Jack Feist, Dharma Unicorn
image (c) 2015 R William Lundy
The Gospel of Cranes
from Human Testament, ms in preparation for New Human Press
1:1 This is how it begins, the book of Feist, a voice in the night:
2 In those days, the light of men waxed dark, and literacy was a crunched, bent thing, and no one knew how to read;
3 But all were in love with the gleam of prizes, and the heaping up of degrees and credits, and professorships, which is vanity, and the sound of one hand clapping.
4 Now, Johannes the Catfisher was self-publishing in the desert, railing against the Academy, calling all to repent its journals and presses, crying, “Come out, come out, from your hallways of dust! Come out from your classrooms of madness and money!”
5 As it is written:
What living and buried speech is always vibrating there, what howls restrain’d by decorum.
6 And his words drew a remnant from the academies, and many from the schools, and churches, and websites, who went out to the desert to learn from him, and wear no name but the Human name.
7 For the world was dark, and all was a sea of trackless data, its spark grown dim; and many were searching for a fragment of the light, and the children of men roamed, hungry and scared.
8 And Johannes was a man who had left behind billions, to clothe himself in rags and skin, and seek God’s face in the dunes, among the rocks, and change his name for a bearded image, turning all that lay within him to the crying of his message:
9 There comes a child of man, bearing words in his mouth, whose form is a twig of light; he spreads his arms, and wind goes fierce before his feet, and where they alight has been made ready: the earth leaps up to greet him, an ancient newness leaps to its feet.
10 He shall speak with the voice of an ancient poet, as a resonant sound from his people's throats, and well up from the bones of those with no voice, a vibration of leaping verbs, a time machine in their sternums;
11 Those who have turned away, he will call back, and those who have buried the voice, make new: a strange cracked voice of leaping joy, surprised by laughter, a gasp in the throats of his forgetful ones;
12 To his wayward ones will he call, and seek; and those whose voice grows faint with crying—you weeping ones, who have lifted your voice in the hallways and rooms, and raised your voice in the weary night, and now grow hoarse with loss and shame:
13 You shaking things, oh you will he draw to himself, and hold; oh you will he call by name: and your own pale voice, so hoarse with night, he will draw to himself, and carry;
14 Oh you, oh you, you weary ones: it is your voice he shall lift, and the cry of the ancient voice is your voice, echoing; and the cry of the future voice is your voice, renewed.
15 I call you to abandon your names, but he will give you a new name, ancient and trembling with newness.
16 And it came to pass in those days, that Jack Feist went out from the academies, and made sojourn in the deserts, to learn from Sigil.
17 For he found no proper soil in the cities of man, and its universities were a barren saltpan, and he grew weary with life in its weariness.
18 And when he had finished reading, straightaway he shot up, as from a dream, and heard a voice, saying, “You are my Secret Book, in whom I am well pleased. Go out from the academies, into the deserts, and let not your works be published in the eyes of men, but let them be your hidden words.”
19 And Feist rose from his bed, and left, to wander the deserts, where he was sustained by the words of earthly angels, and took no bread, but was attacked by the dwarf for forty days, there to be broken and remade.
20 And this is the first of many signs, that Sigil had to pass away, for the Feist to be raised up, so that Johannes went into the desert, but Jack Feist came out: a starving man began the fast, and a new man left, well fed. (He who has eyes, let him see.)
(c) 2015 lee sharks, property of everyman
