Knight of Cups: Homage
All these years living a life of someone I don’t know. From childhood on, I heard stories: princes, knights, and travelers. But I forgot that I'm the son of a king who dwells in my breast and keeps my heart beating - a god.
But the king never forgets me; he sends messages and signs. But nothing breaks the deep amnesia into which I'm fallen. Was the amnesia brought on by cancer? Childhood bliss? When did it start?
Why did life become a puzzle? But random events – earthquakes, disease – offer me the opportunity to wake up. I have to take it. I have to act and not cower in the doorway. I have to step outside and notice that other people are just as shaken, just as desirous to wake up from the dream of life.
We all yearn for this.
This common yearning makes me less alone – it's the yearning to put the pieces together that we all inherit. We are all strangers here, trying to put the puzzles of our lives together. We are all pieces of a people, fragments.
I tend to blame myself for my lack of wholeness. But the whole point in being thrust into this life is to put the pieces back together. That’s the theme, the words, the activity.
Another person cannot complete me. Artist, lover, children, friends, parents – they can’t do it for me. The search is for completion and meditation.
Like many of you, I’ve been sold romantic love as a replacement for spiritual transcendence. There are no lovers in the desert. We face the moment of death alone, and the other person must walk away eventually.
In other words, a lover cannot replace the craziness and suffering wrought by my attempt to find the king. And if they try to, they can only do it through hateful words. I need to contrast “love” to “romantic love experience.” Can a “romantic love experience” bring me back to life? Resurrect me in wholeness?
I cannot give the lover too much power. Television and pop songs want me to do just this. But – remember – the king is always looking out for you, giving you the signs that the lover cannot serve as a replacement.
The lover is a sign of the possibility - not a replacement for - of a relationship with the king. The lover for whom one longs is really the king - the god within - and not a man or a woman. A lover can’t complete me. And I suffer because I can’t find solace in her arms - arms that lead me to the desert, where I've tricked myself into thinking that I haven’t begun or done the hard work of the search.
I make common observations. Everyone I know has “problems” of which they’re unaware. But this observation is true and untrue for everyone. Actually, we are all aware and unaware.
The people who really suffer – all the planet's poor laborers – I barely notice them. They pass like flashes of light; then, it’s back to myself and my own brooding.
Why do I wish the Edenic death on other people? Not to sing Blake's Songs of Experience? Do I want it for myself?
Unity: All souls are big enough to want redemption, resurrection, and the simple proof that they exist, even if they stumble. This is why they need others; this is why they need you. This is why you need others. This is why I need others.
When the light leaves my eyes and the angels weep, who will read the signs of needless worry written on the lines of my face?
How I use others! I hunt, pick and choose. I speak in clichés. I attend parties that also are delusional replacements for the king, for God. I linger in the foolishness of opulence, while I long for something greater, something unifying. The fear is to name that other – the fear is that perhaps it’s unnamable.
The backdrop of the party is the desert. When you’re at the party, be quiet, meditate, and pray.
All of civilization is built in the desert, which is another word for "amnesia." I do my best not to face the evil – my darkness – that awaits me there. I have to avoid the false waters of the chlorine pool and wait for the rain.
And then, because facing my darkness and the potential for change terrifies me, my friends and family become my enemies. I don’t want to reveal myself even to them, so I turn away from those that – in the image of the king – would love me. I can’t show vulnerability even to my wife. It’s true – I think that I'm stronger than the king, stronger than God.
What if my wife is on the right path? What if she’s a healer? Her illness really secondary to her healing power? But what if she can’t prevent me from going astray? What if I don’t want to be inside my marriage? What if I deny the king in this way? What if the path vanishes or turns into an ugly city street?
My cancer and heart failure made me afraid of life. My first wife noticed this fear. It maddened her. And she gave peace, mercy, love, and joy. But I denied it. I denied the king in the process. The desire for the eternity of her love was the desire for the eternity of the king. She wasn’t important, but the common desire was… And love is desire for the king, for God.
But lies abound, such as the lie that work leads to freedom. Accept this lie and deny the other way – the other place – the journey to find the king, the journey within.
There’s also a sound – a roar of the "culture" – that makes it almost impossible to hear the king and his voice, which tell me that the puzzle pieces of my life can come together.
But the voices of the sage writers come through – a multiplicity of voices that I can spend a lifetime putting together. (Am I a demented Spinoza?) These are the voices of people who have comprehended the meaning of at least one sign.
And perhaps I can find these signs in the stuff of the material, commodified world out of which all this artificiality is built. To live in the artificial is to live in the dream of death and to dream of life. But rays of light seep through the artificial.
Isn’t it true that we’re all wounded? We all hobble along: angels with broken wings. We can fly, but we don’t allow ourselves to do so. This is the nature of our exile. We have denied ourselves through fear.
When we were children, we had no fear. We accepted light and didn’t even realize darkness. (Blake!) Now we have to find our way.
We create disguises to hide ourselves – to pretend we’re not afraid. Do our children make us drop our masks? Does our empathy for them change us? Why is our love for them different from our love for wives and husbands?
Paul, can you remember the man you wanted to be? What that desire to be felt like? To have it every day? How can I actualize myself when no one cares about the reality of the king? My king? Our king?
But maybe people do care…otherwise, they wouldn’t make statements like the one I just made. After all, I am human...humanity. Can’t you hear my soul, my vital soul, bursting through my sad words? Are they really words of sadness? Have you uttered or thought similar statements?
The lie is one of inauthenticity – the idea that I can be whatever I want to be. Fantasy prevails on television screens, videogames, the Internet – the way people spend their time. It’s so easy for them - for me - to lose themselves.
But – again – they remind you to wake up through your observation of their behavior, their money, their clothes, their traps, their arrogance, their drugs, their gadgets…all of this stuff equals a pride beyond measure. The theater of the mind? Amnesia? Denial of the king within?
And this theater prevails even in sleep…dreams within dreams. Place as dream: Vegas, also located in the desert. The USA: one huge desert…a waste land. And we feed on the fake resurrections of mass media. How many copies of Elvis, Lincoln, Jesus have existed?
People’s stares take away my individuality. I want to get away from people, get away, and find the place I really want to go. I must find my own way, that I do the reaching. But my inner king reaches for me. That’s the awareness that so easily gets lost in my brooding. I have to accept God’s desire for me…
The path leads to prayer and meditation and art. The path leads away from distraction into paying attention to the moment. But why have I been a tourist in these ideas? Why haven’t I committed? Why haven’t I shown the love that’s in me? What’s the fear? If I could just truly and selflessly love my friends and family, I could find the inner king and love God. Love is desire. God is desire. I need to make God with other people – because our very salvation depends on it.
Not all waters are polluted. I can jump in. Is this what marriage is? An act of faith that mirrors one’s faith in God? Is faith desire? But faith is risk. Does that make desire risk?
It seems that my memory can destroy the purity of the moment: my memories of past transgressions, which define me. The past is never dead. It reshapes the present and must be redeemed by my own actions. (Faulkner!)
Again, I'm left in the desert. I contemplate and brood – I don’t meditate. My head is down. I feel that all I can do is fall to my knees and long for compassion. And, having done that, I desire to let love out of my body. I don’t want containment. I want to reveal my soul to the world.
Suffering wakes me up from the amnesia of the world. It’s sent to me. It’s how God reaches me. It’s a gift. But one that’s incredibly hard to recognize and survive.
The real gift, though, is compassion. It’s the opportunity to help each other accept another’s compassion. It’s in this acceptance that life begins – and this compassion is for oneself and for others.
Along with compassion, comes courage…courage to touch others and be touched…courage to stand together in calm waters or to sit together in crammed traffic jams.
Perhaps the biggest sign there is: the light in the eyes of others. I can wake up to this light and live in it. I can come out of the cave. I can see the sunshine glimmering on the water. My children can grow…and I can care for them.
Remembering the moments of goodness is a choice. The desert can thus be transformed into the place of resurrection and meditation, no matter its aridity and rockiness.
There’s a time for desert dwelling but also a time for water swimming. My world begins in the water; I desire to dive in, I dive in, and I begin.
Other people – especially ones I’ve known for a long time – can change my personality. I act differently around them. I judge them and think I know what they’re thinking. I forget that their souls exist.
Why do I continue reaching out to these people, especially family? Is family that key? The simple fact that I don’t give up on them shows that I love them. Love is real; family is real.
Does the real me show up when I talk nervously to strangers or when I lose all boundaries and speak my mind to the people I “love”? Why is it easier for me to feel hatred for the people I love? Why does family involve so much bad feeling?
Vulnerability and dislike intersect in random ways.
Perhaps jealousy for those who have fun condemns me. And, more importantly, does creativity derive from an unbridled sense of fun or serious thought? Are the two mutually exclusive? Is conversation an art?
I find it hard to see the kindness that shines through people who seem foolish, even if they smack of kindness. But we all have the compulsion to analyze each other to death – that is, until we’ve come up with a label that makes things easy.
Is introspection performative? Is there a way to perform sadness and get the “effect” of authenticity? I don’t think so. I think what I've written here is me.
When we “film” ourselves – alone – we reveal authenticity. Can it be done in public? Is public art automatically inauthentic?
The weirdness of being here…when you’re out of the superficial spotlight…when the world sees you as a second fiddle.
But always remember that the light shines through in many different ways.