The Triumph Of Life, Love, and Being
By Austin P. Torney
Copyright 2012 Austin P. Torney
Smashwords Edition
Chapter 1: The Monastical Village
I am Brother Peter, a monk, now in the monastery’s sanctorium, where I study philosophy books, and perform their illumination, for this is also a scriptorium. There is a convent next to the abbey, where the nuns begin the books, the verse, and then send them over to the monastery for illustration. I deal, mostly, with Sister Angelina, although we have never met in the entire and holy arena. She sends me the books, with the instructions enclosed therein. We work tirelessly on these books of philosophy, which thus travel back and forth, freely, between the monastery and the nunnery, and we often secretly read them for their content, too, and thereby learn of the universal extent. We soon begin to discuss the books and their philosophical hooks, through more personal notes and letters to each others nooks. I am surprised when it first happens, for I find the note, right away; it floats and falls out of the book I am illustrating, as if it had been on wings to me. Obviously it is from my friend sent, the holy nun somewhere in the convent.
It says, “I have a long list of books I want to read. I will probably never get to the end of their leads. I usually read several books at the same time, and since I still maintain my monastic habit line, there’s nothing better to do at night, so I read them, reclined.”
So, I send a reply, of my fate, “I too have been reading all the books, to date, given to me to copy and illuminate. Some are from the forbidden section of the library, and I’m not supposed to read them, entirely, but I do. I am learning a lot, through my peepers; much is being withheld by our keepers.”
Her next note reads simply: “Time flies like a bird.”
“True,” I write, “so very right; the wings of time are black and white, for one is the day and one is the night. This was a philosophy from a book of quatrains that I am presently illuminating, with golden rain.” Such, we began getting to know each others looks, through the notes that we conceal in the books.
She now writes: “I was delirious to hear of what you thunk; I thought my note might go to a wrong monk, but I hoped that it would be sent to you. I can’t believe that it worked out that way, too!”
And so I reply, as if under a star, “I was thinking about you last night, afar, and about how wonderful your personal notes are. It really made me feel so good to hear from you. Life is much more enjoyable now. Thank you, too.”
“I am really happy that you are enjoying life. We live only once, so I believe in getting the best out of life.”
“I was as delirious as you were on high when I received your reply. It gave me energy! I was walking on air for the rest of the day, and I still am! You made my day!”
“I am glad that my note made your day. After all, if we combine a lot of days, it comes out to a whole life, in all its ways.”
“Your vision of life’s celebrative rhyme is one that’s very similar to mine.”
“There is this wonderful love song; it’s in French, but the music is beautiful, which will help you enjoy life. If only they would let me sing!”
“Thank you so much for your attention to me. I don’t really know just what magic was freed that prompted you to write those wonderful parts, but I feel an excitement all the way into my heart. I’ll listen to my intuition in these everyday actions lit. I’m not going to question it; I’ll just enjoy it.”
“I would love to keep the friendship with you. I don’t know about you, but I very rarely feel this sort of chemistry!”
“We will make good friends, as one: me as a saintly monk and you as a holy nun! Now, that is funny.”
“I got your last note and was hysterical reading it. I don’t know how you would be as a saint, but I will qualify for a nun very soon.”
“I like your idea about combining days into a whole life. Indeed, life can be had and found in every single act. Minutes, hours, days… They all flow and blend together into the moving whole. Nothing is really separately told. Please keep your philosophies coming. I love them. I will try to live them, becoming!”
“I’ve been rereading our notes; we write as if we are in love, so I get the impression that we are in love. Of course, perhaps it’s only platonic love, but there seems some indication of some other kind of interest. Ignore me here, I am fantasizing a little. If only we could meet each other, hidden, but that is quite forbidden.”
“I enjoy your fantasizing very much. Of course we are in love. Each time we write a note we make love. It’s an unusual love because we never touch, hear, or even see the other. And so it’s a very pure love, a love of heart, mind, and spirit. Naturally, it’s hard to separate out the body, since nature didn’t really mean it to be so, as I’ve come to realize, from my reads.”
“COME TO ME!”
“Lord save us both from damnation! What am I to do?”
“You already know.”
“I can hear the Pachelbel Cannon playing, as the background anthem; it is the greatest of the 17th century, a tune that may never be outdone, verily. It flows and resonates in time, with the sounds of spirit, mine, for I am feeling so peaceful, all around, so much that I can hear the haunting sounds of my inner chorus playing, and now my favorite song of dance, love, emotion, adventure, and romance. Oh, God help me!”
“Help thyself.”
“We shall soon make a life from the days. The monastery is connected to the nunnery’s ways by a door that has been locked for centuries. I can feel the spirit of you, dearest Sister Angelina, on the other side as I illustrate your lingua.”
“Let us, then, much quicker, slip our letters under the door, putting them under the loose stone on the floor.”
“I wish we could speak to each other near the door, but there is a code of silence, a part of the monastic lore.”
“Our inner selves may somehow whisper to each other, through it, directly knit.”
“I sense your disembodied spirit drifting into the monastery; you seem to be with me, here, and even as I work, so sunnily.”
“You transcend the walls of the nunnery; I feel your presence here; it is a very comforting feeling, bared.”
This evening, I lift my wine glass, in supper’s ray, and look at it in more of a symbolic way, then remember what I learned in a book this day. I am the wine glass, its cheer, filled fairly full with my human nature. Who would punish me for using my given nature in a good and loving way, for being human! It’s as if my glass is precariously tipped, in time, yet I must somehow not ever spill the wine! Why restrain the very nature’s gift that I have been born and blessed with? I think awhile, of all the rest, as daydreams begin to pierce the mess—the noise of consciousness. I still think somewhat like a monk, but I am progressing past all that bunk… I am searching, analyzing, feeling, racing fast, perhaps coming close to being truly human at last, finally reaching the only conclusion that is philosophically reachable: I am my own golden chalice to life’s dripping blood! I will drink life’s bountiful wine—the flood! Oh, what a ‘wicked’ thought of love! Shall I repent my thought? Oh, but how can I repent, when roses bloom in loving hearts? Perhaps it would be best if I give love to the parts.”
“Receive this note from my swelling tide, with a picture of a key in a lock, on my side. ‘Tis is good time.”
Chapter 2: The Secret Door
So, I take my note as usual, and place it under the locked door. As I look through the keyhole, I see that there is a key in the lock on the other side. How shall I get in? Try the door, fool! I turn the handle but the door won’t open. How can I get the key over to my side, so I can unlock the door? Should I even be trying to open the door to the nuns’ convent? What am I doing? Settle down, think, and think some more. I think other thoughts, first. Why should the monks be separated from the nuns? All are people, first and foremost, with the same natural and biological urges for companionship that all normal human beings have. Nature makes men and women both. It is as though the invention of one makes necessary the other! How can a mountain exist without a valley? How can day and night be separated, yet not kiss at twilight when they meet? How can the Yin exist without the Yang? How can men exist, apart, from women? How can one exist without the other? It’s love, it’s love that makes for completeness between a man and a woman. Monastical segregation’s wall doesn’t seem to follow natural law. Perhaps it is just another invention of talk by those who continue to blindly walk the beaten path of traditional morality with many a weary footstep, chained to regimentation’s nest. It is time to start thinking for myself. Ah, the forbidden readings’ shelf is a dangerous thing indeed.
I get it now, but the paper of my note is too small, so I remove an old illustrated newspaper from the nearby shelf and slip it under the door; yes; I poke a pen through the keyhole until the key falls out and onto my newspaper. I carefully slide the paper back under the door. Now I have the key, right here on the floor! My hand trembles as I turn the key in the lock. The lock creaks and groans with noises that sound to be so loud as to give me away, but that is only my imagination, yet my ears still hurt with every grind of the turn of the ancient lock. Bits of rust stream out of the lock, starting a small pile on the floor. I pray that the key does not break off inside the lock, and so I turn it ever so cautiously. At last, the door opens, and I am into the nunnery. The lights are off in the corridor, for no one is ever expected to use it. I can tell that she is nearby, since the scent in the air is similar to the perfume that she puts in her letters.”
Brother Peter?” she whispers.
“Yes, I am over here.”
“It is so dark that we can not see each other. It’s a crypt, Let us gently close and touch.”
“I have your cloth; be still, to embrace and hold, invisible in the dark, a spiritual holding bold.
We embrace, warmly.
“It is so,” she relates. Physical time and space are fading away, into a mystical experience. We now float in the dark, snuggling into each other’s being, blending in ways that seem to completely transcend the physical.”
“It is as if we both occupy the same same physical space. Mind, heart, soul, and body are all of a oneness. We drift in the blackness, floating through the universe, suspended only by our love. There is no past; no future; there is only now.”
“This is such an incredible wholeness.”
“It’s the anticipation of imagination.”
“Come, there’s a light beam.”
“I’m with you.”
“I’m opening my habit to take you in; embrace me, lovingly, longingly.
“I feel the unlimited power of the universe around me.”
“I feel that I hold the entire universe within me.”
“It is the melding of the loving.”
“Oh, ages have gone by; I must return or be missed, she muses. “I’ll walk with you back to the door.”
“Yet, we stop, for our good-night.”
“My spirit has escaped from its eternal tomb and ever seeks out yours.”
“I am happy that it has found me and touched me. Farewell, for now; I, too, must go back to the monastery tonight, but, one day…”
“Farewell, my saintly monk; please come to see me again.”
“Goodnight, my holy nun; please write me the time.
I walk back. I return through the door to the monastery, and smile to myself because I now know that love is reason enough for all that we do. At repast, I drink my wine, eat my food, breathe deep, and enjoy the experience of being alive in every way, for I have been given the key.
“I am reading ‘One Thousand Years of Solitude’ now. When I finish, I’ll share my thoughts about it with you.”
“You are becoming quite a source of inspiration to me, a wellspring of ideas.”
“Have you read ‘Decameron’ by Giovanni Baccaccio? He’s a 12th century Italian writer. Most of his work is dedicated to the life of nuns and monks in monasteries. I read it when I was younger and more innocent than I am now. I will reread it again to get into some of his earthy spirit.”
“I’ll make up a little illustrated book for you, using some words from our notes and some pictures of nuns and monks that I have.”
“Perhaps we can leave here together someday, somehow, but, these are only little dreams that I have, very far from reality, but I have to admit that I will not settle for less.”
Chapter 3: Out of the Flames
A monk runs in, yelling, “Fire, fire!”
I think, A voice! It shrieks and breaks the code of silence. Christ! A great tragedy! The monastical village, the library, the monastery, and the nunnery have somehow caught fire and are burning up!
The monk relates, “The fire started in the library when a candle fell onto some dry scrolls. Something about a scuffle to reach the forbidden books. Soon the entire library was engulfed in flames and was filled with terrible black smoke. The fire has since spread to the nunnery, and it’s well on its way toward the monastery. Everyone is panicking, and soon here, too, running every which way in the black smoke.”
“All but me.”
What?” he says.
“I am used to finding my way in the dark… Oh, never mind; get out! Drag those who have succumbed.”
“You, too; it’s getting black in here. Bye.”
Ah, the velvet darkness that I love, from all of the times that I have visited my friend, the holy nun. I sink to the floor, and now I crawl along that floor, underneath the smoke. I find my way to the nunnery, and quickly unlock the connecting door, and head straight for her room, still in the dark, as always. I find her dazed but alive and carry her out of the nunnery and into our new life.
I tell her, “I managed to save one book from the library, my favorite, the one that I always like to work further on, the old ‘Book of Quatrains’.”
“Good. Here we all stand, outside, watching until all the buildings of the monastic village are reduced to glowing embers.”
“What will we do now?”
“Like a spark from the embers, we will rekindle ourselves from all that is remembered. We still have our inner lights. I am concentrating on them; they are growing bright. We are alive! We are free! We are renewed!”
“Well, it looks like your thousand years of solitude are over. We’ll have to live out in the world on our own; our yesterdays have truly been reduced to ashes; there’s nothing left of our life here.”
“There was no real life here. We have each other. Bring that book you saved.”
“It has an unreadable main title, but is subtitled ‘The Book of Quatrains’. Unfortunately, I was not able to save Aristotle’s greatest masterpiece, ‘Beyond Metaphysics’! It was the only copy in existence, and now it is lost to mankind forever.”
“This book will do. Is it a sin for us to continue to give love to each other?”
“Yes, in terms of our moral tradition and man-made law, the giving of love has become a sin, and, yet, we had once denied our human nature and all of the natural feelings that have welled up inside of us. And that is a crime of the natural.”
“Throughout all of history there have been many sins written into the rule books, some of them quite laughable.”
“In the monastery, I was studying many such religions and crazy cults. There are thousands of them. Start one tomorrow and you can have an immediate following.”
“Lately, my mind has been opened through my studies of the natural sciences and the intuitive philosophies that we have been discussing.”
“Yes, it feels right to give love. But can you love the world and me as well?”
“I have found that the capacity for love is boundless. I love you, the earth, life, books, and our friends.”
“Live it! I feel that it’s right to give love.”
“Why hoard it!”
“That would be selfish. But what of these natural desires?”
“It’s difficult to suppress desire; it’s almost self-defeating, since it takes an even stronger desire to resist desire. Now I go with the natural flow, for when I try to go against the flow there is only suffering.”
“So, we walk the road, then look back, in a while, at the last of it.”
We walk off into the forest.
“It’s time, she says. “Look back at the smoldering ruins of the Abbey and the Convent.
We look back at the fire. “It’s gone.”
“We said it in unison,” I note.
“We’re used to sensing each others thoughts.”
“What is that flower you’re carrying?”
“A rose. I don’t know where it came from!”
“Perhaps it has bloomed from our love.”
“I am your rose.”
“Where does the rose bloom?”
“In loving hearts.”
“What else do you know about the rose?”
“It’s considered the most beautiful of flowers. It is the ultimate representation of beauty in nature and life.
She says, “Ah, let us walk on, through this fertile valley, yon, and onto the misty mountains, and beyond. We can get supplies along the way. For now, we have the book.”
“I love this ancient book I took, sound, while the monastical village burned to the ground.”
“It’s all that knows, and I carry but this single red rose.”
“We are the fugue, two moves, so let us softly hum the melody of the Pachelbel Canon, freely, each singing one of the fugal voices, for we now live as two-part harmony’s choices, as equal partners in life and love. We are, at once, free yet attached, though ranging, playful but serious, stable yet changing, thinkers yet doers, adventurous but not foolish, poetic as well as prosaic, and reasonable but passionate.”
“Yes, we’re free now!” she says, nudging me. “My God, it just sunk in.
I kiss her softly on her cheek. “True, we’re free at last.”
“Take this smile of love that passes between our lips, for even though we were are now quite homeless, our life together is to become a celebration blest, so let’s happily walk on through the valley in the dark by the light of the setting moon.”
“Ah, false dawn has come and gone all too soon, and morning twilight now glows in the east.”
“A familiar nightingale sings in the breach, but just as quickly flies away, lo; whither and whence it goes, we cannot know.”
Chapter 4: The Verse
I offer, “Now, for the verse, as first. Although day-tide has barely spoken, I, nonetheless, will open the precious token, this mysterious book of poetry sealed with a waxen shield, this read having been concealed for over ten centuries, in the secret chamber of the library of the old monastery’s remainder.”
“Open it as one would a tender lover.
“Lo, a small bottle is encased inside the front cover. Some of its spirit apparently escaped when the volume was undraped, for I’m already captivated by the Persia fumes.”
“As am I. It’s the perfume of ageless rhymes from the ancient looms of time.”
“This tome is written in some foreign language, in verses of thirteen syllables, in four-line stanzas.”
“It’s written in Persian, I’ve looked, having handled many of the foreign books, in my role as an editor in the abbey’s nooks.”
“It’s the library’s most valuable book, as I’ve illuminated and unhooked so many of the monastery’s great books. It was the only one I could save, but it’s the only book we’ll ever crave.
We watch the book moving, amazed.
“It’s coming to life, like a good husband in the presence of his wife.”
“I see. The words of the Persian poems are beginning to move around the page, as all over it they run, sometimes briefly changing into English ones.”
“Even entire verse-lines are dancing, as like a dervish whirling.”
“They are trying to settle, from the struggle, but the words yet again jump and juggle, though first hanging back, but then ever surging forth, darting around through the verses’ course, within each stanza, trying to form a brighter source, in lines which still state, but in differing aspects, the original and pervading concepts.”
“’Tis as if this magical language transmogrification is attempting to preserve the entire relation of the original poetic scheme throughout, the whole translation process, so devout, including literal meaning, rhythm, rhyme, melody, syllable, meter, and time; however, this doesn’t seem workative, and so it follows that something must give, and this could be the ration that is usually lost in translation.”
“Perhaps. Oh, yes, look; out of that apparent desperation, uncaged, the Persian verses are jumping right off of the page, and splashing into the bottle of perfume.”
“Wherein they are redistilling themselves, subsumed.”
“Yes, oh yes, for they are leaping back out and on to the blanked page, whereupon they are recondensing, restaging, and recomposing themselves, for this time, our age, into Victorian style verse, forming new quatrains in which only the essence of the remains of the original concept of meaning is maintained.”
“The lines are now ten syllables, rather than thirteen, yet holding many more and related meanings heretofore unseen, but the verses are still in groups of four per stanza, and the correct lines still rhyme, as per lingua, although some of the rhyming schemes don’t seem to have quite the same means.”
“Yes, for only some things unnecessary have been lost, and something very new has been added, not tossed, something somehow much better told, although ever within the spirit of the old.”
“What are you, old book?” she asks the book.
I add, “Are you alive? By you I shook.
The book answers, “I am the book of life, my pages rife with the antidotes of strife; I am a conscious dream, a living philosophy. I live forever through my words, wholly. On my pages you will find all of man’s follies, joys, sorrows, wisdom, as well as all of his jollies. Read me and my ideas will come alive, demonstrating the happiest ways to survive! It is by experiencing my words that you shall know them, forwards. Yes, the arts may enrich human experience, but they’re no substitutes for the living of it.”
“What is your name, might I ask of the same?”
My name is but a question only, a mystery that you have to solve, namely, ‘What is the name of the Rose?’
They look for a minute at the tome, deeply inhaling its perfume.
“Oh, that scent,” she sighs.
“Book, you are Persia-fume.”
“The book is free now, too.”
“It’s morning; the stars have taken flight. Night’s cup seemed empty, light, bottomless, heartless, and cold.”
“But the day is about to fill it with gold.”
“I already feel the touch of dawn, as its freshness washes over the lawn. It is a sweetness and a serenity, like a mist that drifts into a valley and fills it fresh, with moisture fully.
“I feel it, too, and so some refreshment is anticipated. I must reach up to this rose bush, unsated, to bend down the branch of Moses. Here, let us drink the dew from the roses, then stoop, very, to pick some strawberries.”
“What is the name of the rose,” I wonder?
“As I, too, was just going to say, upon that ponder.”
“On that we’ve been a silent as a cloud, until we each just spoke it aloud.”
“Yet I am without answer from the depths unplowed.”
We stroll into a flowery area.
“What a forest of floral colors”, I say; “they are lush and soft, in bowers: lavender, crimson, and ever-during green, of flowers. The leaves of the previous autumn have made a multicolored carpet spun.”
“Ideas cascade over the mind, the thoughts suddenly loosened, in time, by the inspiration from our exertion. A light rain is falling that excites our senses, calling, jogging our thoughts, unwalling.”
“Walking is good exercise, spurring thoughts, and I feel energized.”
“Yes, it gives back much more than it takes. Walking is as easy as falling forward makes!”
“Oh, yes; breathe deeply; relax about, let the thoughts flow up and out.”
“My thoughts are becoming clear. Alertness tingles in my senses, dear. Oh, I am becoming so wide awake. I love this world and everything it makes.”
“Breathe in all that’s good, freely, then breathe out all that’s bad, really.”
“I feel peace flowing into me, truly; it’s warm, wet and glad.”
“It’s spreading through your body and into your spirit, is it not, my lady?”
“Oh yes, oh yes, dear yes, my lad; this is the best life I’ve ever had!”
“It’s like an eager sap rising in the veins; we’re inspired by the warmth of the spring rain.”
“Because we’ve lived through winter’s chills, to see yet another round of daffodils!”
“Like sparks from the smoldering embers, tame, we rekindle our fires from nature’s flame.”
“Could it be that a rose is a rose is a rose?”
“No, for that answer would be much too easy to pose.”
Chapter 5: Picaresque
“There’s a movement in the bushes,” she observes.
“A man is trapped in those rushes.”
“He is snared in a web of promises that weigh him down, by wishes, for he always puts things off the row, as one who ever waits for tomorrow.”
“Look at this page, man, a quatrain in my hand.”
“The web is collapsing, freeing the man.”
“There is writing on the ground under his feet, of words very sound: they read ‘NOW!’, in big letters round.”
“The revelation has hit him like an hourglass, one made of the heaviest welded brass, as a relief of realization washes over him fast. He is muttering to himself.”
The man exclaims, There is only today! It’s the only shelf! Why fret about other days that tweet, if today can be so very sweet?”
“Hear hear!
The man continues, “Stretching my present row to distant calendar columns so, by all my tenuously made vows is what created the complicated web of promises in the first place bred, a trap that has taken away all my ‘nows’. ‘Now’ is the time! I’m sure. I must seize the moment’s shore or lose its momentum forevermore!”
She notes, “The man is running off, seemingly weightless, flying aloft.
I declare, “We, the He and she, as the harmonic subjects of this new story, must yet wander ever onward, past the path of worry. Love is in the air, filling the voided space with glory.”
“Never wait! It ever wrinkles the brow. The only real time under our feet is NOW!”
“These lovely moments rife, are giving me the time of my life! I savor each one, its treat, and then comes another, just as sweet.”
She frowns, “Lo, the woods are growing dense, filling with mist and shadowed goods.”
“What’s that fuss, behind us?”
“An old WITCH has just sprung up, to our rear, she being the specter of fear, and of all that is worrisome here.”
The witch asks, “What is your deepest fear?
We don’t answer.
The witch continues, “Do I ask of the air? Hell, death? Which shall it be? How about Heaven? Is that it? All three?”
“I banish you,: I say, “for death is merely the natural end of all living things of nature’s blend. What has no death has no life principle! My turn to live would never have come about, to ripple, if it were not for the deaths before, of people. As for Heavens and Hells, those are what we create within ourselves, as we can turn our souls outside in, to create a Heaven or Hell from within. Hell surely arrives when we make our own difficulties, in life’s wake, when we our common sense forsake. However, I do have one fear that’s grown, although just one alone.”
“What is that fear?, the witch pleads. “My hopes suddenly rise in pitch, but my form is ready to fade, for your anxiety unmade.”
Angelina cuts in, “I’ll answer for him, as his partner, for I am his opposite twin and can think his thoughts. His one and only fear besought is that of not living well, as ought!”
I add, “So, with that answer furnished, witch, you, the specter of fear shall vanish, like the mist, cold, on the morning wind unrolled.”
We move on, as she says “Our fugal voices can now resume, to hum the two-part Pachelbel Canon’s words, its soulful music sweeping us onward, upward, inward, and outward, as our voices blend and part, weaving in and out, once they start.”
“When does the rose bloom?” I rue, seeking some general botanical clue to the book’s mysterious and questionable rule.
“The rose blossoms on the summer solstice even, arising from the only kiss that’s ever given to the arriving summer, from the vanishing spring, the kiss of which spring dies in giving, as they sing.”
She continues and adds, “I, a-Rose.”
We move on, noting a cemetery, and I say, “I love this song, but, ah, a cemetery’s yawn, so cold and abrupt, for here is an empty grave, opened up.”
“Let’s jump right into it, to better read the marble’s script.”
“It reads, ‘The Last Remembrance. En-graved is THE END of your earthly sigh: six sides ‘round you: five are dirt, one is sky. Shov’ling, Death talks to you at last, and cries: What were you doing during all of nigh?’”
A little girl arrives, with a withered rose.
Angelina hails. “Hi! A little girl with curls.”
The little girl states, “Those who live must learn of death told, so that all the better they may breathe as old. Run along now, you two, with ease, before Death himself, quite a sight, arrives with his shovel’s plight, for you are standing in a grave site. Which of you is ready for his scythe’s tooth? Behold my rose as you go, for sooth, and take note of my eternal youth, for that which can never die must be forever young and spry!”
Angelina says, “Let’s hurriedly continue on, to strive, a bit shaken, but feeling much more alive.”
“One must be aware of death espied, in order to live life more fully, I surmise.”
“How then shall we live?”
“Let us live each day as if it were our last.”
“I can improve on that. Let us also live each day’s sun as if our life had just begun!”
“May I look again at that living book of philosophy?”
“I hand it to you, softly.
We look at the book, she noting, “It has words with matching pictures in it!”