Not that I can help you, don’t think that! Nobody can. Nobody will, probably. You—(and here he spaced his words)—you will have to solve your own problems. But at least you will know, when thinking of me, that there is one person in this world who knows you and believes in you. That always helps. The secret, however, lies in not caring whether anyone, not even the Almighty, has confidence in you. You must come to realize, and you will undoubtedly, that you need no protection. Nor should you hunger after salvation, for salvation is only a myth. What is there to be saved? Ask yourself that! And if saved, saved from what? Have you thought of these things? Do! There is no need for redemption, because what men call sin and guilt have no ultimate meaning. The quick and the dead!—just remember that! When you reach to the quick of things you will find neither acceleration nor retardation, neither birth nor death. There is and you are—that’s it in a nutshell. Don’t break your skull over it, because to the mind it makes no sense. Accept it and forget it—or it will drive you mad…
When I walked away I was floating in the clouds. I had my briefcase with me, as usual, but all thought of calling on prospects was gone. I got into the subway automatically and out again automatically—at Times Square. Whenever I had no set destination I would get out automatically at Times Square. There I always came upon the rambla, the Nevsky Prospekt, the souks and bazaars of the damned.
The thoughts and emotions which possessed me were almost frighteningly familiar. They were the same which I experienced when I first heard my old friend Roy Hamilton talk, when first I listened to Benjamin Fay Mills, the Evangelist, when first I glanced at that strange book, Esoteric Buddhism, when I read at one gulp the Too Teh Ch’ing, or—whenever I picked up The Possessed, The Idiot, or The Brothers Karamazov. The cows-bells which I carried under my ribs began clanking wildly; in the belfry above it was as if all the stars in the heavens had come together to make a celestial bonfire. There was no weight to my body, none whatever. I was at the six extremes simultaneously.
There was a language which never failed to set me off—and it was always the same language. Boiled to the size of a lentil, its whole scope and purport could be expressed in two words: Know thyself! Alone with myself, and not only alone but disconnected, discalibrated, I ran up and down the harmonica, talking the one and only language, breathing only the pure ineffable spirit, looking upon everything with new eyes and in an absolutely new way. No birth, no death? Of course not! What more, what else, could there be than was at . this moment? Who said that everything was fucked up? Where? When? On the seventh day God rested from his labors.
And He saw that all was good. D’accord. How could it have been otherwise? Why should it be otherwise? According to reason, that fat wingless slug, humanity was slowly, slowly evolving from the primordial slime. A million years hence we would begin faintly to resemble the angels. What rot! Is the mind encysted, then, in the ass-hole of creation? When Roy Hamilton spoke, though he possessed not a shred of learning, he spoke with the sweet authority of the angels. He was all instantaneity. The wheel flashed and you were immediately at the hub, in the center of that empty space without which not even the constellations can wheel and flash their secret codes. Ditto for Benjamin Fay Mills, who was not an Evangelist but a hero who had abandoned Christianity in order to be a Christ. And Nirvana? Not tomorrow but now, forever and eternally now…
This language was ever bright and clear to me. The language of reason, which is not even the language of common sense, spelled gibberish. When God lets go the arm that holds the pen the author no longer knows what he is writing. Jacob Boehme used a language all his own, a language direct from the Maker. Scholars read it one way, men of God another. The poet speaks only to the poet. Spirit answereth spirit. The rest is hog-wash.
A hundred voices are speaking at once. I am still on the Nevsky Prospekt, still toting the brief-case. I could as well be in limbo. I am most assuredly there, wherever that may be, and nothing can derail me. Possessed, yes. But by the great Manitou this time.
Now I’ve gotten below the rambla. I’m approaching the old Haymarket. Suddenly a name juts out from a billboard, cuts my eye-ball just as clean as a razor-blade. I have just passed a theatre which I thought had been torn down long ago. Nothing remains in the retina but a name, her name, an utterly new name: MIMI AGUGLIA. This is the important thing, her name. Not that she is Italian, not that the play is an immortal tragedy. Just her name: MIMI AGUGLIA. Though I keep walking steadily ahead, and then round and about, though I keep scudding through the clouds like a three-quarter moon, her name will draw me back punctually at 2.15 P.M.
From the celestial realm I slide to a comfortable seat in the third row orchestra. I am about to witness the greatest performance I shall probably ever witness. And in a language of which I know not a word.
The theatre is packed—and with Italians exclusively. An awesome hush precedes the rising of the curtain. The stage is semi-dark. For a full minute not a word is spoken. Then a voice is heard: the voice of Mimi Aguglia.
Only a few moments ago my head was seething with thought; now all is still, the great swarm gathered in a honey-comb at the base of the skull. Not even a buzz issues from the hive. My senses, sharpened to a diamond point, are fully concentrated on the strange creature with the oracular voice. Even were she to speak a language I know, I doubt that I could follow her. It is the sounds she makes, the immense gamut of sound, which enthralls me. Her throat is like an ancient lyre. So very, very ancient. It has the ring of man before he ate of the tree of knowledge. Her gestures and movements are mere accompaniments to the voice. The features, monolithic in repose, express the most subtle modulations with her ceaseless changes of mood. When she throws her head back, the oracular music from her throat plays over her features like lightning playing over a bed of mica. She seems to express with ease emotions which we can only stimulate in dream. All is primordial, effulgent, annihilating. A moment ago she was sitting in a chair. It is no longer a chair; it has become a thing, an animated thing. Wherever she moves, whatever she touches, things become altered. Now she stands before a tall mirror, ostensibly to catch her own reflection. Illusion! She is standing before a gap in the cosmos, answering the Titan’s yawn with an inhuman shriek. Her heart, suspended in a crevice of ice, suddenly glows—until her whole being shoots forth flames of ruby and sapphire. Another instant and the monolithic head turns to jade. The serpent confronting chaos. Marble returning in horror to the void. Nothingness…
She is pacing back and forth, back and forth, and in her wake a phosphorescent glow. The very atmosphere thickens, impregnated by the impending horror. She is unveiling now, but as if in warm oil, as if still drugged by the fumes of the sacrificial altar. A phrase gurgles from her tortured lips, a strangled phrase which causes the man beside me to groan. Blood oozes from a burst vein in her temple. Petrified, I am unable to make a sound, though I am screaming at the top of my lungs. It is no longer theatre, it is the nightmare. The walls close in, twisting and twining like the dread labyrinth. The Minotaur is breathing upon us with hot and evil breath. At precisely this moment, and as if a thousand chandeliers had been shattered at once, her mad, fiendish laugh splits the ear. She is no longer recognizable. One sees only a human wreck, a tangle of arms and limbs, a mass of twisted hair, a gory mouth, and this, this thing, gropes, staggers, grapples blindly, suddenly, towards the wings-Hysteria sweeps the audience. Men with jaws locked are hanging limp in their seats. Women, scream, faint, or tear their hair convulsively. The whole auditorium has become like the bottom of the sea—and pandemonium struggling like a crazed gorilla to remove the heavy liquid stone of fright. The ushers gesticulate like puppets, their shouts smothered in the screeching roar
