Oliver Benjamin
CHAPTER 18
My thoughts may wing like the sooty tern toward the place
where I was born. But unlike so many of my animal fellows,
I lack the innate power to find it. Man is one species brilliantly
equipped by nature to get himself hopelessly lost.
ROBERT ARDREY, The Territorial Imperative
Philosophy is homesickness.
NOVALIS, General Draft
1. The Supreme Ultimate
There isn’t a whole hell of a lot to do in paradise. Consider popular
paintings of heaven: Angels loafing, strumming lazily on harps,
warbling interminable campfire versions of overplayed songs.
Perhaps fluttering around aimlessly, hither and thither, upsy daisy.
Ho hum. La dee dah. For an eternity. InHell you may burn, but at
least it’s not boring.
Roy had spent three days on Deq mostly lounging in the cool
leafy interior, sitting still and watching nature weave its slow, patient
and unending waltz. He rarely slept. There were fruit trees from
which he sustained himself and the Nile from which he drank.
Out of curiosity at first, then as part of a new strategy, he spent
most of his time chewing chat. Know thy enemy, he had been taught
by somebody once in some book somewhere. Know thy enemy.Roy
chewed the chat and chewed and chewed and he felt that he was
feeding back on himself as he did so. The chat must be understood.
It must be realigned, won over. Like a good martial artist, he must
take the force and the spirit of the opponent and turn it, twist it on its
own axis, bring it over to the other side like a rotating yin-yang
diagram. The first one now will later be last, the hills shall be laid low
and the valleys shall be exalted.
What was it Yak told him the yin-yang was called in
Chinese?…The Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate.As Roy stared at
this image in his mind he saw at last what it really was. How had it
not occurred to him previously? Or anyone else for that matter? The
diagram was this: two perfect breasts nestled against and into one
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