Golgotha and The Battlefield

Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, by Palma Vecchio

The shorelines shifting sifting sands and changing winds create a landscape of flux, one more to do with the mind of the beholder than the real world. 

The last time I was here, long ago, it was Golgotha. In the dunes, where grass broke the sand open like termites do wood, stood the cross. The sand sloped up to its base on the left, and was caught by the wind and blown away in a spray on the right, then launched above, so that the scene was dressed in a diluted gray light, the sun struggling to break through the flying rock. Behind the cross was the jungle that leaned against itself, the trees were crooked brothers who hollered, and the vines that hung perpendicular to the ground their long tangled hair.

The thing itself was driftwood, dry and airy, pockmarked and scarred in small gouges all over by the soaring sand. It curved and curled in cords of bark, and sap flowed from its pores. The crossbeam was fastened to the post with hundreds of pieces of twine, in gorgeous colors. Red and gold and the blackest black and the whitest white and the green of the rainforest and the blue of the ocean on the horizon. 

I began to realize, upon seeing it close, that the wood curved not like wood but like a body, so that it seemed the Christ that should hang upon the cross had in fact become the cross, the cords of bark His tendons and muscles, the sap His blood and tears and pus. That pretty twine, the hair rended from His skull, then tied round his arms. 

My hands, the hands of a child, were shriveled from the saltwater. They lighted upon the crucifixion and drew away quickly, like they had been burnt. They put themselves in my pockets in defiance while I turned and saw that the tide was coming in. They gripped the knife as I carved the INRI into His forehead. 

The shavings of wood that peeled from my blade fell and were swept up by the wind. I then stood behind the curtain of dust wrought from the Corpus Christi’s right hand, squinting, as an unrepentant thief. I waited for the surf to claim us.

-

Today I am here again.

Rainforest spits me out hooting and jeering as always. I look for a hook to hang my eyes on and see only the ruins of a great battle, fought between kingdoms of no further relevance. Logs and boards, car doors and refrigerators, all lay shattered, caked in mud. They are the fragmented shells of tanks and barracks. Grand rivers and open valleys have been carved into the soil by bullets from the guns of gods. These weapons are dead but their remnants remain, in the scars on the land, the potholes and trenches, and in their sundered metal husks that have settled themselves into the earth, the bodies of things once magic.

The soldiers have long since decayed, their bones picked clean by the gulls and crushed underfoot by us apes. Their vestments remain, piles of deep green seaweed are the mounds of fatigues taken by the few survivors and burned for warmth, while they waited for the kings and queens of their nations to land ships on this beach laden with fur coats and good food and new rifles. 

But the ships did not come and they took to cannibalism. They died off when they grew too skinny.

I walk now amongst these ruins, a path rising before me that is blown and shaped by the air like an artisan blows glass, blooming and billowing and at the last instant becoming corporeal and allowing me to pass. I take a perfect seashell and fill it with rocks, other seashells, half a sand dollar, the claws of a crab. They’re a cast of characters, a circus troupe. I, stumbling, slipping, and sinking, play the idiot.

-

I must now mention before continuing, a tree that stood amidst the broken battlements. It was after an African savannah tree, jagged silhouette splitting the sky like lightning, leafless save for the ribbons tied to it. Ribbons of all colors, red and gold and the blackest black and the whitest white and the green of the rainforest and the blue of the ocean on the horizon. Tied in every knot known to all the sailors and flyfishers the world over, crossknots and granny knots and nooses and slipknots and over-and-unders. It was right where the front would have been, where the bodies were so mangled you could not tell them apart.

Like a peace treaty that tree was devastating in its beauty. I stood with my circus in both hands as it cracked and fell.

-

I make to ford a river, skip across the logs that float there. I trek to the place where the earth meets the tide, where the sea licks at my boots. The neap. I do not enter for I remember that it wronged me once.

A throne emerges from the shallows, curved driftwood with cords of bark twisted like varicose veins around its legs, a corona of sap dried where my head would rest. I turn over my shoulder and see that tree and its twine fluttering low over the ground, soft against the setting sun.

I take my place as the prince of memory.