They worked hard at Hyoi's boat till noon and then spread themselves on the weed close to the warmth of the creek, and began their midday meal. The war-like natue of their preparations suggested many questions to Ranson. He knew no word for war, but he managed to make Hyoi understand what he wanted to know. Did seroni and hrossa and pfifltriggi ever go out like this, with weapons, against each other?
'What for?' asked Hyoi.
It was difficult to explain. 'If both wanted one thing and neither would give it,' said Ransom, 'would the other at last come with force? Would they say, give it or we kill you?'
'What sort of thing?'
'Well- food, perhaps.'
'If the other hnau wanted food, why should we not give it to them? We often do.'
'But how if we had not enough for ourselves?'
'But Maleldil will not stop the plants growing.'
'Hyoi, if you had more and more young, would Maleldil broaden the handramit and make enough plants for them all?'
'The seroni know that sort of thing. But why should we have more young?'
Ransom found this difficult. At last he said:
'Is the begetting of young not a pleasure among the hrossa?'
'A very great one, Hman. This is what we call love.'
'If a thing is a pleasure, a hman wants it again. He migth want the pleasure more often than the number of young that could be fed.'
It tood Hyoi a long time to get the point.
'You mean,' he said slowly, 'that he might do it not only in one or two years of his life but again?'
'Yes.'
'But why? Would he want his dinner all day or want to sleep after he had slept? I do not understand.'
'But a dinner comes every day. This love, you say, comes only once while the hross lives?'
'But it takes his whole life. When he is young he has to look for his mate; and then he has to court her; then he begets young; then he rears them; then he remembers all this, and boils it inside him and makes it into poems and wisdom.'
'But the pleasure he must be content only to remember?'
'That is like saying, "My food I must be content to eat."'
'I do not understand.'
'A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hman, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing. The seroni could say it better than I say it now. Not better than I could say it in a poem. What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure, as the crah is the last part of a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we member it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then - that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it. You say you have poets in your world. Do they not teach you this?'
-p.72-73, Out of the Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis
... i love the way this passage presents a different way of looking at the world, a different norm. that greed and hoarding are not the norm, but don't make sense, and trust in God, Maleldil, does. and i love the way it describes memory- as part of the experience, not as separate from it, and continuing on. so even when i leave my friends, we are still meeting, and we will not know what our meeting means until we see how it has shaped us in the end... it is more than the idea of leaving a part of oneself in another person, but a transformation through the knowing of a person that continues, so in a way the person is still there even when they are not physically there anymore. and it deepens my understanding of how relationships are the most real and definite way to change the world... not through some institution or program, but through being real and authentic and loving the people around you.
No comments:
Post a Comment