# [D22:6M] Vision: [[The Branches Fall from the Trees Sometimes]] Hexagram: [[Twenty Second Hexagram]] Trials: [[Twenty Second Trial]] Archetypes: #historianofdreams #road #monk #manychairs #library #face #umbrella #floor #sky #roasaryofglassbeads #eye #two #bed #arm #fog #secretdrawer #darkwindow #red #night #white #face December 14th, 1404, 1910 1. The Historian of Dreams traveled the Dead Roads a great distance by foot to meet the Monk.  The Monk was seated in his many chairs throughout the dark library.  He had a long serious face above his beard, each of him had.  Of the many, one near the middle of the room stood in his robes with his hands clasped in front of him.  The Historian herself wore no less serious a face and greeted the Monk with a restrained bow from the distance of his threshold. She wore a dark gown, having traveled even so far a distance. The point of her umbrella pressed into the floor, though she sought not to let her fatigue show by leaning on it too much. She was researched well enough to expect this man’s aversion to physical contact with a woman, and, in any case, it was unclear which of him was real.   Outside the library walls, the building itself burned unceasingly just as it had for the past 600 years. At night, the monastery appeared to pilgrims as a star in the low horizon, which is why and how the Historian arrived so late; it was navigated best under a dark sky. She was given a chair at the center of the room, near to he who was standing.  A jade lamp glowed faintly from the little wooden table between them.  He poured an amber liquour from a crystal decanter and  gestured that she should try the elixir, which she did.  The warmth of it drifted into her chest and knees.  "You're in search of a relic, I’m told,” he said and set down the vessel. "Yes," she said. "A rosary of glass beads. 15th Century." Then he said, "Many pilgrims go on from here to Athos or Constantinople grinding their teeth as they set off in search of things which might support their visions and ideas of what ought to be.  Not often do they find much; they don’t seem to believe that nothing hides anywhere except in plain site." "The rosary is here then?” she said, putting the tiny glass to her lips. “In this room?” The many of him looked at her.  “How many beads should be found on the rosary you’re looking for?” He watched her eyes glimmer with the drink.  She sensed him without knowing what she sensed, and, therefore, glanced at the glass as she placed it again on the table.  He watched her from every chair in the room. From outside came a crashing sound. The Historian of Dreams turned in her seat.  A Monk from among the many of him spoke from a distant corner. "The branches fall from the trees sometimes." 2. The Historian of Dreams, in those days, mistakenly believed in a causal order.  She didn’t yet understand  that certain things like to happen together, in pairs, and groups and the like.  History is not history until it is written.  Some say history repeats itself, but only thought does that.  The history of the world is the history of thought.   The event in time is a coordinate in space, folded into it, unfolded, folded again, but each time a little differently.  Thought retrieves an idea that it calls an event, and then is convenienced or inconvenienced to place it on a line that thought invents.  The thought thinks, _that coordinate is behind me now; it has already happened_.  But once the coordinate is known, it cannot cease itself.  The best an historian can do is cut the line at an arbitrary point and tie two far ends together.  The Historian is one who, wearing the beads, repeats her thoughts again and again.  The Historian, conscious of no religion, perpetuates it most of all.  For the Historian, there is no difference between thesis and prayer. 3. There was a smell of unwashed bedding. The boy turned toward the sleeping girl and let his arm fall across her chest. Her eyes opened and they looked at each other.  She could feel him against her stomach.  They kissed and melted together and then went downstairs for eggs and bacon.  She ate it hungrily.   She cannot remember now, all these years later, who made breakfast, yet she could still remember the watery sunlight pouring into the kitchen, on its ceiling, along the floor.  Outside, the fog drifted across the field. 4. The Historian of Dreams leaned weakly on her umbrella in the doorway. "Would you like to look into the secret drawer?” said the Monk. "So there is one,” she said. A Monk among him unlocked a desk drawer beneath a dark window, and she peered into it.  There were two pistols. "This isn't what I’m looking for," she said. "No," he said. "But that's what there is." “If you don’t have the beads, why not just tell me?” As she’d strode through the room to look into the drawer, the many of him had turned to watch her as she'd passed. She had felt those many eyes, and knew them, glassy in the low red light that shown from the night ablaze behind the windows. 5. The Historian of Dreams shivered as she looked around the room at him. "Did we know each other once?” she asked. "Seeing you makes me sad.” "There are as many of you," he said, "as there are of me." “They loved you and hated me,” she said. “I was afraid and ashamed to admit it.” “Your guilt made you angry at me whenever I brought it up.” “It made you feel crazy and alone.” “Yes. There were pills for the pain," said the Historian of Dreams, "and then pain from the pills." "I was always green," said the Monk, "and you were always white." "Guns, knives, guillotines." "Hospitals." "The man with a million faces." "That's what you called me." "Alternating from one to the next with vertiginous speed,” she said. “You were anyone for everyone.” “And now you search for relics.”  “That’s what made them love you, a face for each of them.” "And here you find me.” 6. “At first,” said the Historian, “I thought that patience would be enough." “Nothing stays hidden,” said the Monk.  “Everything arrives.” "I couldn't tell which of us had changed.” "A thing can only wait in plain sight to be known.” “Had _they_ made you similar to them, or had I?” He stood and helped her settle into his chair before she collapsed. She seemed suddenly old, but he, looking down at her, remained unchanged. She could see him there plainly and counted him.  She added all of him up by hand, from every chair in the room where she now sat, and found in him none. He had never kept himself secret.  There never was one.