Sunday: A Travelogue

The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish.

terence mckenna

Sunday morning.

Late to wake, again. Again in a panic. Again, I startle to find a full-grown man in my bed. Eleven years together and that beard, those wide freckled shoulders. The hollow thud of déjà vus: Wake up, I dreamed you alive.

The air conditioner hums inside the window frame. The man in my bed sleeps. Rolls over and away.

Beside him, a glass tipped over in the night, water puddled around spare change, dimes magnified to the size of quarters. His arms flung back over his head, the right one bent like a blessing, index finger piercing the puddle on his nightstand. He is a vision, a symphony: atoms swelling into cells, surging into organs, crescendos of heart, brain, and skin. Nails gnawed to staccato half-moons. Even now, as his eyelids twitch in violet dream, he is dividing, multiplying, growing larger and more luminescent. In my half-sleep, he resembles an electric light bulb, long and thin, blinking on and off, onoff on.

On my nightstand: Stendhal's travelogue, Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio, published in1817.

Stendhal had been enamored with the city of Florence for years before finally arriving, at age eighteen, to kneel before Giotto's frescoes in the Basilica of Santa Croce. Most profoundly, Stendhal confesses in Naples and Florence, the frescoes depict the life of St. Francis whom, in 1204, Christ came to visit as a six-winged seraphim. Subsequently, Francis became the first person recorded to bear the stigmata, the evidence that later bore him into sainthood.

In other words, the guy saw things.

In the fresco, Francis cowers on one knee in an oversized brown robe, his arms raised as if to put a shot, his right shoulder dropped, while Jesus hovers menacingly in the upper right corner, his six red wings clapping the air. He is small and devilish looking, actually, like an overfed mosquito you'd like to flick from here to Nebraska.

I can't be sure, but what may have unnerved Stendhal most are the gold beams of light, like lasers, that shoot from Jesus' right palm to Francis's right palm, left foot to left foot, and so on. Five gold laser beams streaking across the painting like lightning, the fifth strung heart to heart. Over a palette of muted blues and grays and browns, the gold beams of light, boring holes into Francis's body, electrify the foreground like a blessing, or a curse.

"As I emerged from the porch of Santa Croce," Stendhal recounts, "I was seized with a fierce palpitation of the heart; the wellspring of life was dried up within me, and I walked in constant fear of falling to the ground."

In the two centuries since the publication of Stendhal's travelogue, countless others have reported similar reactions to art. And it's not always art, necessarily, but some other physical evidence of profound personal meaning. A temple in ruins, say, or a child's bloodied lip. The Virgin Mary's profile on a piece of toast. A Plath poem. The distant cry of a beluga off the Aleutian coast. Reports consistently mention rapid heartbeat, fainting, even hallucinations. Some people lose their breath, consciousness, or common sense. Loved ones are called and hospital visits are common. There are follow-ups with the shrink. Prescriptions for Xanax.

These days, we call this sort of experience Stendhal Syndrome. In other words, there are consequences to sneaking a peak up Creation's billowing skirt. But not to worry, doctors advise, it's psychosomatic. It's all in your head.

Be wary of your worship, is how I understand it. Your art and your gods will bring you to your knees.

Eleven years in the same bed, but wedded only two weeks. What does it mean to be this man's wife? To light the threads of a single, endless...