Rivers in the mind
The riverbank was cloaked in mist, and the jester, sitting on his horse on one bank could not see the opposite bank. He sat, looking up and down the murky eddies of the dark river. Sometime he would stare deeply into the water, looking beyond the water itself to the swirling, tumbling molecules of water as they surged onwards, always towards the sea far away. It made him smile in the freezing dark before dawn, and he looked once more into the sky.
The silence was intrinsic in the scene. It would have been somewhere else if anything had made a noise. The trees swayed but made no sound. The reeds whispered watery secrets to the fish in their roots and the birds flew in respectful silence over the river and far away.
The jester sat watching the water as the mist stained the river silver then gold as the sun rose and lanced yellow light along the valley. The bend in the river seemed like the end of the world, far away and unreachable. The jester smiled at this too, pleased to see a willow in sorrow caressing the face of the water with filigree fingers of greenery.
The arrival of the sun in the sky broke the pact of silence the birds had signed with the sky and suddenly the dawn chorus sounded from tree and bush and high in the air. The jester sat, looking around with a look on his face that told the waking world that he was the first man to see this day, and he was going to make it a good one.
When the sun had burned the mist away the river suddenly turned blue, blue as the sky above. Twin rivers of blue light snaked through the small slice of the world that the jester was watching, and he nodded his acceptance of them.
The jester sat on his horse all this time watching carefully every little thing that happened. He saw a mouse steal a blackberry. He saw a flotilla of ducks slide over the water. He saw a pike patrolling the riverbank, cruising through the reeds and weeds. A kingfisher sat, bright and defiant of all thing grey on a low branch, watching the river with bright eyes. The jester saw it rise to meet itself out of the mirror world, and it rose once more with a fish in its beak. Not for nothing is the bird christened monarch of those who fish.
When all was said and done and the morning was waxing to noon, the jester saw someone moving on the far bank of the river, hauling a raft into the water and plunging a pole deep into the river with not so much as a splash.. When after a long haul contrary to the current he hit the bank, the jester moved to meet him.
‘Good day, Mr Ferryman.’
‘Sir. Will you be wanting that beast on my raft?’
‘Indeed, sir, this beast shall pass where I pass.’
‘So be it, but I got to tell ye I don’t hold with no beasts on my raft. Make devilish mess, most often.’
‘Tis true, sir, that beasts man men are prone to defile that which they stand upon, but I assure you that if our passage is swift your raft will remain in it’s present state.’
‘You see that it is so, sir, and I would be most obliged. Hence! Come.’
The jester dismounted and led his horse onto the wide raft. After a few shuffles on the wood the horse settled down and looked hard at the far shore. The jester stood by the ferryman, looking around all places.
‘make haste good ferryman, I am pressed for time.’
‘Is that so? Strange then that you’d choose my raft to cross by. Every soul in these parts knows I don’t paddle till noon and then but until I get hungered again. Why, dark sir, should you choose me?’
‘Why I choose what I choose serves no purpose in explaining. Suffice to say that not all journeys are made in body. Tell me, river-master, I observed a murky smear in the water flowing early from thence.’ The jester pointed down the river to the bend. ‘I ask what could produce such discoloration in the great river?’
‘Ask me not what lies beyond that bend, sir , for I can make but witless reply. I know the stain of which you speak, for it travels by intervals down the river for days at a time, but for it’s origin I cannot say. At the bend my knowledge of this river it cut.’
‘How does a man spend such time as you have on this river without looking up or down it’s course?’
‘I have no need to know of that which I will see but once if at all. I know this river, this river, better than any man alive or dead.’
‘The river which you know passes you by every day of your life, sir. This river, even now is different from that river which we set out on. Your knowledge is of the bank and the rocks, the things which do not change. The river is always changing its nature and in this you have no knowledge save that which lives in memory.’
‘The water is but the medium of travel, the river is the space the water does fill, and in this have knowledge incomparable.’
‘Maybe it is so, but to who is this knowledge of use?’
‘To your good self sir, for one. And every last man who ever travels on my raft. I never steer it wrongly. This is my river sir, and I take any slight upon it as I would my own person.’
‘I meant no offence, if offence can indeed be offered to a space on the world. I am amazed you see nothing beyond the rivers bend. It is to me something which olds horror, if you would forgive me sir.’
‘I have nothing to forgive you of. You speak as one of those who sees the world as blur, passing without looking nor noticing the little things. Your life passes you, my life stays as I wish it to be.’
‘If it is life that we discuss then I say you are correct. My life is a blur, as is yours if you care to see. The difference is my life is blur of more colour and kind than yours. I offer no challenge sir for it is clear to me that this is what you have chosen and you are content in it, but bend an ear for a time and tell me then if you have no desire to pass beyond the bank of this river.
I knew a king once, long ago it was now. His kingdom was in disarray, his people were unhappy and idle. The king was a man whom fortune favoured greatly, and his kingdom prospered by the wok of other men. His subjects, tired of long days passing without occupation or distraction, pleaded with the king to give them something to do. The king looked around his kingdom, searching for something for them to do. A soothsayer did come from the woods beyond his borders bearing knowledge of a certain river. This river, if it was taken into buckets and kept so for a year and a day, would grant health to every person to drink of it. The king thought this a worthy pastime for his subjects and he decreed that every last person in the kingdom should take a bucket and fill it from the river. When all available buckets were filled and the water of the river was standing in the castle cellars the king looked upon the river and saw with dismay that it still flowed. The soothsayer had said take all the waters of the river. To this end the king sent people out through the world bringing back many buckets to the kingdom. The people were once again employed in scooping the water from the river and standing it on the bank in buckets. In a short time every last bucket n the kingdom was filled, and still the river flowed by. The king slew the soothsayer for speaking of such a thing, and he ordered all buckets which had been sitting for longest to be emptied and used once more. The order he gave was impossible to carry out, and after searching the entire kingdom for a place to pour the water of the river the men saw no alternative to the river. They emptied the buckets upstream of the castle and sent the buckets down the bank to be filled once more. The kings rage grew, and the cycle continued with all the people of the kingdom taken in filling the buckets or carrying the empty buckets from the place upriver to the filling stages on the bank. Men who as children carried water to the castle stooped as old men under the self same weight. Time passed the kingdom, and the king died in time. They continued filling the buckets, because nothing but a rumour of a curse remained of the soothsayers direction. Generations wilted, and the river flowed by, being taken and refilled as it slid past the castle. To this day that kingdom toils under the threat of an age-old curse in an endeavour to which there is no end.’
The jester looked at the ferryman, and the man was looking out to the river and whistling.
‘Pretty words, jester, but they have no meaning to me. I fill no buckets with this river, I pass over it’s face.’
‘But you pass over a different face on each crossing, though you see it not.’
‘The river may go, but that is the way of water. The way of man is to stay.’
‘So say you. On water I have no argument, for it is undeniable that it is so. However, men can pass as water should they choose to be without the buckets of the mad king.’
The ferryman said nothing more, looking out to the bend which he had never passed. One day, he thought to himself, I shall.
The jester and his horse disembarked on the far bank, and the jester turned back to the ferryman.
‘Meadows on mountains, deserts so high there is no air, waterfalls off cliffs made of ice. All these things you have missed in your obedience to the transient master river. So be it, good sir. I have left a gist for you on the other bank, should you wish to collect it.’
‘I thank you though I know not what this gift is. Your manner is strange, sir, and I am not altogether regretful to be parting.’
‘And that, sir, is just another bucket filled in the river of your mind.’
The jester clicked his horse up the bank, and it frisked away, glad to be off the small raft. The ferryman watched him go and turned back to his raft, hefting his pole for the return journey.
