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Authors: Arthur Phillips
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each crevice of three fingertips forever, to see that sugar's disintegra• tion pause forever. One's blood roars with the desire that somehow this instant of possibility and potential be seized and held, vibrating and glowing orange in one's softly closed fist. That one might stroke and ex• amine this captured moment, feel its velvety tread in one's palm, that I might remain quivering on the brink rather than tumbling headlong into the future, until I have had my fill of the present. Or, think of it like this, Reader: one climbs a high, steep hill. Then, after years and
years of climbing, one sees the crest within reach and one realises that, upon achieving that crest, only two possibilities remain: up and over, to begin an accelerating descent, or .. . to continue moving in the same di• rection one has grown accustomed to and fond of, to continue the way one has come, up and up, to ignore the fallible earth that ceases to rise, but to rise oneself nevertheless.
And if you should sit up for a moment from your soft easy chair and wonder, Why? Why Egypt? Why the desire to rummage in the dust? I can only suggest that the kings of Egypt kept climbing. They mastered
those frilly, fleeting moments, imprisoned them in soft cages. In their
•wrapped corpses with their organs bottled in canopic jars, and in their picture-alphabet and in their beast-headed gods, the best Egyptians lived with the certainty that they were owed eternity, that they lived and would live forever in a present of their own choosing, unhaunted by the past, unthreatened by the future, luxuriously entertained in a present they could extend as long as they wished, releasing these savoury moments on their own terms, not at the imperious demand of mere days, nights, suns, moons.
Margaret, may I share with you a darker memory of my shining youth? It is not the sort you prefer, but it makes a point. As a boy, I re• call a village vicar berating me (r optional) for my obsessive interest in the Egyptians. (This would, of course, happen only when my father was abroad on expedition and unable to protect me from the vile clergyman, and I would wander away from the Hall, roam into the vil• lage near our estate. Where the vicar did not realise who I was, so far from my family grounds.) At any rate, time after time, he would appear unannounced. I was easy to surprise, as from a very early age I was generally bent over my labours, wonderfully ignorant of all that hap• pened around me. And he would snatch my work from me, crumple up hard-won hieroglyphs. He would, with a noisy, liquorish menace, un• cork the usual cant: "Boy, how can you think it wise to truck with this culture of death?" Even at ten I knew the correct answer to that cata• clysmic catechism: "Right you are, Father. Much better to stick with the life-embracing imagery of a cult that worships a bleeding corpse nailed to bits of wood." Of course, I had to be in the mood for a thrash• ing, or worse, if I chose that path.
But the point, which I understood even at that age: Egypt was
not — I must repeat for Readers who still do not know it—a culture of death, for all the mummies and bottled lungs, the jackal-men and cobra-queens. The Egyptians were the inventors of immortality, the first men who saw they could live forever.
Atum-hadu wrote:
The gods and I walk slowly arm in arm And sometimes we do not walk at all, But sit upon a rock and watch the charm
Of two goats f ing behind a peasant's wall.
— (Quatrain 13, Fragment C only, from Desire
ant) Deceit in Ancient Egypt by Ralph M. Trilipush, Collins Amorous Literature, 1920)
Sunset on the Bayview Nursing Home Sydney, Australia
December 6, 1954 Mr. Macy,
In my experience of human behaviour (and I've seen all there is to see, it's fair to say), I've concluded there aren't but five motivations for a man to do anything. They're hardly mysterious, you know: money, hunger, lust, power, survival. That's all
years of climbing, one sees the crest within reach and one realises that, upon achieving that crest, only two possibilities remain: up and over, to begin an accelerating descent, or .. . to continue moving in the same di• rection one has grown accustomed to and fond of, to continue the way one has come, up and up, to ignore the fallible earth that ceases to rise, but to rise oneself nevertheless.
And if you should sit up for a moment from your soft easy chair and wonder, Why? Why Egypt? Why the desire to rummage in the dust? I can only suggest that the kings of Egypt kept climbing. They mastered
those frilly, fleeting moments, imprisoned them in soft cages. In their
•wrapped corpses with their organs bottled in canopic jars, and in their picture-alphabet and in their beast-headed gods, the best Egyptians lived with the certainty that they were owed eternity, that they lived and would live forever in a present of their own choosing, unhaunted by the past, unthreatened by the future, luxuriously entertained in a present they could extend as long as they wished, releasing these savoury moments on their own terms, not at the imperious demand of mere days, nights, suns, moons.
Margaret, may I share with you a darker memory of my shining youth? It is not the sort you prefer, but it makes a point. As a boy, I re• call a village vicar berating me (r optional) for my obsessive interest in the Egyptians. (This would, of course, happen only when my father was abroad on expedition and unable to protect me from the vile clergyman, and I would wander away from the Hall, roam into the vil• lage near our estate. Where the vicar did not realise who I was, so far from my family grounds.) At any rate, time after time, he would appear unannounced. I was easy to surprise, as from a very early age I was generally bent over my labours, wonderfully ignorant of all that hap• pened around me. And he would snatch my work from me, crumple up hard-won hieroglyphs. He would, with a noisy, liquorish menace, un• cork the usual cant: "Boy, how can you think it wise to truck with this culture of death?" Even at ten I knew the correct answer to that cata• clysmic catechism: "Right you are, Father. Much better to stick with the life-embracing imagery of a cult that worships a bleeding corpse nailed to bits of wood." Of course, I had to be in the mood for a thrash• ing, or worse, if I chose that path.
But the point, which I understood even at that age: Egypt was
not — I must repeat for Readers who still do not know it—a culture of death, for all the mummies and bottled lungs, the jackal-men and cobra-queens. The Egyptians were the inventors of immortality, the first men who saw they could live forever.
Atum-hadu wrote:
The gods and I walk slowly arm in arm And sometimes we do not walk at all, But sit upon a rock and watch the charm
Of two goats f ing behind a peasant's wall.
— (Quatrain 13, Fragment C only, from Desire
ant) Deceit in Ancient Egypt by Ralph M. Trilipush, Collins Amorous Literature, 1920)
Sunset on the Bayview Nursing Home Sydney, Australia
December 6, 1954 Mr. Macy,
In my experience of human behaviour (and I've seen all there is to see, it's fair to say), I've concluded there aren't but five motivations for a man to do anything. They're hardly mysterious, you know: money, hunger, lust, power, survival. That's all
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