Reflections on the death of a porcupine and other essays — John Shaqi
Reflections on the death of a porcupine and other essaysLawrence, D. H. (David Herbert)
Philosophy
Reflections on the death of a porcupine and other essays
Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert)
English essays -- 20th century
The darkness, this has nourished us. The darkness, this is a vast
infinite, an origin, a Source. The Beginning, this is the great sphere
of darkness, the womb wherein the universe is begotten.
But this universal, infinite darkness conceives of its own opposite. If
there is universal, infinite darkness, then there is universal, infinite
light, for there cannot exist a specific infinite save by virtue of the
opposite and equivalent specific infinite. So that if there be
universal, infinite darkness in the beginning, there must be universal,
infinite light in the end. And these are two relative halves.
Into the womb of the primary darkness enters the ray of ultimate light,
and time is begotten, conceived, there is the beginning of the end. We
are the beginning of the end. And there, within the womb, we ripen upon
the beginning, till we become aware of the end.
We are fruit, we are an integral part of the tree. Till the time comes
for us to fall, and we hang in suspense, realising that we are an
integral part of the vast beyond, which stretches under us and grasps us
even before we drop into it.
We are the beginning, which has conceived us within its womb of
darkness, and nourished us to the fulness of our growth. This is ours
that we adhere to. This is our God, Jehovah, Zeus, the Father of Heaven,
this that has conceived and created us, in the beginning, and brought us
the fulness of our strength.
And when we have come to the fulness of our strength, like lions which
have been fed till they are full grown, then the strange necessity comes
upon us, we must travel away, roam like falling fruit, fall from the
initial darkness of the tree, of the cave which has reared us, into the
eternal light of germination and begetting, the eternal light, shedding
our darkness like the fruit that rots on the ground.
We travel across between the two great opposites of the Beginning and
the End, the eternal night and everlasting day, and the transit is a
stride taken, the night gives us up for the day to receive us. And what
are we between the two?
But before the transit is accomplished, whilst we are yet like fruit
heavy and ripe on the trees, we realise the delirious freedom of the
end, the goal, and we cry: “Behold, I, who am here within the darkness,
I am the light! I am the light, I am Unicorn, the beam of chastity.
Behold, the beam of Virginity gleams within my loins, in this
circumambient darkness. Behold, I am not the Beginning, I am the End.
The End is universal light, the achieving again of infinite unblemished
being, the infinite oneness of the Light, the escape from the infinite
not-being of the darkness.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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