NIMROD

We have come along this road before: our feet are hot, our faces are sweaty, we have seen these mountains, we have seen these rivers, we have seen these stone statues, we have seen this holy place before. We have been to these gardens before, we have drunken from this brook before, we have eaten from these trees before, we have seen these animals before, we have come along this road before. We scatter diamonds along the road, in the ditches we throw our diamonds, in the ditches we throw our gold, in the ditches we throw out clothes: we are becoming hairier, wilder, stupider, crueler, our brains are fallow fields, our souls are filled with weeds, we do not store any grain anymore, we do not store any gold anymore, we have come along this road before. This is sweetness, this is a sweet vine, this is a sweet drink, our cup is overflowing with sweetness, there is no more bitterness in our cup.

What could you say to such a beast as him? What could you do to bring such a beast into the realm of logic and reason? Why, he lives in the irrational land of the dead, the irrational land of wildflowers and weeds, the place of crazy noises and calls, the place of bizarre animals and monsters. He has been along this road before; we have all been along this road before; I have been along this road before; you have been along this road before. This is all something of a cockroach wobbling along on its six legs, too stupid to feel fear, too unconscious to know terror; this is all something of a worm cut in half, neither half quite dying, neither half understanding its distress. What could you do to bring him the light?—indeed he lives in darkness and shadows and caves, and he can never emerge into the light of mathematics and logic again—he is I. I am he. I am it. It is I.

Yes, we’ve been along this road before—and this is our origin, this is our fundamental nature, this is where we shall end up, this is our destination. We shall not rise up into the perfect realm of logic and mathematics, we shall not live in the perfect orderly realm of reason, we shall not enter the heavens by the light of our discrimination, but by the force of our irrational nature—by blood, by sex, by anger, by ecstasy.

There was once a man who wished to lift himself up into the heavens, the perfectly ordered realm of pure logic, the realm of the light of mathematical and geometric truths. He built a tower that reached up into this realm—he built a structure perfectly ordered by engineers and mathematicians—and it went on up into the firmament to the nonphysical realm where there were pure triangles, squares, rectangles—the realm of the logically orderly, the realm of pure geometric truths, the realm of pure logic abstracted from every physical instance, the realm of the rational soul. This man climbed the tower and went off into the skies—he was abstracted from his own flesh, reduced to numbers and truths. He lived up in the skies where the light of the sun constantly shone, illuminating perfect truths, this was his abode of light and reason, this was the heavens devoid of anything irrational or disordered. But he decided he would descend down to the earth and tell the people of this perfect realm, these heavens. When he got down to earth he found that no one could understand a word he said, and he couldn’t understand a word anyone said to him. Finally, he took the people up the tower—they followed him up the tower. There they lived in the heavens, the people lived in the realm of the pure abstractions, there was no flesh on them, there was no hair on them, they didn’t have hearts or intestines or stomachs or livers—it was the place of pure soul. They lived in these heavens of pure abstractions—among the numbers, among the truths, among the geometry, among the triangles and squares painted across the firmament which no eye can see. Finally, they returned to earth—and found that each of them spoke a private language. In the skies each had been alone, solitary, contemplating pure truths, and each had developed his own private, orderly language in which to think, each had her own private language, each had his own private language. When they got back down to the face of the earth there was no one who spoke the same language as anyone else—and they went crazy, killing one another, eating raw flesh, drinking blood, beating one another, raping males and females—and finally they scattered to the far corners of the earth, they went out and were dispersed all about the face of the earth. Thus were the people who reached onward, upward into the skies, who wished to live abstracted from the flesh—each had been alone with his own private language, her own private language.

We’ve been along this road before—we’ve been back to the flesh, to the darkness, to the moist earth, to the places where logic has no bearing and reason is blind. This is the realm where chaos prevails, where we eat of the trees without fear of poison, where we do not store grain, where we do not value gold, where we throw our diamonds and clothes in the ditches. We’ve been to this holy place before, we’ve been to the wildness of it, we’ve been to the meanness of it, we’ve felt the crude craziness of it, we’ve seen the land-monsters of it and the fish-monsters of it, we’ve heard the crazy calls and noises of it, we’ve seen the fallow fields and weeds and wildflowers of it, we’ve been along this holy road before—and we shall always return, for this is our secret garden with rivers flowing beneath, the place the rational mind is blind to, the place the eyes of the world cannot see, the place we shall enter when our flesh fails, and we feel ourselves slipping into that land where nothing can be what it is—where no one can know truth without knowing contradiction—where the shadows are always lengthening, where the dusk is constantly growing darker, where we shall know nothing clearly, where day and night are one together—that lovely place of sweet earth and water. These are the gardens; this is our abode of fire.