HUMAN RIGHTS OF THE WRITER ("Mission to Venice")

By Simon Mol (Venice, Italy; May 4, 2005)

REFUGE IN A SHADOW
Do you see the Ant in the City’s heart?
Perhaps it is perching on the Palace’s hat?
It was well when last seen; crawling, searching by the market gate.
Is it singing still? –
as much as tortured voices taking muffled messages
to distant onlookers.
The ant, the Ant!; on the toe of fate,
soon to be crushed by restless feet
soon to become dust.
The ant!— locate the Ant… by the Palace whose dark corners shelter them.

I first came to Venice on the wings of my mind long, long ago during my high school days. This was while reading a crime fiction by James Hadley Chase— ‘Mission to Venice’. In the novel the protagonist, Don Micklem, fell on the trail of a British agent who had supposedly defected as a Russian spy.

I followed Don Micklem along the canals of Venice, riding on Gondolas as he tried to locate spy. This was how I came to fall in love with Venice… such is the power of literature. 

I was born in a village at the foot of Africa’s second highest mountain (Mount Fako)—an unusual mountain in that it is an active volcano. I am imbued with some of the volcanic properties of this sacred mountain. This, in a sense, constantly leads me into trouble with those who oppose the eruptive power of Truth.

Today I live in a country described by English historian Norman Davis as ‘God’s Playground’, in his book ‘Rising 44’.

In God’s Playground, during the course of ‘Rising 44’, a child with the qualities of a phoenix grudgingly nursed a vision of becoming an actor. Clutching to his vision, the child survived ‘Rising 44’ to become a playwright, poet and priest.  One thing led to another and he became the leader of a nation that has no physical location. A spiritual citizen of Rome, he reached out spiritedly to humanity across continents and philosophies. A serious lesson is embedded in the story of this great soul, who retired in the height of his struggle to unite.

I am happy, for obvious reasons, to be living in the home of human history and cradle of that great priest. When I landed there in 1999 though, I felt like a fleeing fisherman who ended up in the desert with his paddle because of the challenges posed by a new language. Our craft depends on the use of language. Now, in a situation as this, there is desert and there is desert; i.e., some writers end up in deserts with craters of water, i.e., in terms of language. Yes there are a few craters where I am, but they are guarded with ferocity.

As time went on a fear developed in me. It was a fear of loosing my Innocence. Pressure from forces that strive to erect walls amongst people, forced my conscience to crack and some of these precious Innocence to spill. By sheer determination I mended the crack and partially recollected portions of my spilled Innocence. This was possible thanks to the wealth of literature residing in me. Whenever the Literature in me expresses itself in prose or poetry the therapeutic effect leaves me clean.  Even if at times the messages appear to be incomprehensible or muffled by incoming pressure.

The pressure is ever coming, and the crack on my conscience didn’t appear just once. Hence the fear of loosing my Innocence is constantly looming. And since giving the Literature in me the upper hand is my only hope, I will keep writing until my fingers go limp at death. It is easy to identity the source of the pressure that bombards me constantly.  The source is the upshot of ‘Rising 44’, which has amalgamated into the form of a gargantuan reptile— a reptile crawling from ruins and sustained by painful memories. Time and again you are made to feel like an alien who’s being spied on by 90% of the population. In contemplation I often ask myself why mankind is so selfish and hypocritical. Why do we proclaim that children are sacred entities, who should be loved and protected, and at the same time, out of greed we provoke conflicts, which, instead of resolving them in our time we permit them to permeate time and be inherited by unborn generations... why? And we say children are sacred?   

For sure I am not as strong as the Great Priest to survive as long as he did, for he was in the protective field of Forces stronger than himself. We live in an age where a piece of paper endorsed as a document, is more important than a human being. Owing to this factor and several others not worth listing here, I am held prisoner in an invisible cell. And this is what actually compounds the problem, i.e. the cell where I am held, has no physical walls. This makes it almost impossible to prove that I am a prisoner. And so I am left at the mercy of a one-way traffic; haunted and hunted by tangible and vindictive skeletons escaping from the shattered box of history. Still, for the sake of arts and literature, the land where I am, remains beautiful for the human soul.

As for the flesh, that is an entirely different matter. My sole consolation rests with fellow writers and poets, for it has dawned on me that under the current form of geopolitics, a man’s real identity is his profession. And writers as the custodians of human consciousness and protectors of our collective conscience, posterity has no better hope than to look up to members of this club that has among other things a moral obligation to ensure the continuity of or specie… even if their only weapon is the pen. Well, it’s said that the pen is mightier than the sword.

HEARTS AND LIGHT-YEARS

Rise and walk if yours is to blemish…
Coming— echoes of Light-years
answering mermaids’ call
to rekindle, rebirth
all that Time garnered in toil and turmoil.

How did Here come to be?
Who birthed Its name?

Ride the canals, touch the dreamers’ pulse
Romance with long-gone minds on beds
Of dreams that outlived them.
Hatch yours, build within—
Never trouble a pebble; watch, touch, change not!
Sun on souls rays of unfettered glee

Be amazed, revere—never of darkness,
There, where cars are noisy things of distant lands.

Here you belong—sphere of fairytales,
I to you; kill with love a bit of me, bury Here
So I too forever may belong

Walk across Devil’s Bridge….
Bring back His Confession—
‘Evil is shy… where Beauty had Its nest’.