8/3/2019 Quest by Day, Vigil by Night Dated Self Note 2 by Ivan Khayiat

1/2

Self Note -2 from Ivan Khayiats Quest by Day, Vigil by Night

It is a most pleasant scene: a nature of birds hops joyously on plush

winter greenery - shadowed by palm, pine and fir -all so calm, unfettered,

and unmarshalled waving in the noiseless afternoon wind. It is so

pleasant to sit alone and yet not experience aloneness for deep within I

feel the pulse of sympathies between myself and the calm greenery

stretching from the tip of my touch and prancing out with my eyes up the

distant slopes. I see the lantern posts stringing their wires from stump to

stump - (all caught between the musical greenery)- and though at times

these signal the sad furious mechanism of the modern age, now it

matters not; the calm pins and holds me firm to her breast.

I have not read all morning.

Nothing compares with a life of unified passion, vigour andbeing. Our

deepest moments of joy are sensed they bring a kinaesthetic qualitywith them. Only when the serumglides and ebbs with the stream of blood

and thought andbone does my spirit experiences this lulling sense of

pure belonging kinship. It is this feeling deepened in a dank stillness I

crave for in all my endeavours ... yea that I yearned for from childhood

memories - old distant streams that still gently ripple, though faint, within

my breast.

I sit andwonder what the days ahead hold for me. I would it were nothing

but 'being' ... sure and true, and however turbulent the waves of passionare that gust on unknown sea, let there be times like this, now, stillness. Icannot escape the albatross that has been chained about my neck. Nomatter what I do, it is and will be there - always to haunt and goad me onin the quest. I am a teething babe who will spend its days giving form andshape to a mysterious wor(l)d [sic.] within - my drama, my own passionalwor(l)d [sic.] of pure beauty - my soul's verdure whereof when a man hasdrunk but a sip, he shall never thirst again, for therein, stretched out inrolling glory is the bread of life and golden manna. Such is my cross, thatwhether or not any man may know of it, I must bear with a brutal joy, evenin the face of hell and outer despair. This cross I have not chosen, but by

virtue of me - my humanity and the strange warbles within - it has chosenme. Whether I return home or stay abroad, it shall rest complacently onmy shoulders, for this ghost would not be hied hence at dawn by therooster's crow, trumpeting the arrival of light. Always it will be there,staring me, with horrid silence. If I flee earth, it will be there. If by night Idwell in the sea, by day it - a ghastly spectre - it will rear its head onceagain to witch me right between my eyes.

And oh how oft I have wondered what it is ... and I cannot tell. Sometimes

8/3/2019 Quest by Day, Vigil by Night Dated Self Note 2 by Ivan Khayiat

2/2

it oppresses me so strongly that I identify my craving a creative outletwith its flow ... as if my song will be the strumming of its forgers within mystringed head. And so what can I do or say to another man. If I am, it is.Then please ask me not why I am this in my strange actions, thoughts,words and deeds. Ask me not, for my intellectual despair and abject

disappointment with my slow progress is an offspring of this unknownthing. I have observed my growing despair with the abstractions Iproposed to Explain or understand it. Alas this is not enough tis a meresliver too faint a shade, a shade, a firefly flickering faintly, a glowlessglowworm failing to do justice to a lucient radiance that moves dark in thenether pitch regions of Psyche. Yes, all abstractions fall short- abysmally.And yet, how fearful I am of the alternative - as if madness would possessme. Then if because I am, it is; then if I am to be, it is to be; and if I am toquest me, then I am yoked to quest and discover it.

This is my secret. The man who knows this knows knows me. I have

withheld it from my best and most respected friends for fear ofdesecration. And yet, this I hate for I have need of them and theircompany, and above all their intellectual steel to nub and buttress my ownfibre.

O how lonely and uncertain is the road ahead. In my mythic ramblings androvings, one friend I have met Pasquel. Only to him, who knows it all -my dreams, frustrations, fears of demise, and hope to attain - can and do Iturn to when I am caught in the grappling doldrum and grasping rigors offeelings of abandonment and thereby my total self-destruction.Time and years and years wear on.

Hold my hand and lead the way;Rugged, winding,Dark stumblings,MomentlyFlashing findings -After the dents of fear and labourGrant a tooth and tongue to tell.

QUEST BY DAY, VIGIL BY NIGHT 32