The Garment Of Forgetting: Bedtime Story

Hello, loves.

Join me tonight for story time.

Tonight's story is inspired by the Gnostic Hymn of the Pearl.

There was once a young man who was the son of a great king, though he did not know it.
He did not know it because, at his father's instruction, he had been sent down from the luminous country of the East into a strange and heavy land called the World, to retrieve a single pearl that lay at the bottom of a dark sea, guarded by a serpent.

Join me as he tries to complete his mission.

Transcript

Hello dear ones, And welcome to today's reading, A short story, The Garment of Forgetting. There was once a young man named Thomas, Who was the son of a great king, Though he did not know it. He did not know it because, At his father's instruction, He had been sent down from the luminous country of the east, Into a strange and heavy land called the world, To retrieve a single pearl that lay at the bottom of a dark sea, Guarded by a serpent. It was a mission of love, The pearl was precious, The world needed it be found, And before he left, His father had dressed him in robes of light. At the moment Thomas crossed the border into the world, The robes became heavy and strange, And he found he could not keep them clean, The mud of the place clung to everything. He was given a disguise to wear, So that the inhabitants would not suspect he was foreign, And so he dressed like them, He ate like them, And spoke like them. He found lodgings in a city near the sea, And made inquiries about the pearl, But there was something that no one had warned him about. The food of that country was different from the food at home, It was thick and sweet and filling, And it carried in it a kind of sleep, Not a sleep of the body. He remained awake and walked about and carried on conversations, But a sleep of a deeper kind, A forgetting. The longer he ate the food of that country, The more he forgot that he had come from elsewhere, The mission faded like a dream at midday. The pearl became a story he had perhaps once heard, The robes of light became a half-memory that he sometimes glimpsed when he was ill or very tired, A warmth he couldn't account for, And then dismissed. Years passed by. Thomas became, To all appearances, A man of the world. He worked on the docks near the dark sea. He had friends, Small troubles, Small pleasures. He was not unhappy, Exactly, But there was always a flavour of incompleteness to his life, A faint nausea he couldn't explain away, As though he had forgotten something of great importance, And the forgetting itself had been forgotten. One morning he woke very early, Before the city stirred, And walked to the edge of the sea. The water was black and still, And the sky was particularly dark that morning, The dark blue that exists only in the hour before dawn. He sat on the stones and felt, With unusual sharpness, The ache that he usually kept below the surface. What am I doing here? He thought, Not as a question about that particular morning, But about all of it. Every morning, Every year. The docks, The food, The friends whose names he knew, But whose hearts he didn't. The shallow happiness that never quite filled the place it was supposed to. He heard a sound. He thought at first it was a gull, Or the wind in the rigging of the boats, But it was neither. It was a voice, Or something like a voice, Coming not from outside, But from a point somewhere between his ears and his heart. It said his name, His real name, Which he had not heard in so long. He had ceased to believe it was his. He sat very, Very still. The voice spoke at length. He could not afterwards have transcribed the words. They were not quite words, But what they conveyed was this. You are not from here. You were sent here for a reason. The pearl is real. The serpent is real. The sea is real. You have been asleep. It is time to wake up and go down into the water. Thomas sat there while the sky turned pale, And then gold. Around him the city woke. He heard the first carts, The first voices, The smell of bread from somewhere. And he felt a peculiar double sensation, Of being fully in the world, And simultaneously, For the first time in years, Not quite of it. As though a window had been opened into a sealed room. He went back to his lodgings and stopped eating the food. This was harder than it sounds. The food was everywhere, And its sleep was seductive. And several times in the first weeks, He relapsed and felt the fog return. But each time he caught himself sooner. Each time, The voice, Faint and steady within, Was a little easier to hear. He began to remember. Not all at once, But in fragments. The way a man who has been concussed slowly recovers his history. A detail here, A name there. Until, One morning, He wakes and knows himself again. He remembered the East. He remembered the robes. He remembered his father's face. Though he could not have described it, Except to say that looking at it, Had felt like looking at the source of all looking. He remembered the pearl. He found it, In the end. The serpent was real. Ancient and cold-eyed. Coiled in the deep water. But when Thomas spoke to it in the language of the East, The language he had slowly recovered, The serpent turned aside and the pearl lay in the slit below, Exactly where he'd been told. Small and white, And extraordinarily heavy for its size. He brought the pearl to the surface. He stood on the shore, Soaking wet, The pearl in his palm, And looked at it. It was just a pearl. And it was also the most important thing he had ever held. He did not know how both of these could be true. But they were. He looked out at the city behind him. His friends were there. His small, Simple life was there. He had, In the years of forgetting, Genuinely loved things in that place. And that love, He understood now, Was not worthless. Even in the sleep, Even in the forgetting, The divine spark had gone on quietly loving through him. The mission had not been despite the world. It had been in it, Through it, Tangled up within it. He dressed again in the robes of light, Which he found waiting for him, Folded on the shore, As though someone had known he would need them. They fit differently now. Not lighter, Exactly, But more comfortable. A garment that knew the mud it had moved through. He began the long walk home toward the east. He did not know how long the walk would take. He suspected it was the rest of his life. And he found he did not mind.