To the people of that town, I must seem a rake. Dashing off with my millions and a frail young girl under my spell. Never. But too long I've been compelled by the images I must strike, by the weight of my associations. Too long I've been driven, headlong into any event that could sunder those ties. Even within myself! Preying for the duelist's ball!
But really the reverse of such wagging tongues. An angel whisking me away heavenward, beyond all past ensnarements. But where can she be taking me? Where might I find a land which separates me from myself, the bearer of all these ills?
Where all I see is a man fleeing his problems, Marianna contends that I am free. That I may be whatever I wish from this day forward. Or again, a new man tomorrow and yet again tomorrow. That no damned history must travel with me town to town.
Sitting in the couch with the soft hills and scrub oak surrounding me, I cannot bring the last few tumultuous days full into view. My mind is fluid with the events and each will pass me in its turn, but I can contend with the whole yet. The landscape itself seems to affect my capacity for reflection. Dull dun colored hill that swell and cap and recede again into further hills. These are not the Sierra crags that inspire heights and limits to the mind. The very ocean—this morning seen thrashing like a cage beast beneath angry cliffs—is now a vast and distant glass. Its black-green etching a sorrowful distance.
Marianna is a Christer. I spent my youth laughing through my teeth at her type. I had wit and luck and saw no truth in such talk. But her faith in me through these upheavals carries no logic I can discern apart from that of a Christer. She has a reverence for the quiet I have never been able to muster. Quiet could stare me down in half of a minute. Her patience is unparalleled. She has saved me with her patience.
And yet, tho my very soul has been stayed from the brink by the force that could only be a Christer's, there is no Christ for me. How interesting that truth feels as it simply reveals itself with such lightness. As if faith were not an agonizing battle fought for millennia. And perhaps I am, in fact, the beneficiary of this long struggle. Who can, the first truly free Western man in a dog's age, simply have no Christ.
What have I then? After these revelations? These self-inflicted lessons? After Marianna's faithful aid? I have yet my own truth. These hills that pour past me now, experienced—pouring—by dint of man's invention, but here for no cause but their own long personal histories. That I too am a part of those long histories. Subterranean undulations. The ocean before. The cliffs. The spree. The table itself! All those heights from which I so perilously have toppled. They are my faith and have shown me my truth. Hard spent on truth, I go now to find truth in calmer climes. But for pain, they are no less true.
Marianna's Christ watches over me still, as all faith lives in the world through the faithful, all acts through their actors. But for me there is only Marianna. My little sister, my little soul. I have felt endlessly guilty above all things for entwining her in my own desultory path. I could never have wanted my life for her. I have begged her countless times to free herself from me and follow where her virtue my lead her. And she has laughed in my face! Laughed with sparkling eyes and a joy I cannot canvas that I am precisely where her virtue must lead her. Finally I see that I cannot be guilty but for my own life, indeed that there can be no guilt before her at all. I can only hold my guilt for myself by myself. This is her great lesson to me. If I am not guilty before Marianna, I can be guilty before no man. For I have never loved nor wronged any person as I have her.
I can only close these notes by staying that I hope I might recall revelations made at the precipice also in the lolling hills. That tomorrow I can bring down the jam and bread to make a meal for my family or any other with such knowledge.
Sitting in the couch with the soft hills and scrub oak surrounding me, I cannot bring the last few tumultuous days full into view. My mind is fluid with the events and each will pass me in its turn, but I can contend with the whole yet. The landscape itself seems to affect my capacity for reflection. Dull dun colored hill that swell and cap and recede again into further hills. These are not the Sierra crags that inspire heights and limits to the mind. The very ocean—this morning seen thrashing like a cage beast beneath angry cliffs—is now a vast and distant glass. Its black-green etching a sorrowful distance.
Marianna is a Christer. I spent my youth laughing through my teeth at her type. I had wit and luck and saw no truth in such talk. But her faith in me through these upheavals carries no logic I can discern apart from that of a Christer. She has a reverence for the quiet I have never been able to muster. Quiet could stare me down in half of a minute. Her patience is unparalleled. She has saved me with her patience.
And yet, tho my very soul has been stayed from the brink by the force that could only be a Christer's, there is no Christ for me. How interesting that truth feels as it simply reveals itself with such lightness. As if faith were not an agonizing battle fought for millennia. And perhaps I am, in fact, the beneficiary of this long struggle. Who can, the first truly free Western man in a dog's age, simply have no Christ.
What have I then? After these revelations? These self-inflicted lessons? After Marianna's faithful aid? I have yet my own truth. These hills that pour past me now, experienced—pouring—by dint of man's invention, but here for no cause but their own long personal histories. That I too am a part of those long histories. Subterranean undulations. The ocean before. The cliffs. The spree. The table itself! All those heights from which I so perilously have toppled. They are my faith and have shown me my truth. Hard spent on truth, I go now to find truth in calmer climes. But for pain, they are no less true.
Marianna's Christ watches over me still, as all faith lives in the world through the faithful, all acts through their actors. But for me there is only Marianna. My little sister, my little soul. I have felt endlessly guilty above all things for entwining her in my own desultory path. I could never have wanted my life for her. I have begged her countless times to free herself from me and follow where her virtue my lead her. And she has laughed in my face! Laughed with sparkling eyes and a joy I cannot canvas that I am precisely where her virtue must lead her. Finally I see that I cannot be guilty but for my own life, indeed that there can be no guilt before her at all. I can only hold my guilt for myself by myself. This is her great lesson to me. If I am not guilty before Marianna, I can be guilty before no man. For I have never loved nor wronged any person as I have her.
I can only close these notes by staying that I hope I might recall revelations made at the precipice also in the lolling hills. That tomorrow I can bring down the jam and bread to make a meal for my family or any other with such knowledge.
