Divine Comedy, Book Three Paradise: Canto 13: Alcohol and Understanding. Still

If you would understand what I write here and now or what I saw next, or where I went. You will have to imagine how it would feel to be suddenly without purpose.

I had no map, no belongings and no baggage. All I had was the knowledge that for me, this was still, somehow paradise and I needed to experience whatever belonged in this place.

Sitting and waiting. That was an option of course, it always is, easier to sit in one place and if you look at it honestly, you’ll see that’s what most of us do most of the time. We set a few things in motion and then repeat them for the rest of our lives. We go to a job, sing in a choir, walk the dog, come home, watch TV and go to bed or some variation on that. It’s comfortable, it’s easy and really, there’s no reason to want to do anything else, is there?

But things change anyway — people come and go through no fault of their own, people die, jobs are lost and the paradox is, sitting and waiting will not keep you where you want to stay.

A still pool evaporates and is no longer a pool at all. A still wind is no wind. birds need to move to fly and that’s what birds are made for, a soul might be completely still in death, I have no way of knowing but it seems to me that death, whatever you might hear, has not much to do with paradise.

So I kept walking.

Movement is what you do when stillness won’t work.

It was a fine day for walking and not a car in sight. I could see a long way down the road and it seemed to me as though there was nothing but bush forever.

“So,” I said out loud, “Paradise is a long walk down a deserted country highway?”

Nobody answered.

The sky was blue, the branches of the oak trees swayed in the wind.

The sky was blue. There were pebbles on the shoulder of the highway, caution made me walk on the shoulder of the highway, habit made me walk on the shoulder of the highway. Walking on my shoulders. How high was the way? Soft shoulders?

The sky was blue. I walked. My mind emptied like the wind in the blue branches on the tree’s sky, which was blue and the pebbles on my shoulder — they were blue too. Soft, blue shoulders, high, curving branches, green high wind. If there was a sky, the sky was blue. I guess.

I walked and the pebbles rolled under my feet across the soft, high way.

There was a sagging roofline just visible through the trees ahead. It was a hut I thought, or maybe a shed. Maybe it was a ruin — I walked to it. What would you do?

Under the roof there were no walls. It was an empty shelter shielding a collection of copper and steel pots, tubes and wires and a big black kettle being stirred by a fat woman in a cotton housedress, the kind my grandmother used to wear to do her housework, and pink flip-flops.

She looked up and pushed her hair away from her face. “You here, finally.” she said, “Here, stir it.”

I took the paddle and stirred the mess of fruit in the pot, there were apples, maybe some acorns, some weeds — it was a collection of anything that hid a cache of sugar in this tangle of plant-life.

She sat down in a sagging old lawn chair and looked at me.

“What do you think you’re getting out of this?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” I said. she just looked at me so I went on. “It was supposed to teach me something I thought, I mean — I thought Gd would rescue me from ignorance if I agreed to go on this journey.”

She made little grunt of a laugh and shook her head. “Right.” she said, “cause Gd rescues you all the time. That’s Gd’s job.”

“What have you learned by watching?” she said

“Not much.” I answered. “Less than I thought.”

“There’s a time to be the student and a time to lead. You’re not a student anymore. You want to be stupid about faith? You’re in the wrong place.”

“Who do you think your life belongs to anyhow?”

She looked at me from under a sweaty brow. Her hair was a mess and I saw she was wearing my necklace, the one with the portrait of the blackbird.

I stirred the pot. “I’m doing things. I’m moving. I’m here aren’t I?”

“You’re observing” she said. “That’s all you ever seem to do. See that stuff in that pot?”

I nodded.

“We’ll heat it, it will turn to mash, I’ll strain it and put it through the still. It’ll become a spirit and anyone who drinks it will change. Sure, only for an hour or so but they will change.”

I nodded again, seemed pretty obvious to me.

“I make that change.” she continued. “what do you think would happen if I just let it sit there on the ground?”

“It would rot.” I said, “become compost I guess, or the birds would eat it.”

“Yeah” she said, “We’d see it but it wouldn’t be anything but what it is.”

“I’m not doing this for anyone but me” she said. “I’m an agent of change, people get this product — sure but it’s my work. It’s my need to make something in the world that matters to me. Drink this and change. I did that. You see?”

“Not really.” I answered. “I make stuff, I do stuff, I walk.”

“Nothing matters if you don’t take it through every step.” she said, “I gather, I make, I give, I gather again and I see the changes I make. Do you?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. With all my writing and every other act, every act of faith or love or hope — I performed the action and waited for a response. Too often, no response came. For a minute I wondered if she was going to force me to drink.

As though she read my mind she said, nobody forces you to drink. Nobody could but let me tell you honey, if you don’t drink, I got no use for you and I’ll find someone who will.”

“Faith is more than action — it’s sticking with it. Doesn’t matter where it goes. So where are you going next?”

I thought about that for a moment and realized — I had no idea.