HAUNTS OF THE FAMOUS

I found myself in a dense overgrown woods that I could not comprehend. Not it's depth nor it's light. The trees had hollow trunks of metal anchored into concrete pads in lieu of roots. The aluminum branches were covered with trompe l'oeil leaves. There was no visual sign of life anywhere, but after a time I began to have audial hallucinations that the trees were speaking to me - perhaps calling my name. And the voices became louder and louder. And the name was not my name, but many names - a cacophony of names.

Suddenly I was not alone. Beside me stood a tall, stoop shouldered, dark complected figure - "Please, Shade, identify yourself and help me navigate this precinct of noise and gibberish!"

"I was Florentine once but they condemned me to exile and I never returned there. My mortal dust resides in Ravenna. Now, as I predicted long ago, I trudge this ledge by day to purge myself of vanity's taint, awaiting the anonymity that should be every mortal's ultimate goal. This chorus that torments you is the whip of Pride's enlightenment. These multiple sounds that overwhelm you have only one sound and meaning to those of us who dwell here: that is the sound of our own name. That is the only sound that each of us hears - our own name in endless repetition. More than 600 years I have watched the clock spin here and witnessed many humble souls advance towards Bliss while I continued to march to this familiar chorus. But so long as my name is trafficked among the living - that long and longer shall I be here; contemplating the gaudy bauble of Earthly fame and every mistruth in that trifle that I penned. The fame I once craved has become my jailer."

"I know you -"

"PLEASE. Do not speak my name. Until my name is forgotten on Earth, here I must reside."

"I would never speak your name. But I must protest that I've never found a single mistruth in your guide to these realms."

"Yet here you are mystified and lost. Still accepting Death as an end, still scrubbing at imaginary stains on your soul. As if God could be bothered with the likes of Man!"

"Please Master help me."

"This is my second time passing thru this place. The first time I was a wide-eyed corporal tourist like yourself - unenlightened - like one who having spent one rainy summer afternoon in Tucson declares to the world, 'Arizona is a wet place.'
Now I realize the universal rule applies here as elsewhere: Change Is Constant. So the boulders and flames of yesteryear have been replaced with other forms of torment. Another poet who resides here once asked 'What's in a name?' Apparently much is because it is our own names that are used to goad us towards Enlightenment.
Have you ever been so lost in intoxication that one side of your face seemed glued to the table and not one movement was possible?"

I had to admit that I had.

"Then perhaps you are also familiar with the experience of being surrounded by voices belaboring your name - some with love, some with indignation; some who truly know you, many who do not. So it is for the pilgrims here. Each suffers in like kind and like proportion to their intoxication by fame, to their former delight in hearing their own name. What you hear as a cacophony of names each of us hears as the sweet beguiling tones of our own name. At first these familiar syllables console us. Our chests swell with that delicious feeling of pride. But eventually we recognize these tones as our punishment - the very source of our imprisonment. And until that time that our names become lost to human memory - until we are forgotten by family, friend and foe - until then our souls may not advance beyond this place. No soul can be reincarnated without cleansing all of the previous life's stains - with fame perhaps the hardest to bleach.

"Master is there no guidance you can offer me?"

"Just like yourself and everyone else in this place, I was the author of my own fate. What I invented I now live. Because I believed in this fate I am now a cog in my fate's wheel. Because I predicted a long sojourn on this mountain I now suffer that destiny. To be celebrated by Man is to be locked to this earthly plane, unable to find Paradise. Jesus' 3 days on the cross have lasted more than 2000 years. The cross is a metaphor. Jesus is STILL on the cross - remembered, worshipped, misunderstood, misconstrued. By personifying Man's apprehensions and expectations He made the ultimate sacrifice: to never abide in the peace of Heaven's anonymity.
Celebrity, fame, acknowledgment - these boosts to the ego that we crave so - they are the very source of our imprisonment. Thus Satan has always dangled success and popularity in front of Man. Fame truly costs your soul. Believe it or not, you'd be vastly better off in an unmarked pauper's grave than honored with statues and speeches - a Hero never to be forgotten. This forest is filled with such souls.
I will state it simply: watch what you believe. It all comes true - all of it.



"A breath of wind - no more - is earthly fame
and now this way it blows and that way now
and as it changes quarter, changes name.
Ten centuries hence what greater fame hast thou
stripping the flesh off late,
than if thou'st died ere thou was done with 'goo goo' and 'gaga'.
Ten centuries hence -
that's a briefer tide matched with eternity
than an eye wink
to the wheeled course Heaven's tardiest sphere must ride."