Читать книгу Painted Oxen - Thomas Lloyd Qualls - Страница 6

This is a different kind of book. One that not only invites you to come along for its journey, but to participate in its story. There are places in these pages you have forgotten exist. It is time to remember.

This is the story of two men, one young and one old, on separate pilgrimages that are equal parts internal and external. The old man, a Tibetan monk, is searching for a sacred hidden valley known to bring enlightenment to those who enter it. The young man is a modern-day backpacker who has traveled to India in the age-old tradition of seeking higher truths about himself and the world. The story moves back and forth between these two characters and weaves together a tale of their parallel journeys that are centuries apart, but may be more connected than they appear.

There are four winds, four elements, and four seasons. In this spirit, the novel is arranged in sets of four. Two of the four parts are the stories of the old man and the young man, titled Scylla and Charybdis, respectively, after the dual perils faced by Homer’s Odysseus.

The third part is a series of dreams. Presented as fragments of interrelated stories involving a goddess with red hair, an alchemist, a pair of lions, and the god Vishnu, these visually lush vignettes act as connective tissue for the two main stories. Because we must smuggle our dreams into the waking world, these chapters are titled Praeda, which means stolen goods. The main character in the dream world is the mysterious red-haired woman who holds ancient secrets and who acts as a guide of sorts for the dreamer.

The tales of the two pilgrims, together with the dream stories, each make up a trinity of vignettes, and each of these trinities carries a theme, introduced to the reader by a character from the 22 major arcana of the Tarot—a deck of cards that dates back to at least the 15th Century—thus creating the fourth dimension and squaring the set. One of these 22 cards is the Fool. Like our two protagonists, the Fool must leave the safety of his home in the Sacred Mountain in order to embark upon the journey of Life. Likewise, each Tarot card represents a stage in life that we must pass through on our journey back to the Sacred Mountain.

Each realm also uses its own voice. A voice is an important thing to have, whether or not you are a character in a novel. The old man’s story is told in third person, because a Tibetan Buddhist would never tell his own story. The young man’s story is told in first person, because telling their own stories is exactly what backpackers do. Finally, the dream world thread is told in second person, because it takes place between the other two worlds. And because, after all, you are the dreamer.

As I mentioned, this is a different kind of book. If you accept its invitation, you must understand that—like the characters in these pages—you will find yourself transformed by its journey’s end.