The ecstasy of love fades and the frenzy of sex is too ephemeral to have any effect. What can we do when we find no food to satisfy our hunger? You’ll be swept into the tornado and annihilated. There is no way to bring back stability after it has died.

A brunette dancer at the New Paris attracted him with her gaiety and lithe body, so he went after her. He saw Margaret on the stage, returned her smile, then invited the brunette to his table. To Margaret it must have seemed a clumsy play in the game of love, but in the storm he’d lost all sense of humor. The brunette left with him, enticed by money. It didn’t really make things better, but he thought his heart stirred slightly as she laughed. If his heart didn’t stir, it would die. Poetry, wine, love – none of them could call forth the elusive ecstasy.

Every night he picked up a woman, from one club or another, sometimes from the streets. At the Capri he sat with a dancer called Muna. Yazbeck rushed over to greet him, exhibiting obvious pleasure. It angered Omar, for he saw it as a kind of death notice of his frustrated hopes.

“My good man. Did….?”

Omar looked at him sternly and left with Muna. As he pressed her to him, he trembled with an unaccountable urge to kill her. He imagined himself ripping open her chest with a knife, and suddenly finding what he’d been looking for all along. Killing is the complement of creation, the completion of the silent, mysterious cycle.

“What’s wrong?” Muna whispered.

He awoke, startled. “Nothing, just the dark.”

“But there’s no one around.”

He raced the car at such a speed that she grasped his arm and threatened to scream. Later, as he was undressing, he felt that the end was coming – the answer to his search – insanity or death. Warda sat the bed. “I’m going away,” she said.

He answered gently, “I feel responsible for you.”

“I don’t want anything.” After a moment’s silence, she spoke again. “What’s sad is that I’ve really loved you.”

He said wearily, “But you’re not patient with me.”

“My patience is at an end.”

He felt such revulsion toward her in his soul that he didn’t comment.

Finding no trace of her when he returned the next night, he smiled in relief and lay down in his suit on the divan to enjoy the silent, empty flat. Every night he brought a new woman to it.

Mustapha laughed and said, “Hail to the greatest Don Juan on the African continent.”

Omar smiled lamely as Mustapha continued. “It’s no secret anymore. Several of my colleagues have spoken about you. The news has also reached your cronies at the club. They wonder what’s the story behind your rejuvenation.”

He said with distaste, “Honestly, I hate women.”

“That’s obvious!” Then he continued more seriously. “Empty your heart of what’s troubling you so you can settle down, once and for all.”

In the spring it was a relief to sit outdoors in the nightclub gardens, rather than in the closed halls. But the agitation remained, and he was exhausted by his dreams. Occasionally he found solace in reading, especially the poems of India and Persia.

His nighttime adventures took him once more to the Capri. As he sat under the trellis, sipping his drink and receiving the spring breeze, Wards appeared again on the stage. He felt no emotion, surprise, agitation, or pleasure. In autumn it had started. Ecstasy, love, then aversion; when will the grieved heart smash these vicious cycles? When will it break through the barrier of no return? She sees him, than continues dancing, while Yazbeck steals worried glances. He felt no determination. But after the show, noticing Warda not far from him, he invited her to his table. She approached with a smile, as though nothing had happened. He ordered the usual – the drink which had earned him renown in the clubs – and said with sincerity, “I”m really sorry, Warda.”

Smiling enigmatically, she said, “You shouldn’t regret what has passed.” Then gaily: “And the experience of love is precious even if it brings suffering.”

He said, biting his lip, “I’m not well.”

She whispered, “Then let’s pray to God for your recovery.”

He felt the glances of the other women who’d gone with him, night after night. As Warda smiled, he muttered, “I didn’t desire them.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“I know them all, without exception, but there was never any desire.”

“Then why?”

“Hoping the divine moment would unlock the answer.”

She said resentfully, “How cruel you were. You men don’t believe in love unless we disbelieve in it.”

“Perhaps, but that’s not my problem.”

The scent of orange blossoms drifting from the dark fields suggested secret worlds of delight. Feeling suddenly light and unfettered, he asked her fervently, “Tell me, Warda, why do you live?”

She shrugged her shoulders and finished her drink, but when he repeated the question, he was so clearly in earnest that she replied, “Does that question have any meaning?”

“It doesn’t hurt to ask it once in a while.”

“I live, that’s all.”

“I’m waiting for a better answer.”

She thought a moment, then said, “I love to dance, and to be admired, and I hope to find true love.”

“To you, then, life means love.”

“Why not?”

“After loving once, weren’t you disillusioned?”

She said with annoyance, “That may be true of others.”

“And as for you?”

“No.”

“How many times have you loved?”

“I told you once…”

He interrupted her. “What you told me once doesn’t matter; let’s discuss things openly now.”

“Your violent nature is getting the better of you.”

“Don’t you want to talk?”

“I’ve said all that I…”

He sighed, then continued feverishly. “And God, what do you think of Him?”

She looked at him distrustfully, but he entreated, “Please answer me, Warda.”

“I believe in Him.”

“With certainty?”

“Of course.”

“How does such certainty arise?”

“It exists, that’s all.”

“Do you think about HIm often?”

Her laugh was a bit forced. “When in need or adversity.”

“And other than that?”

She said sharply, “You love to torture others, don’t you?”

He stayed in the club till 3 a.m. and then raced out in the car to the Pyramids Road. Going out alone that night, he reflected, was an interesting development. He parked the car along the side of the deserted road and got out. The darkness, unrelieved by ground lights, was peculiarly dense, unlike any night he could remember. The earth and space itself seemed to have disappeared and he was lost in blackness. raising his head to the gigantic dome overhead, he was assaulted by thousands of stars, alone, in clusters, and in constellations. A gentle breeze blew, dry and refreshing, harmonizing the parts of the universe. The desert sands, clothed in darkness, hid the whispers, as numberless as the grains, of past generations – their hopes, their suffering, and all their lost questions. There’s no pain without cause, something told him, and somewhere this enchanted, ephemeral moment will endure. Here I am, beseeching the silence to utter, for if that happened, all would change. If only the sands would loosen their hidden powers, and liberate me from this oppressive impotence. What prevents me from shouting, knowing that no echo will reverberate? He leaned against the car and zed for a long time at the horizon. Slowly it changed as the darkness relented and a line appeared, diffusing a strange luminosity like a fragrance or a secret. Then it grew more pronounced, sending forth waves of light and splendor. His heart danced with an intoxicated joy, and his fears and miseries were swept away. His eyes seemed drawn out of their very sockets by the marvelous light, but he kept is head raised with unyielding determination. A delirious, entrancing happiness overwhelmed him, a dance of joy which embraced all earth’s creatures. All his limbs were alive, all his senses intoxicated. Doubts, fears, and hardships were buried. He was shadowed by a strange, heavy certitude, one of peace and contentment, and a sense of confidence, never felt before, that he would achieve what he wanted. But he was raised above all desire, the earth fell beneath him like a handful of dust, and he wanted nothing. I don’t ask for health, peace, security, glory, or old age. Let the end come now, for this is my best moment.

The delirium had left him panting, his body twisted crazily toward the horizon. He took a deep breath, as if trying to regain his strength after a stiff race, and felt a creeping sensation from afar, from the depths of his being, pulling him earthward. He tried to fight it, or delay it, but in vain. It was as deep-rooted as fate, as sly as a fox, as ironic as death. He revived with a sigh to the waves of sadness and the laughing lights.

He returned to the car and drove off. Looking at the road dispiritedly, he said, as if addressing someone else, “This is ecstasy.” He paused before continuing. “Certainly, without argumentation or logic.” Then in a more forceful voice: “Breaths of the unknown, whispers of the secret.” Accelerating the car, he asked, “Isn’t it worth giving up everything for its sake?”

– The Beggar by Naguib Mafouz

He stands there all the day long, knocking sometimes, but always there. He is a storyteller, and all His stories are about how to live forever. Father told you the same stories, every night before you fell asleep. Stories about how to live forever.

But before you can live forever you must go back to before the beginning. Before you were born. Before the world was born. There was only God. There was only His son. There was only the Spirit. And the angels were there and they were divided. It was the evil one that divided them. He was the highest of the angels, glorious in countenance, before he was cast out of heaven and became Satan, the evil one. Before he made many of the angels believe they were as good as God. That they were as important as the Son. He lied to them. That is what the evil one does. He lies, and lies are behind everything that goes wrong in the world. Because the world is where the evil one went next. Into the world he came for almost forever. But forever is saved for you, for those that won’t listen to his lies.

– a question of doors? by Paul B Womack

 

a question of doors?
is available from Amazon.com

It’s not being told what to want.
It’s choosing for ourselves.
It’s not someone else’s agenda.
It’s a way of life
And we live and die for it.

Who is in the seats of power deciding,
Knowing better the things to want?
Remove them to the dunce’s chair,
Out of the way in their tall white hats.

Trade them for something to eat,
For the little things we want.
Remove them to the dunce’s chair,
Out of the way in their tall white hats.

It’s not the party line.
It’s the desolation of an empty table.
It’s losing faith in our fellow man,
In our fathers and mothers,
In a better life for our sons and daughters.

Who is in the seats of power deciding,
Knowing better the things to want?
Remove them to the dunce’s chair,
Out of the way in their tall white hats.

From the seats of power deciding,
Remove them to the dunce’s chair –
Out of the way in their tall white hats

To the dunce’s chair.
Out of the way
In their tall white hats.

the pounding surf of your soul,
glimpsing the mysterious music of the whole.

a daring dance in focuses of light,
in distinction then disappearing out of sight.
or in a golden burst you can’t quite remember,
a revelation you can’t make fit.

through the wake of your soul,
a glimpse of the mysterious whole.

but you can find harmony without a fight.
you can make the canvas of consciousness bright.
or you can blindly be the loser,
misplacing the prize offered as a gift.

the completeness of the soul,
in the oneness of the whole.

© 2010 Wasted Space Publishing

The Old Man and the Sea
by Ernest  Hemingway
Collier Books, 127 pages, $4.95

Book Review

Ernest Hemingway had a way of getting right at the heart of a story. His brutally American directness changed the voice of 20^th century fiction. And in “The Old Man and the Sea” the heart Hemingway targets is his own.

In the first sentence Hemingway lays out the story. “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.” And in the following pages, Hemingway expresses his own view of life in the voice of the old fisherman, Santiago.

“He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.”

“It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.”

“Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

As Santiago speaks these words the bond is made between him and the writer. Santiago’s dreams of the lions coming out to the beach at dusk and his veneration of the great DiMaggio remind us, somehow, of Hemingway’s real-life adventure at the bull fights in Spain and hunting lions in the jungles of Africa. And we begin to feel that the old man’s quest is Hemingway’s also.

Hemingway had not written an important novel in more than a decade before “The Old Man and the Sea” was published in 1952. Perhaps he faced those years with Santiago’s same resolve. “Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for.”

To write is certainly what Ernest Hemingway was born for. And in these few short pages is the crystallization of his work. In crisp sentences Hemingway gets to the heart of his story. To the heart of an old fisherman who has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish. In that heart there is no bitterness or thoughts of failure, because “My big fish must be somewhere.”

For the old many, though, the fish is too far out. Even as he lashes the great marling to the side of his boat, the prize is set upon by the sharks. But for Hemingway the act of courage is enough, even if the bare bones of the fish are all the evidence there is when Santiago returns from three days at sea.

I always think of Hemingway as an existentialist, of how he created his own idea of himself and lived by that idea. It is hard to equate existential reality with the rugged code of manhood he established for himself and lived by in his writing and his life. But when he felt he could no longer live by that self-imposed code Hemingway ceased to exist, committing suicide just seven years after receiving a writer’s greatest honor -  the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.

At the end of “The Old Man and the Sea,” “The old man was dreaming about the lions.” I wonder what Papa was dreaming on that sunrise morning in Ketchum, Idaho in 1961?

I was dreaming of death. I dream of death every night. Every night since the doctor.

The doctor brought death to me. He brought it in an e-ray picture. He delivered it in a syringe full of blood. My blood. Dead blood. As dead as the hollow x-ray picture of me inside.

The doctor put the x-ray up on a clipboard with a light built into it mounted on the wall. He pointed with his pen to the tiny shadows. I could see the shadows clearly through the ribs in my chest in the x-ray picture. But I could not feel the shadows as I filled my lungs with air to prove the shadows were not there. But the shadows stayed there, tiny, between my ribs in the x-ray picture. And the doctor pointed to them with his pen and told me what they were.

They were death.

By myself now, I face death. I have faced death before, many times, and I have never been afraid of it.

But always that was the chance of death. In war. When the lion charges. With the sea the hurricane brings up over the barricades.

Never have I faced the certainty of death. Death coming without a chance to fight against it and win. Death that you cannot see coming; that is only tiny shadows on an x-ray picture.

How do you fight such a thing? The doctor told me how. He began with how the cancer conquered the cells of my lungs. He told me the armies of cells my blood raised, and that the armies of my blood could not win. He handed the syringe to me as if it were a map of an enemy’s battleplan, as if I could see the advance of the cancer’s offensive.

And in the face of the cancer’s onslaught, the doctor prescribed weakness. Retreat. Radiation. Like the Russians that fled before Napoleon and left nothing but their burning homes and the dead of winter. Perhaps, like Napoleon, the cancer would find nothing left to conquer.

Then the doctor gave me medicines in brown bottles for the pain that would come as the war was lost. Like the pain of all lost wars.

That was three days ago. Now, as in that small story of the fisherman, I must decide, like the old man, how to fight the sharks. And even if the radiation destroys the sharks that menace the oceans of my blood, I will return to the shore with only the empty carcass of my great fish.

Will I dream of the lions then, too, like the old man? Or will I still dream of death?

It is only my life, though, that I will lose. I have already lost much more that that. I have lost my manhood to age. Age does not always take that away, but it has for me. It has taken my courage. Within me now I am a coward. I will not let anyone see my cowardice, but it is there. Waiting.

I don’t know what has taken my writing, but it is gone also. Perhaps my cowardice has taken that as well.

What was that I was writing before the doctor? “If you cannot respect the way you handle your life then certainly respect your trade. You know about your trade at least. But it was a rather awful story really. By God it was.” It has always been that way. I have always known when the story was bad. Now all the stories are awful, and no one will say it but me.

There were good stories before, though. But they were many years ago now. I like the story of the American that fought in Spain with the guerrillas. He lost his war, too, but he kept his bravery. I would have kept my bravery if death had come to me so long ago.

He spoke to himself of his father’s cowardice, remember? Like I speak of mine. “He would be acutely embarrassed by the presence of his father. Anyone has a right to do it, he thought. But it isn’t a good thing to do. I understand it, but I do not approve of it. Lache was the word. But you do understand it? Sure, I understand it but. Yes, but you have to be awfully occupied with yourself to do something like that.”

I like that American that fought with the guerrillas. “Dying is only bad when it takes a long time and hurts so much that it humiliates you,” he said. “It would be all right to do it now. Really, I’m telling you that it would be all right.” I can kill death, or it kills me. It is the same thing.

Last night I dreamed of the lions. My rifle jammed and they took me. It was a noble death.

Better than this.

© 2010 Wasted Space Publishing

no harsh confinement in loneliness.
no brooding storms over ominous times.

in a flash of the mind,
new awareness.
in windswept horizons of primeval terrain,
new consciousness.

like a blossom of omnipotence.
the infinity of finite time.

© 2010 Wasted Space Publishing

Top heavy with epics and a couple you may not have even seen.