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The raven paradox
If all ravens are black, nothing not black is a raven.
If all love is fleeting, nothing that lasts is love.
The rocks are constant, and the air. Both flow like water. I set out once not knowing where I was headed, and the ravens led me. Over Altamont Pass I saw one heading south past Tracy and followed it. At Crows Landing three flew eastward toward the Sierra. I backtracked to follow. Dozens of them flew south along Route 99, and at the Tehachapis an orchard of them gleaning fallen oranges. At Lone Pine the sun set and I slept there alone, halfway up the mountain, my back against broad granite.
Lone Pine Creek flowed past, a carillon of rock and water.
You may display a thing not raven that isn’t black, but you will not thus provide evidence of ravens’ obligatory blackness. The statements are logically equivalent but not identical. That granite slab against my back cooled beneath the feet of sauropods. I cannot lean my head against it and prove love ephemeral thereby.
What is this that lingers in my breast? Nothing that lasts is love. Its half-life short, its breakdown products habit, distance, rancor. This endless sour yearning is not love. This eternity of lack is not love.
Black is the absence of all color, a character that is the lack of character. A non-raven, if non-black, is a thing that lacks this absence. A hole falls into another hole and vanishes. This emptiness unfathomable is not love.
I have given up my strength too often, laid it at their feet as tribute. I have draped it on the ground before them. The jaguar bears a new-killed fawn for its cubs. My heart will cool slowly, crystals of olivine and feldspar and quartz accreting. My heart will freeze at the surface, black basalt, and the lava flows beneath it. My heart black as obsidian, heart black as ravens. It flows like water with the air. It lasts so long I cannot stand it further.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Note: A database glitch in 2008 ate a bunch of archived comments. Don't be offended if yours isn't here, or confused if the conversation seems disjointed. Thanks!
Ah, Chris. Un suspiro es el único que te tengo ahora; un suspiro llena de cariño
By: By nina on 2008 03 19
I’m sorry that I keep leaving comments on these sorts of posts that are totally unconstructive and at this point repetitive, but I keep feeling like I can’t let them go by without saying: this is so beautiful, it borders on the obscene. You are one of my favorite writers right now.
By: By Isabel on 2008 03 20
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