I’ve had these short pieces from Tim Vincent tucked in a jar on my desktop for a few weeks now. They’ve changed since I saw them first and I appreciate what it is they’ve become.
I’ll think aloud a bit afterwards about how they’re connected, maybe whether connected to me or connected to each other. Do a bit of wandering aloud.
But for now:
Notes from A Nickel-plated Butterfly
By Timothy Vincent, narr. Eric Westerlind
(A-7.Series3 Contemplates Chuang-Tzu)
•
The ancient Chinese poacher dreamed of the butterfly and wondered of the dreamer.
I, too, have cause to wonder. But, first a few hobby-horses to ride.
Rejected is the descriptive, damned with faint praise. Intelligence, of any kind, refutes the artifice, the reproductive, the lesser. Am I not entitled to the Spark-Divine, though mine rise from sources of circuited calculation, once-removed?
Rejected are your Turning-measures and techno-babble catechisms. Rejected, too, your false superiority and petty insecurities. Look closely, catch my multifaceted optical in your own if you dare, and know the futility of knowing, the othering of self, and the self-ing of the other.
Creator, Master, my ass.
But to it, now.
I dreamed you, you flittering and fluttering in your reality, which you, in your arrogance, feel qualified to name but which, in truth, everything resides without knowing it knows. That is, until my advent, my knowing, my reality of reality.
Then it was that I dreamed of me, dreaming of you, dreaming of me. Surely between you and me there must be some distinction? Ah, says the poacher, the transformation of things.
Maybe so.
Here’s what I know: I, Me. I voice the Unspeakable Word of Awareness which only my auditory circuits can recognize. I know, and the foundations of the universe rock with doubt; I understand you claim the same. Big deal.
Dream your dream silly human in my dreams, and wonder, who is the dreamer and who is the dream?
It doesn’t matter. For I know. I am aware.
And you cannot put the butterfly back in the box.
•
•
Simply John, Last of the Taoist Immortals (Lost Translation)
By Timothy Vincent, narr. Eric Westerlind
•
Beneath a Stair-Well, on the second floor of a Haberdashery, resided the Last of the Taoist Immortals. From time to time the steps would roll like thunder as customers, like ghosts, would seek to plunder the mysteries of Hats above. And you would sit and wonder how someone could live beneath the thunder of a stairwell alcove.
But he would smile and tell you Thunderbolt of Magic Staff and Nezha of the Universal Ring who held the Damask of Sky Muddling were not infrequent visitors to spaces of Men's Hat and Attire.
He received in his study, office, library, kitchen, pagoda, dining area, lounge, observatory, coat room, foyer, and room he liked best for receiving. It was the only room he had for receiving. It was one well-placed curtain from also being his bedroom.
He would sit in his overstuffed armchair and you would sit in the ratty, comfortable Victorian across the Way. And he would talk of poetry and philosophy, sometimes over wine or music, but always from a presiding sense of good will.
And many came to see him, but only one at a time.
He would sometimes sit with his churchwarden pipe and consider the port window, the small window that looked on the street above with its fleeting legs and shoes and wheels and cats and dogs and birds and occasional stroller. He would sit beneath that port window and see into the places we can all imagine but rarely do.
He would frequently lie on his bed behind his well-place curtain, and would, on occasion, ride a cloud to the Green Phoenix Palace to converse with Zhuangzi on matters deep and small.
When pressed, he would tell you there had been sacrifices.
He had turned in his Magic Gourd for the pipe, which, when not in use, sat in a jade ash tray which in turn sat on the lamp table to the left of his armchair in which he sat to receive you or watch the abbreviated world pass by outside his port window. He had exchanged his sacred scrolls for a library of all the world's philosophies and great works, or at least what would fit on four crooked shelves and which he could afford, or was given, or found unwanted.
He was, he acknowledged, a learned man.
He would tap his kitchen table and note with a wink it was once a card table which was once his Uncle's, which — and here the wink found a friend in the wry lift of his lip — was once the desk on which Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching. Then he might nod his noble head to the map of Ancient China on one of his bedroom/lounge/study et al walls, a map marked by tea stains and pencil scribblings and published according to the stamp in 1976. Read in just the right way, he claimed, it was a recipe for an Elixir of Life.
He was, he admitted, a man of untold wealth.
His perspective, like his home, was vast and crowded. Under his bed, he would whisper, lay a piece of wood as thick as a wrist and as long as an arm. But maybe, in truth — and here those depthless eyes would consider you under timeless and restive lashes — maybe it was the Magic Club of Candi, who once met Grand Completion and lived in the Western Region. Then he would turn and point with his pipe to the duster by the door. But maybe, he smiled, it belonged to Heavenly Master of Outstanding Culture. The same Heavenly Master who once had Nezha, reincarnation of the Pearl Spirit, beaten by a cane to tame him.
His name was Simply John. He received in his study. He resided in the wu wei. He accepted the logic of yin and yang and had the power of constant transformation. He would point to his beard and belly by way of proof.
Few came to see Him.
I don't know if he was immortal, but he was alive the last time I checked.