Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

40. THE TEMPORARY ILLUSION OF THE MISTS OF TIME:

“The small farms and hundreds of broken acres making up some gentryman’s last dream are still staggered and lost in the mists of Jefferson’s time but even HE doesn’t know - and the horses seek retreat but get only rocky trails - what he’s started as the highwaymen try to survey what they see (and the liquid land moves and churns its way along like water EVERYTHING changes there’s not a new moon left) and there’s nothing to be seen no matter (‘and up on the screen it was I saw Rod Serling ruing his own day and nearly crying over some wicked ‘spilt milk’ as five advertisers swarm the proscenium and award each other prizes while pushing him off stage’) and Jehovah rang the doorbell trying with a briefcase and a key to find some other land but no one answered who wanted to listen so every ‘witness’ went to perdition and that was the end of that but nonetheless the farms we mentioned once before were put in place in relation to highways and the moon and two fellows in jagged clothes with sacks and walking-sticks trembled and began sketching the falls in charcoal gray and they called themselves some wizard’s name we’ve now forgot” and thus the blind man started talking to the historian taking notes and recording all this for posterity (or perhaps it was thought he said ‘prosperity’) – either way we understood – and sitting there like evidence the likelihood was good there’d be abrasion coming for this guy talking was a blinded monk who’d seen the ABSOLUTE and the distant ends of life but now returned was lost in memories of ocelot and old Virginia and we watched his wife the little one file down her teeth so they would fit and she was singing some hillbilly mountain song about ‘Old Harmon’ and the kilt he wore while the blind guy whittled ancient water and spit back a modern tale but legality mattered for nothing and what he said came out SOME SAID as wisdom’s other end – “right now right now all I really want is silence and the chance to be left alone and I’m really tired of the living and everywhere I go there’s noise and busy people pushing stupid schemes or wearing bad ideas as birthright and cadaver and they’re fighting to the death somewhere I’m sure to elevate their destitute story and make others see it so but without a goal there’s nothing to strive for and time seems so endless when you’re hot and the lines of children and mothers cross the two lines mingling to death and deliverance and everything kept hard in my aging memory is a story now lost – like the white clapboard house on the side of the road with the old horsetrack oval out back and the chapel and everything meandered to something back then and the old days I tell you they were something to see them old days were something to see” and he motioned to me to come over and whispered “everything I have everything I ever saw I would gladly now throw away and make my sodden trash-heap higher than the sky for nothing’s worth a whip ‘cept the death and all that comes with it so SALVATION be your necklace fellow and may you hoe a happy road yourself” and with that I figured there was some value in a handshake so I took his trembling hand (which I noticed just as well was blind too) and shook it up and down with a miser’s grip and the little guy grimaced and fell back and got up and fell back and got up and disappeared and went away and returned and even the little wife who was working on the teeth blamed no one for nothing and she walked away - oblivious to everything else they disappeared into the mists of time itself.