the love of two hearts

  Are two dreamers wished for parts

  In the kisses I have lost,

  From lips that are red

  In the wishes I have sent,

  From my heart to her head

  In the love in my heart,

  That I have desired to start

  There are whispered wishes lost

  And I have to pay the cost

  Of these wishes lost forever

  But her wishes, may they never

  Come to be and to become,

  Wished for hopes, forever done.

  The formula for love:

  +-

  -+

  x(-+-+)

  +*(-+*++*)= ?

  This, he had writ to her, was the long-sought formula for love. He told her he did not figure it out directly, it happened spontaneously as he burned the late embers in the attempt to figure out the formula. After an hour of straining, those symbols just popped into his mind and he wrote them down. At first he thought it was mere gibberish but as he looked closer he realized he had discovered, by happenstance and strained fortuity, the long-sought-for formula for love.

  He was ecstatic, for many poets since the ancient days had sought for this and many had died in the attempt. He was humbled to learn it by sheer will power and not any resident genius within. Follow this formula, he wrote, and great love will come from it. He guaranteed it and wished her luck. Then he wrote further, “Had I not come upon this formula, no telling how much love in this world would have gone to waste. But they must be circumspect with it, for in it is a great power.”

  The dream of the angel; 1961—

  first dreamt, 1941

  Before he met her he had not dreamed for a long time and then a few months after the meeting, he began to dream again. There was one dream that kept coming back. It took months to dream the whole of it and splice the pieces together. It had been a recurrent dream when he was young, and he had always wondered what it meant, for he knew it to be true to life.

  He was twenty-one when he had first dreamt it. In the dream he had fallen asleep under an old oak tree with his head resting on a white brick. There was a magnolia tree nearby and the fragrance of its large blooms filled the air. Both trees had been planted long before he was born and had time to grow mighty. The day was yellow and there were puffy clouds in the sky and the birds were flying through the clouds and back out again. As he lay there he watched the birds. It was peaceful and idyllic and there was the energy of creation in him. He felt life flowing through him and it was good.

  He began to fly as a bird and flew into the future and there a beautiful angel appea
red from a cloud, she was made of god, angel, man and light. She had long hair and was of a good height and had a dimple you could make your finger disappear in. She was athletic and had Indian summer eyes. She flew down to where the young man was sleeping and sat on the white bricks surrounding the trunk of the oak and remarked to the dreamer how beautiful the day was. The young man flew down and sat beside her and replied it was as beautiful a day as he had ever seen and he should know, for he had seen a few of them. The angel smiled at this and then asked the young man:

  “So young dreamer, what will you do with your days of life? What dream will it be for you? What mountain will you conquer, what age will you set your name to?”

  He said to the beautiful angel:

  “I will seek great riches and earthly power. I will conquer the mountain of abundance and will grow wealthy and beloved by all who know me. They will respect me far and wide and love me up close. When I die they will know I lived, by the great things I did.”

  The beautiful woman nodded her head and then said,

  “Right, of course.”

  The young man asked,

  “Is that not a good enough dream?”

  She shook her head slow, as if to say yes and no. She said,

  “That is a good dream. But it has been done so many times now. It is a good dream, just not a great dream. A man rich in cash is common. A man rich of thought is not so common. How many thought millionaires do you know? How dull is the dream and reality of cash without thought. But a million thoughts without a single penny is never boring and is wonder itself. You can spend all your money, but you can never spend all your thoughts. And the more thoughts you spend, the more will be added. Thought is the wealth that will not fail you. Cash is king only to servants. Take two souls. One beginning as the poorest beggar in the world, with all against him, but with the greatest spirit, mind and thought, versus the richest man on earth who is mere servant of material things. The beggar will sooner or later be king of the rich, and of all other such servants, no matter how powerful or rich they be.”

  The young man nodded his head in agreement. He wished to be like a king, if not one. The beautiful angel smiled and continued,

  “It has to do with dimensions. The rich man is one dimensional. The thinker is many-dimensioned. Why not make a new age in the world? Why not live the pure dream of miraculous life? Why not conquer the mountain of time that is called eternity? Why not name a new age and call it the age of wonder? Why not seek to discover a field of wonder and by that field, the new age to come into being?”

  The young man asked the beautiful woman:

  “Why wonder? Why seek that, when there are riches that can buy wonder? And riches are easier to seek and it is more common and popular. Will not the people call me odd to be a seeker of this wonder?”

  She replied, “Why not wonder? It is the most difficult thing to seek. And what riches can buy wonder? You seek to be a common fool, I see. Let the common do the common things, each man chooses his own definition for himself. And I suppose the people will be right, that you are odd, to seek what is not commonly sought for. I, for one, would not mind being thought of as odd, or even being odd. Isn't that a good thing to be, in a common world?”

  The young man said,

  “So if I find this field of wonders, what then? What to do with a field of wonders? Seems there would not be much to do with something like that.”

  Said the beautiful angel to the young man,

  “The field of wonders will be a catalyst which will give way to the age of wonder which then will give way to . . . . Well who knows what wonder and wonders all that will give way to? That is the wonder of wonder, what it can make, what it can do, to what before was just average and day-after-day and tedious.”

  The young man asked,

  “But you must tell me why an age of wonder is needed. I am curious to know.”

  “Because such an age will save the race of mankind. None have called into being an age of wonder, so no age of wonder has yet come. Most all seek riches and power. Few seek the wonder that would save, only the power that would destroy. They seek to fulfill their appetites for the things of earth and let their appetite for the things of Heaven go hungry. When man will eat the food of Heaven, Heaven will come to earth to serve the banquet. Men and their ages of power. . . .

  “The age of iron did not do it. The age of copper could not do it. The age of industry, husbandry and technology could not do it. In fact, these ages of power made it worse. It increased man's power to destroy. All that increases man's physical power increases man's capacity and appetite for more power and destruction, of life and the chance of life. What is needed is an age of wonder, for that then would increase man's power of himself, of life, of existence. It would increase the lettered savage's knowledge of being and then the savage would become less savage and more civilized. People are wild and they don't know it. They are soft-skinned and pretty-faced and exquisitely feminine, even the large and strong ones, but they are savages all the same and don't even know it. The truth of their savagery is hidden in their self image; hidden in plain sight.”

  The young man nodded his head and said,

  “Yes. I have seen all of this many times myself. Why are we so savage?”

  She said, “The age of the savage had its beginning when man first slaughtered another living thing. It was not the apple man ate that made him dark. It was the apple kept him tame and good. It was the blood of the living that brought out the savage in man. When man first killed and tasted blood and found how simple was the kill and how pleasing was the blood, man turned savage. It put in him and her the feeling of power, this taking of the life of another living being. The age of the savage began when they first killed for sport, with the first club fashioned for the purpose. And then man tamed fire and it became the age of fire and the age of brimstone followed that. Before these introductory ages, emergent man was just a wild and innocent animal, picking berries. So then came the age of the roasting over fire and man was able to roast that which he killed. Then came the age of the spear, when man figured out he could kill with impunity, from a distance. More power. Then came the age of the wheel, when man learned he could run over that which he would then roast on a spear.”

  The young man said, “I must admit, I have eaten roasted beef on many occasions, and never have complained of the exquisite taste. Is it savage to wish to eat what is good to taste and nutritious?”

  She shook her head no and said,

  “It is the pleasure of the kill that is savage, and the killing for killing's sake. When the age of the village began, savagery multiplied. When man built the first village and made it lawful to kill the first man on behalf of the village—then is when the age of true savagery began. As the villages have grown the savagery of man has grown. And from then to this present day the savage has grown with her power until she can now destroy entire villages with impunity for the sake of the one village. And not yet has this age upon age run itself out in the savage animal that is man and womankind.

  “From the village came the age of the state and nation. This, the best and worst creation of man and womankind. No longer villages but entire nations. The epitome of powers and principalities, whereby entire villages the number of cannot be rightly counted, are wiped from the face of the earth, for the one nation. There can be said no indirect words about it: this present and past race of man, generally speaking, is annoyance to no end to the future generations of their own kind, with their gross ignorance and whole-scale monstrosities. But mankind's evolution is the only hope for mankind's intelligent, reasonable and noble future life in this universe and so it is the great obligation upon man and womankind to grow sooner than later beyond their long adolescence and become a responsible member of the cosmos.”

  The young man put his finger to his lips and set a thoughtful gaze upon a distant cloud. But he was not looking at the cloud, but into the future. She said,

  “An age of true wonder is the only
answer. The age of religion has never accomplished it. Like all the other progressions, such an idea has only increased man and womankind's capacity for destruction; directly and indirectly, toward the chance at joy, love and life. All saints were first condemned by the church, and then given to the church's brothers-in-arms—the state. To the state are the saints handed over for the blood-letting, decapitation, burning alive and dismemberment. No church has true authority to name any saint, and such is the height of hypocrisy, for that which condemned and had killed to then name so. It is high pretense and absolute hypocrisy which the savage lives by. It is committing sin and crime and then giving one's self the authority to forgive one's self, and award besides—”

  The young man interrupted her,

  “I never knew the saints were named by the churches who had them killed in the first place. Is that really true?”

  “It is historical fact.”

  “Well that is kind of embarrassing, isn't it, for the church?”