Book of the Jaspers

— Paracelsus

                    XII.

— the Potala.

Dear Urze: I am very sorry for my silence. I've had the most terrible

fortnight. That silly lieutenant on the space station,

after adorning himself in a bulk-suit, actually used his ray gun

on the watercooler. And when the water began to boil,

the Smythe and I

enjoyed the most uncommon distress that was altogether pleasurable.

Even here in Lhasa they can't say, with any authority,

whether or not I've broken my vow of celibacy?

It seems anyway that I beat the script, just as my brother did.

I am looking forward to a bath. But nothing ever changes in Lhasa.

I didn't see the ray gun incident as violent — the heightening

transformations of water to steam, etc. Well, it seemed a happy

turning for the Smythe and at the last moment

she explained that 'her next reservoir,' following a thousand year passage

on some filthy snowball of a comet, will be

somewhere on the Vermont side of Lake Champlain.

A very nice body of water and the very resting place for Alfred's ashes.

The Buddha was right

about how illusory it all is — Smythe made that perfectly clear

before turning to vapors.

And do you see what I mean: nothing happens, constantly!

is, in the lieutenant's notes, at 11 degrees,

north by west, of the space station WGYN . . .

It could be a coincidence. All my love. Your uncle Paul.

XIII.

Urze: I have spoken with the Tulku Arak

who is very much alive. We went to the Muslim baths

wearing red plaited hats. He said

it was critical that Alfred and I found the Dza Obum.

I have given it to the Tibetans.

This means I will never again be welcome in Paris or Geneva.

It's especially awkward

for it was the Swiss who released me from quarantine.

They will blame the young lieutenant for the whole thing

and he should probably be warned. Is he still

at that naval base on the Great Lakes with your aunt?

The tulku said that we should not be fooled by our governments'

reports regarding the Clouds of Hayagriva.

He added warmly, "Lo vueh has flown the coop!" Do you

then feel her here with us again? This is marvelous,

if true. Is it possible that Lieutenant Schofelt, Jr. has been

utterly felled by your Aunt Laura? No,

not to worry about their ages. Well, I wouldn't . . .

The guru seemed to suggest

that the gods are in a hanging season in Universe Plaget.

This involves the Khandro. Absolutely.

Tulku Arak will keep Alfred's cat, Boil,

who has already eaten out the throat of a rat

the size of a Mastiff puppy. The tulku says it was

auspicious for them both. I do love

these old holy men from Kham.

I miss Alfred terribly, and I am still deep

in the forty-ninth night of Bardo alarms.

Exeunt.

I saw a zombie on White Street in Lhasa yesterday.

A Chinese general, clearly long dead,

clearly parading in the service

of a monk who cooks in the French quarter . . .

A beggar woman, whose left eye is almost entirely draped

behind a black mole that a white hair grows from,

told the tulku that this cook is sometimes called Magus-ur.

He has no teeth and

a great hatred for the Chinese. We just won't learn.

And I'm no different than the worst of them.

Pax, child. Your chastened uncle.

                   XIV.

— at Ganden.

Urze: in my sleep last night

thousands of lines of poetry

like smoke erecting a stone

for the horizon. Hungry ghosts

calling to me with some troubling nonsense

about the apothecary's quatrains being less arbitrary.

These very same ghosts

follow the zombie and his collection

of marbled cats into the stables

to the kitchen. The cook's

shrineroom is draped in silk legends

of the Buddha, falling brocades

and images, in snake scales and gold,

of our Mother, Prajna Paramita. Her face,

shoulders and arms

are raised with sapphires and diamonds.

There's a broad turning mosaic of azurite

and pearl for the top knot.

Her gown appears to be the skins of cobra

dyed red and cobalt.

There are a hundred butter lamps. The cats

do drink from them — on weekends their shit

is everywhere in the kitchens.

The zombie's cats

converted all the rats in the French quarter

to the eternal sutras . . .

The cook's sanctuary, Urze-la,

has one large image of Palden Lhamo — her mount,

a one-eared mule, is formed

with a checkering of amber and cinnabar.

The mother's blade dates from the ancient sky metal harvest

after the meteor shower of 1138.

The cook-monk and his zombie

seem to do little devotional work — there is one

secret sadhana that they perform at midnight

and they do give beggars

scraps before closing their kitchens at noon.

The cook's amulet, or gau,

is the collapsed syllable of the Kalachakra 'ten.'

It is formed of recessional gold and peat

from the hotsprings near the Panchen Lhama's summer retreat.

The zombie fears it. The neighbor says

it's because the cook has put the zombie's

member in it. I think that's preposterous.

Your uncle is too proud, dear — he has survived a narrow script.

I stabilized a whole universe

just so he might continue to live . . .

He could have died of the Dza Obum

just like his attendant, Alfred!

Urze-la, as your advisor, he must be warned

his time has ripened and I would welcome now

fifty thousand additional prostrations from him

before his dear deceased mother

celebrates her Easter. If he ignores me in this matter

his right knee will fill with worms. I am glad he misses me.

I am the Khandro.

Post Script:

I think you mortals are fond of these afterthoughts

for they are a sly garden of false assertions. Tell him,

the Ekajati, that his nostalgia for his old friend Georg X.

made me retch. I placed that man with lepers

and they did absolutely nothing to deserve him.

The most evil of the flower-Popes, Allius, the IV Innocent,

was my consort in a past life. He was always misunderstood,

and the best lover we've ever had. He was

something of a child. And so that moron X.

killed him by accident. You know,

none of us is invulnerable

to a wild or sideways magic. We fear men like the Georg!

Your uncle

doesn't feel his presence on earth? Your uncle

will not ever again feel the presence of his X. — not

anywhere in the Cosmos. I am telling you that I am terrible.

And I protect you both.

If he doesn't stop explaining me

I'll dissect him for the cannibals on Lingam XY73

as a charity. My earnest love to you. The Khandro.

                     XV.

— Kathmandu.

Dear Urze-la: so we've heard from the young mother.

She is terrible, and as always, for you

speaks exclusively the truth. We're in her debt,

for she's caught us up on all the news from Lhasa. And please

don't be frightened by her. It is mostly bluff.

Please excuse the brevity of this cable for I am exhausted,

having now, tonight, completed

the fifty-thousand prostrations. It took ten days.

I did sleep. Twice. And ate heavily at the start

with a complete fast in the final week. I do love

her black mischief. I will now sleep for days. Your uncle, the Ekajati.

P.S.: Your mother wanted to change the name

of this town to 'Uranus d'Argent.' I'd have

signed that petition.

                      XVI.

— in sheer brokenlading. the tax stamp torn!

Your empty phaxx of '1ylptio'

that spoke of the equinox dagger

was tracked easily to the comet?

Aunt Laura has twice

visited that old Din' é calendar near Flagstaff.

Your warning was invaluable to me. And I have

been trying to thank you since I received it.

You know, Ekajati was still distracted by your death

during his undergraduate years

and it would seem my mother, Marie,

was his first attempt at forgetting

which, of course, results in the unlawful

birth of a girl child in Laos. That would be me,

making you the other breast I was shifted to

which Freud says triumphantly

is the first intimation of disease and famine.

We are a pair, aren't we?

For all the redundancy in our bodies, I sometimes think

that our creator should have been a late Twentieth Century

NASA bureaucrat. We are the strangest beasts,

aren't we?

Are you in Alaska? I guessed

long ago that you were a clandestine

Karma Pakshi shintling.

Uncle said, laughing, dakinis in raincoats

were his undoing. He meant you

and I knew it immediately there

in our musty tent in the Maine woods.

My mother was just recently dead.

She had fallen from a horse

onto a field of stones and purple nettle.

The horse that threw her

was sister to the mare who gave second birth to me

in a cold November field. This is one of those anniversaries.

Why do we have words for an experience of religion

or politics? They're just the worst existential facts,

yes, worst than ghosts. The ghosts of mules,

to quote the second Regency from his Sakya parapet.

He told the Dalai Lama he was always sad, and hence,

unworthy of being desperate. That describes me I think.

And as the old man lay there dying on the hardpan,

his longish beard changed from white to black,

hardy April flowers making something like

the chalk line of a crime scene around his body,

every yak in the valley screaming.

When I think one of those men could say to his Holiness

that he was always sad but never desperate, then

I stop cursing my equipoise, whatever it was mother gave me

there in that hillside village in northern Laos.

I still envy you your tits and mischief.

Love, your friend. The Khandro, L'urze-la!

Post Script: I met a distant cousin of yours, Nagarjuna Watts,

and together we explored one night

the ramshackles of Calcutta. Is he some florid hybrid of daka?

Lama Arak praised you

for your patient travel, ventriloquism and investitures.

He said it was the first ethical standard that keeps you

from possessing any sentient being. Instead,

water coolers, comets, etcetera. He said

that you belonged to the blue and opalescent harmonies,

unlike my red dakini friend, the Khandro of Lux.

I will become one of her manifestations,

of speech and medicine, is my best guess?

I was chosen to do this. Just what our family

needs, another tulku of fire.

Her first invasions of me were quite gentle,

and I tried to explain to Aunt Laura

how it is almost boring — more like a colorist's waterglass

than a nine year old's chemistry set

going kaboom in the attic.

Lama Arak, just before his death, explained to Aunt Laura

that you would recognize my new friend Nagarjuna

from a ritual cleansing he performed

for a far monastery in Kham in his last Earth incarnation:

he was the Kalzang Rinpoche at Dhor, and the monks there

had made a special chapel for red four-armed Chenrezig.

They wanted a passage way

all that first week of fire and water rites, and the rinpoche

was assigned this gate and an especially hateful

mountain spirit called Zabtak. What he did was memorable.

He hung there

three gutted black bear, sixteen wild dogs, two female yaks,

and an assortment of dun rabbits.

He paved the courtyard in goat shit

and caged hundreds of marmots beside the bell station.

He filled the cadavers of the bear and yak with straw

and set them on fire while letting the smaller animals

just rot. Cows had never given sweeter milk in that district.

There are bountiful barley crops there to this day.

This sounds like a Bon practice to me. I think

I will beware of this old Rinpoche.

He's very handsome. My love to you. L'Urze Ekajati.

XVII.

Urze-la: I was telling my friends, L.S.

and the dear Wang, that I don't want

to sleep on their boat. I'm never

constipated, and would rather

lose my return ticket to the womb.

My mother's confinement was brutal — her fair brother

was already dead in The War

of Glasse, and she couldn't be certain

our father was alive at all. She had a vision of him

dead and slumped over a camel

along a dry river in Algeria. Later it was confirmed

he was only drunk, and the camel

knew where the water was . . .

She had morning-sickness for ten solid months. She could

only be calmed in the afternoon by going

to an art-house film. Here's the origin

of my addiction to the lately-rinsed black and white movie.

Her favorite films, and this is troubling, are Marré's Dogshit,

Clint Eastwood's The Unforgiven and Renoir's Grand Illusion.

Admittedly, all men of genius.

So it's Sergeant Schofelt now! The Swiss

are exacting, secretly peevish, and, after all, what

are young men created for, but disappointment?

Tell him if he would join the Royal Merchants

going on the Venus mission, in December — I'll see

that he is made Number Three. My apologies, and this promise,

to both the sergeant and the timid aunt.

Your 'particle man,' Johnny

seems arrogant and insecure at once — so

quite a normal gent by all accounts.

And if he can't keep his hands to himself —

well, Urze, just explain to him

that I know a woman

in the Peyote Culture, Navajo & black-Irish,

who'll place his hands in orbit around our moon

without disturbing his attendance there at the War College.

It's the strangest thing — I watched

her do it once — she substituted two brilliant trout

for the hands of her brother's boy who was beating

the daughter and consumptive mother-in-law. I never saw

José again.

Later, she blinded him! She is

really quite sweet. Lots of old fashioned gusto. You know

what I mean. Love. Your uncle.

XVIII.

Dear Uncle Paul: in the bargain,

you shouldn't have to listen to this, but

something both peculiar and awful has happened

and no, I am not on trillium or cocaine.

The thing is

there's only a mean freckled stallion here to talk to.

I did finally object to some of it, but Johnny

seemed unable to stop.

It was and wasn't his fault. But neither was it

finally welcome.

I got up when I could, and kicked

him in the rib, keeping the whole thing biblical.

I spat on him

and announced his rather total exile. He left. No,

he ran, in fact, down to the barn.

All this seems unimportant now.

After twenty minutes, still the mud-hen

sitting under a pin oak smoking, I saw

my dead mother's form rising from the creek. She had auras

like colored pancakes stacked up behind her head.

She lit the trees above her

which were dripping with beaded mercury:

brilliant rosaries of it

were everywhere in the hawthorn and sumac,

issuing even from my nose without, somehow,

being gross.

had difficulty passing the narrows of my neck.

I was blotching with what I knew was tummo . . .

It quickly left and then, well,

a purple deva with pendulum breasts, wild black ropes for hair,

and heavy mascara at the eyes, made a speech

to me that was quite surprising.

Our butts were hiked in the air

as in those wonderful grade-school

productions of Peter Pan. We were

entirely suspended in empty space

and we looked into each other's face

like peaceful lakes —

we then spoke in a common voice, "Oh how beautiful."

The volume of the voice was almost wounding.

I know they're not very profound

but those words made radical goose flesh even

of my tongue. There were blue pearls bursting all around us.

And then, of course, I vomited. Until morning

I rested in a very hot bath

and finally slept. Any commentary, uncle? Love. Cadet Ekajati.

XIX.

Dear Cadet Ekajati: there's so much that is somehow

individually beautiful in all of us

that I'm astounded

we don't spring these leaks more often. Well, in this instance —

you absolutely delivered yourself of a radiance.

It is itself essentially aware. But empty.

It was clearly bound to happen. You have now

this little spirit birth for a companion. Much later,

it will become you. Fear none of it. Or us.

Nothing ever happens.

I am bored with Nepal. I should be at the farmhouse in Virginia

about three hours after you've read this cable.

Your loving uncle. Paul.

P.S.:

You know when you were born

your parents asked me if I wanted to name you.

And I said that I thought the Old Testament name of Hannah

was really fine.

Your mother countered, "Well, yes,

but she'll just eventually change it to Hega or Urze."

True story. My love. Uncle.

XX.

Dear Aunt Laura: I am speeding to Virginia

and will arrive by Cyclone in the evening.

I'll eat there, in Richmond, and will

reach the farmhouse before midnight.

You shouldn't worry. I know

Urze has talked to you. It seems

you must remain in Michigan for three more days.

This is fine. I've arranged for Urze's friend, Clara,

to come immediately to visit us.

We'll take turns cooking. Sweet potatoes and slabs

of pork roast. Apple sauce!

Urze must begin a new yoga discipline

in earnest. It will be much more

effortless for her than it was for your sister.

I'm not certain that's a blessing? Excuse the brevity of this

stockgram. Please

don't worry.

See you at the weekend . . . Ekajati.

XXI.

Dear Lama-la: while working with the niece

on the unsayable relief of one hundred syllables

in fast mirror-like repetitions, the great Bodhiset, Vajrasattva,

entered the initiation.

She left everyone unconscious, including

the horses in our far barns. This lasted for two hours.

A bath of mother-light, followed by a blast of conchs and then

everyone was awake. The niece was wearing on her forehead

this:

A nine-pointed dorje fell into my lap.

At the moment we began to stand, all the horses on the farm

participated in a wild laughter.

Lama, friend, the niece then danced

with no worldly aim or grace

until she vanished from us.

There was a smell of cumin . . . roses even!

So, what?? She'll be gone for three days and nights??

Urze's little friend Clara didn't bat

an eyebrow over this.

The gardener shit his pants. I'm not that well, myself

Any commentary? Love. The fool, Ekajati.

XXII.

Fool: could I have one of those horses?

Let me know by morning.

Got our ass in a sling this time, eh,

friend? Remember the vehicle, the Garuda

transport . . .

Happiness will shine upon us. Maybe? Maybe not

ever again. Tulku Arak.

P.S.:

If niece, the beloved Delog, returns —

could my sister, Amala, have a strand of

hair for her gau . . . be calm,

nothing's happening . . . a.k.a. Otrul CHAK