#43 Wed (8/3/22) - [OW] like shrubs when lofty cypresses are near

I have discovered, or it was revealed to me, that there was in a dream, a missing volume of the twelve volumes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, but which one, I am not told.  It was selected at random. I only know that there is a empty spot upon the shelf, and yet of the twelve, it should be easy to determine which one is the missing one. Does it matter? Were there only ever eleven?

In the dream, there is an enemy, made strong by hate. Fear mounts upon fear in an infinite Eleatic recursion. 

There is a progression in a horse drawn carriage through a city with only a single avenue heading south. A clock tower with a luminous dial like the moon and yet no figures or hands.

A cemetery and a Roman she-wolf.  The cypress trees with rigid, shiny metallic leaves, each bearing a monogram.  But of what letters?

Some lines of Virgil's Eclogue in Latin. (Translated by Dryden).

A realization, an incantation, and sudden awakening out of dream and night and death.  The enemy trapped within the dream, along with the volume of Emerson.

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The night time carriage ride through a deserted city or country reminds me of Kafka's The Country Doctor or a story of Bruno Schulz.  The City with its single avenue heading South toward a terminus at a cemetery, is reminiscent of life's journey, but a dark journey through a night lit only by the full moon.  The Roman she-wolf exists only as a marker, to evoke Virgil, perhaps. The cypresses in Italy stand straight and tall, like fingers pointing skyward. What kind of cypresses did Borges have in mind that have shiny, rigid leaves? What does a monogram on each leaf imply? The script of the god? A secret message. It seems to trigger the recollection of Virgil, the phrase of the Eclogue invoked like a talisman to allow an escape from fate - to leave the dream, that is life and return to the life that is a dream within a dream. The enemy, mortality, trapped forever.

The remembrance of our lives and the treasures that we have stockpiled during the course of that difficult journey (Virgil, poetry, literature, art, music, etc.) can serve at the end to preserve or protect us somehow in the face of the inevitable finitude that is death. This is our defense against death.


 



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