The Great Weaver From Kashmir Read Online Free Page B

cigarette out into the lava and continued:
    â€œWhat I mean is, God has given me new perspective. I know that he will also lead me to new and more beautiful lands. The great and powerful God has lifted me, a blind wretch, up from his road; he has invited me to his home and created in me new eyes with new pupils; he has taken me up in his hands like a hatchling that has landed on a barbed-wire fence and broken its wing. And behold, I have flown like a newly created Brazilian butterfly from the talons of the Almighty! I am new and everything around me is new, my being most like a refulgent pattern woven yesterday on the loom, and I myself helped to draw the thread through the heddles, a work of creation piping hot and fragrant like warm loaves of bread from thebaker’s oven. I was remade so that I might be suited for composing perfect poems on the beauty of God. To be reborn – it is to learn to turn one’s back on old masters and ancient loves and compose like God’s firstborn. I’ve made a pact with the Lord about becoming the most perfect man on Earth.”
    She looked up quickly and asked:
    â€œWhy do you want to become so perfect?”
    But he would not grant an answer to such an ignorant question.
    â€œI have vowed to leave no further room in my soul for anything other than the celebration of the spiritual beauty of creation. No soulless wish or physical longing, no fleshly desire or pleasure. I am betrothed to the beauty on the visage of things. I intend to travel back and forth through existence like a jubilant monk of the world who beholds the smile of the Holy Mother in everything that exists. My bread and wine will be the glory of God on the face of creation, the image of the Lord on the Lord’s coins. I am a son of the Way in China, the perfected Yogi of India, the Great Weaver from Kashmir, the snake charmer in the Himalayan valleys, the saint of Christ in Rome.”
    â€œI think that you might have lost your marbles!” said the girl, and she stopped to look in his face, because she understood nothing. They stood silently upon the road.
    â€œIt’s as true as day, just as the sun will come up over there by Ármannsfell in a little while!” he averred.
    She riveted her eyes on him until she herself was swept away by his devotion and felt that all of the holy foolishness shining from his face was the truth and reality, and that everything would happen just as he said: within a short time he would be gone, swept away andlost somewhere out in the realm of incomprehensibility, gone east to Kashmir to weave silk and satin.
    All she could do was lower her head and sigh; his name died out half-spoken on her lips. And they hurried off spontaneously, side by side, two creatures from an Oriental romance.

8.
    The first whimbrel cried out to the southwest like a young, sleepless drunkard. Otherwise the birds were not yet stirring. Two sheep, staid and respectable like old housewives, stepped leisurely along a narrow path a short distance away, their gait gentle and notable; they were thinking. The gentle breeze had given way to a dead calm; everything begins to glisten with dew. The birch-grown leading edge of the lava field smells sweet.
    And finally, she absolutely could not help but ask: “Then you’re not planning to get married?”
    â€œI’ve vowed never to touch a woman again,” he answered curtly, pithily.
    â€œAgain?” she asked, without fully realizing what she was asking.
    â€œIt is imperfect to betroth oneself to any human creature,” he said. “A perfect man marries only his ideals. Had matrimony been the way to raise mankind from its sins, Jesus Christ would have redeemed the world by marrying and setting up a carpenter’s shop in Jerusalem, with a sign over the door. The apostle Paul would have bought dining room furniture and a piano and settled down with hiswife, like an English missionary. If a man’s soul became