A tin can teetered on the edge of nothingness; to one side the glorious void, to
the other a gigantic, rotating ring of perpetual fullness; a superable escapade of human
endeavor decorated with ornamental city lights and reeling traffic. It trembled; aware of
the momentousness of what it was about to do and the changes such a dynamic
decision would surely denote. The piercing breeze which rushed through it's empty
aluminum shell spiraled as if on a tight ideological roundabout; weighing up the
consequences of taking one path over another. Balancing on a dividing line; suspended
on the roof of a basketball cage fence as narrow as a razor's edge; it appeared to gaze
up into the stars and, dazzled by their brilliance, made the decision of a lifetime without
really ever contemplating the implications of its action. As it tumbled through
unadulterated emptiness the robust cylinder of industrial silver neared its prize. Hurtling
towards destruction; the dream of freedom; freedom from struggle, freedom from
hardship; even freedom from identity, came to the fore. Everything was so mortifyingly
obvious afterall. The can clanged into reality; its hostile form bouncing into
insignificance; its thoughts and dreams plunging into paradise; liberated and deceased.
Only in death are we confronted by our true existence.
Silvanus straightened his clerical dog collar and dusted down his crumpled
robes as his apprentice Bezeel wheeled around him with a disparaging chortle like a
school prefect who should have known better poking fun at a younger kid's
meticulously though amateurishly prepared uniform which highlighted an unwanted
kindness on his father's part bearing in mind his lack of expertise when it came to
washing and ironing. But at least the wiser of the duo had come dressed for an
occasion he as yet bore no knowledge of.
Bezeel, on the other hand, wore a baggy pair of trousers which would not have
looked out of place in a big top and smoked a willowing roll up as if a suckling calf. He
paced impatiently and strained to recall a time in his life when this alleged 'mission' was
yet to be conceived by the superior agent. "Frustration is the voice of the Devil,
Bezeel." Serenity had always been Silvanus' strong point. He had become a minister in his
thirties after his invalid mother passed away. Since then he had struggled to tend a
small and evidently lost flock whose numbers had dwindled since the amicable
exchange of power. Bezeel had followed the opposite path in life. He grew up in the
Bronx ghettos, had led a brutal and unprivileged existence and yet somehow managed
to survive two excruciating decades of violence and deprivation; both helped and
hindered along the way by a customary indulgence in drugs, drink and other
promiscuous activities which Silvanus would have found unwholesome. Bezeel waved
his hand in a derogatory gesture of rejection as if the priest was attempting to convert
him by bringing the beast's name into the equation; "Any voice bar yours, Silvanus,
would be a Godsent, if you pardon the open invitation." Silvanus knew all too well that
God tended not to make personal appearances on request; only when the time was
right.
Iron trudged with a drained enthusiasm as if having spent a lifetime searching
for a transitory El Dorado. Unknowingly utilizing a chasty theosophy he skirted around
a grimy corner as if a formula one race car taking a hairpin bend and started down
another dozey dawn doused street with an instinctive sense of direction granted him by
a power unknown. "Are the things or this world blessed with a subtle spirit?" Given
that he was rambling to himself like a hopeless and intoxicated destitute, it was unlikely
he would receive an answer, but that had never deterred his somewhat open ended
philosophizing before. "Maybe the natural objects of the world used to house
primordial beings whose traces we still perceive due to the fact that part of us is
primordial also. Does God breath an aesthetic inclination into all things of his creation;
is that how God guides us, if he does at all? Is it God in all things; are God and life
identical? Is there only one being in apparently separate parts; a world soul penetrating
all things which we're simply too limited in mentality to recognize? And in recognizing
that immanent soul, would we discover it was also ultimately transcendental? Is there a
divine element in all things; in us? A reminder incorporated into our psyches; a kind of
designer label which God saw fit to adorn his creations with like kid's clothes lest they
get lost in the school locker room when his many children steam out to play like a
suicidal platoon rushing out into the clutches of an unwinable war. Is there a fragment
of the entity living in the heart of each being; willing to grant us guidance if only we'd
listen?" If he had been a scholar of panpsychic ideas rather than simply a proponent,
Iron may have been reminded at this point of the notions of Atman and Brahman, but
then, thought without degeneration into differentiation or linguistic digression is
probably the preferred variety.
Silvanus waited like a chicken on an egg; the intermittent scuff of Bezeel's plush
sneakers rummaging aimlessly across the empty plateau of a rain soaked car yard
mysteriously missing the very vehicles which ostensibly brought meaning to its
existence gifting his silent meditative vigil an unhelpful backing soundtrack. As the sun
continued to rise Bezeel watched its reflection in the glistening tarmac and imagined he
was in some orchestral planetarium in which the spatial infinity of the universe was
revealed to him. His imagination was not far off the mark.
"Nature is a wonderful thing; an unfathomable thing." Denying his sullen
character for a brief moment, Bezeel had spouted the pronouncement which would
facilitate an inimical metempsychosis. Silvanus raised an inquisitive eyeball which rolled
like a slowing snooker ball and felt the initial judderings of an adrenalous inner heat
coagulate in his heart like a rapturous vein exploding at the conceptualization of an idea
which in surpassing empirical borders immediately made all his organs and arteries
redundant. It was the sign that the student had perceived the higher reality; touched it,
even.
As Silvanus smirked knowingly like a Cheshire cat presented with its favorite
brand of diced tuna a lustrous light glittered and gleamed a warm welcome as it burst
into existence; a pin prick in the fabric of time and space at first which gradually
expanded as if somebody was slicing the canvas on which life was painted from the
other side of the easel. Bezeel's soul leapt in the same way as one's stomach does when
driving a car over a speed bump at a law breaking, suspension buckling pace. In
contrast, Silvanus appeared to have been expecting it. A guttural feeling of belonging
welled up in Bezeel's heart as he at last recognized what he had forgotten; the nature of
things; the transience. Silvanus had been playing along with him all along. He had been
guiding him like a good conscience; an extrinsic Jiminey Cricket who in actual fact
probably possessed an intrinsic quality too. "This is the end of the journey?" Pausing on
that idea of his teacher residing inside him as well as standing by him, Bezeel did not
require a spoken answer for he knew his observation to be correct before he posed the
by now unnecessary question. So this was the grand design; the moment of return; of
coherence. He had spent too long criticizing the world; dividing it up and writing little
labels which his mind appreciated as convenient and his spirit found constraining. But
there remained a smattering of loose ends to clear up before the light could engulf him;
escort him out of the vernacular dream. "What about the mission; our purpose here?
What's to become of the subjects?"
"Man perceives enlightenment only as it strikes him." Silvanus' voice seemed to
resonate not from his body; which Bezeel could hardly make out anymore as his vision
became even more impaired through staring at that all encompassing light. Instead he
perceived that it was coming from the light; no; more than that; it was the light. His
senses scrambled like a three egg omelet doused with sickly melted mozzarella, sliced
tomatoes and aromatic herbs and spices, Bezeel clang on to the dissident puzzles which
now seeped from his mind like rain through a thin thatch roof; the acadine countenance
strangling his lingering hang-ups dead before he could voice them as his body moved in
a manner he could not quite explain into the light and; like Silvanus' voice had done;
appeared to become it. "What will become of them; the players? Was it not our task to
help them; to watch them? Was it not our purpose to guard them? To monitor their
development? They have not yet reached their destination. Are they to walk alone?"
By now Bezeel was holding on to a sinking persona which he had previously
assured himself was his own. It was an unimaginable feeling; a purifying peregrination;
a bridging of previously unfathomable gaps. The reply to his by now quite irrelevant
query was that he himself had been the subject; the player. It was Bezeel who was the
lost lamb; the misguided. It was his enlightenment which he had been conscripted to
earth to achieve; his faith which required rejuvenation. In arriving at the goal he had
carried others on the way; he had observed them and learned. They had been aware of
him and learned also, through perhaps only on an unconscious level. They were
involved in their own journey and he in his. The destination may have been similar, but
beings with such incomparable natures tend not to interact, unless it is willed by the
Divine; unless there is something more to their plight unless a miracle needs to be
presented; unless a guide is required. Unless God is swayed into unorthodox action by
a sentiment or connection which moves him. The answer emanated from his soul, not
the mouth of another, for by now all was one. There was nothing to let go of anymore;
he was back where he belonged. He had fallen at the hands of sloth and torpor; of
avarice and complacency. He had not appreciated his cherubic existence, but now the
memory of why he was who and what he was had come to light; literally as well as
metaphorically, symbolically, metaphysically, and in every other way which the
pantheistic paradigm manifested itself. He was free and true; reunited and pure. This
time he would embrace his nature and use his heavenly wings to the best of his ability;
to soar and to transmigrate.
As Iron span around the corner into the deserted car yard like a heavy boulle
ball edging towards a sandy standstill, he was forced to cover his eyes in both shock
and reverence as a booming light ripped away his vision momentarily as if a crazed
optician riled by the dirt on the lenses of his equipment tearing the eyeball out of its
socket to get a better view of the retina; thus violating the presumably medically based
rationale behind his practice.
Placing an arched hand on his brow like a sailor in the crow's nest searching
wearily for a heavenly glimpse of land, he could barely make out a being of light;
human in shape but both luminous and invisible at once. A logically impossible being
made of a formless thing; just a shape of pure brightness like an inverted shadow;
blazing with light which though far brighter than the sun could not be attributed to fire.
It was only light and eyes; shining discs of a substance although identical to the rest of
its body could somwhow be distinguished from it as if really made of a wholly
alternative element. Angelic in its embellishing eminence, it seemed to speak to him;
although not in any audible manner. The words came through his bones in the shapeless
shape of concepts; inclinations; and went straight to his brain where they were
immediately reformed and repackaged in order to make sense in terms of human
comprehension. And then, as he was forced to blink through the needs and limitations
of his crass human body, it was gone.
He pondered a moment; wondered. He had had a realization; of change; of
impermanence. Something had spoken to him from both inside and outside. What he
had seen; bizzarly; did not seem of prime importance to him; it was what he had
thought; the message. It was about life; about doing what one could. It was a push in a
certain direction; an informing of destiny. There were higher walls to scale; greater
challenges to meet. Confused but in the same instant certain, he quickened his step and
resumed his journey as if attempting to make up for lost time. Visions are often
significant not in what is seen, but what is not.
Framed by a mordant montage of faded corporeal concoctions and phony
phonetic phantasms, Lincoln felt like a person standing in front of a painting in a
Goliath gallery; mistaken by a godly art critic to be part of the piece. She had
convinced herself that she was real, but of her surroundings she had become less
assured. She had begun to feel she didn't belong here or; more accurately since she
never believed she belonged here in the first place; she now felt it was appropriate to do
something about it; to take that leap of faith. "Happiness very rarely knocks at my
door; it's more likely to be some deranged government terrorist intent on getting a slice
of that complementingly chunky bounty they’ve put on my head...." She saw through
this world like a scrap of cheap papyrus; its illusion; its depthless, garbled grandeur.
She was gazing through a tank of particularly moggy water, and it riled her that stare as
she might she could not make out the nature of the groggy shapes which lurked on the
other end of the glass. "Oh; to be happy. That would be a wonderful thing. Banding
such slippery concepts around so openly we presume to comprehend their meaning
when in actual fact some things are difficult to pin down; recidivist roadrunners on the
highway of life who we may think for a time that we've understood until they shoot off
again into obscurity in the blink of an eye."
Placing an instinctive hand on a bovine bookshelf, a miniature dictionary
supposedly intended for convenience in colleague days which circumstance had ensured
never materialized fell into her grasp like a gift from god. Thumbing through, she
fruitlessly scoured the pages for enlightenment. "Happiness. Luck. Pleasure.
Satisfaction.' No; too materialist to be happiness. 'Well being; to be healthy, to be
prosperous' Perhaps whoever wrote this knows very little about happiness. If you want
a question answered; answer it yourself. That's the problem with society today; one of
the problems. People think that if they sit back and let everyone else solve their
problems for them, they need never worry about anything. Personal shrinks, fitness
trainers, financial advisors, agents. Such nonsense makes you glad you arn't rich or,
heaven forbid, famous. You have to work to get your own house in order. Without
purpose, life becomes meaningless. Without meaning, life becomes dull. You can't have
it all, and even if the possibility was plausible it wouldn't be very satisfying to be born
with the silver spoon of happiness hanging from your spoilt maw. But we're greedy
things; human beings. We demand it all and consequently miss what we should be
looking for. Nobody ever said the devil was stupid; in fact, they've always said he's
persuasive and the master of delusion; illusion. People are intentionally mislead without
knowing it. When you are constantly; directly or indirectly; told what's good, bad and
acceptable, it's of fundamental importance to make up your own mind. Otherwise
however big a breed of fish we are, we fare no better than the small fry simply because
we all take the bait. Human beings are clever enough to know what they prefer; what
they like. They're also clever enough to know what's moral and what's not. If we need
billboards and the meddling hand of the media, pinickity psychologists, big shot
businesses and tooth pick censored 'information' to help us decide how we think,
civilization has clearly sunk back into the swampy mire of amebic prehistoric fudge
from whence it came. Paranoia? Well, apparently its better to be safe than sorry. If you
can only find happiness in enlightenment and death, I'd like to reach the former before
the latter, though if we really keep returning to earth until we're no longer attached I
may get another chance at the first option even if the second bangs it's skeletal hand on
my door.... first. If the world is an illusion, at least my paranoia is justifiable; political or
ideological. Governments should protect us, not cheat us. Yeah; I'm an idealist, but
that's how I like to be, and given that's how I am, I'll be even more idealistic and say
governments should look after their people. But in the end, the paternal paw of politics
aside whether its a harsh or a benevolent one, its humanity which plays both confuser
and confused. We label reality; a reality which can't be labeled. We quibble with
meanings, language, definitions. In the end, it's all nonsense. Life is a huge voluptuous
flux of unintelligible nonsense. Ingeniously, it's only when you realize this essential fact
that it all makes sense. I often wonder if a giggling god will one day appear in a puff of
smoke and tell me I'm nowhere near the answer. Perhaps that god will only inform me
when I'm there. Perhaps I'm there already. Perhaps god's here too. It's hard for a
thinker to think in a world that seems to hold an irrational prejudice towards attaining
answers."
A joyful rap on the puncture pockled door announced the arrival of a like
minded pursuer of such errant answers, although after today's mysterious events, Iron
believed at last one such solution to the many puzzles of existence had been granted
him.
He slithered like a wafting ether through the door before Lincoln had finished
opening it; eager to share his godly visitation with his solitary soulmate who, if souls
were indeed transcendental things; probably understood his revelation already, which
was possibly why she had been philosophizing thus on this particular day.
For her part, Lincoln crumpled back into a seat in mock awe of the
revolutionary streak which dictated to her friend that he should knock even when a
perfectly good doorbell begged he adhere to conventionality. "You'll never guess what
happened to me today." Iron had already seated himself and intertwined his fingers like
a seer about to publically decipher the heavenly word from a gigantic book of scripture
without acknowledging her hospitality. "You brushed shoulders with god?" At this Iron
appeared initially deflated until he posited to himself that perhaps God's voice speaks
simultaneously to those of like mind; "How did you know?"
"I can read you like a book." She pointed a ribbing finger which a pessimistic jink in
Iron's mind recognized as a white witch's hex. Insanity providing immunity from such
things, he shrugged it off like a big bill in the postbox of a dole dependent destitute;
"No Saz; I had this realization."
"A religious experience?"
"An experience of a possibly religious nature."
"A little voice that told you to move on in your life." This was growing decidedly
spooky;
"Yeah....."
"Like you've been letting the waters of the world rush over you and now you think you
should go with the flow." Iron brushed and tidied his clothes as if a playing angel had
penned his innermost thoughts all over his faithstruck figure, to which Lincoln omitted
a hypnotic giggle. "I just have this feeling...." Perhaps if he got the gist of the
experience out quickly enough she wouldn't be able to pre empt his revelation; "There's
a certain point in life when you have to progress on to other things; you have to trust
your instincts. When destiny beacons its hard to say no."
"I'd been thinking much the same thing."
"To take that leap of faith?"
"Ooh; this is bad; we're starting to hear the same voices. When schizophrenia's
communal it only feeds the paranoia." She tipped an eyebrow to cajole her own mental
deficiencies like somebody diagnosed with a deadly illness utilizing the shield of humor
to escape the fatalistic tendencies which may otherwise be evoked; "and you're telling
me of this change in outlook because...."
"Well, because it involves you too." Iron would have felt presumptuous to reveal
another person's fate to them only if he had not been so acutely aware that this pair's
were irrevocably intertwined through necessity as well as preference. "You're right;
when destiny calls it's hard to refuse. We may as well be standing by a beehive with a
fly swatter; our purpose has become pointless."
"Time for a career change. The only alternative is to step into the hive; or in our case
the eagle's nest." Until now both malignant misfits had been satisfied in acting out their
vigilante vaudeville in the confines of local downtown Manhattan, but in sharing their
quirksome quest it appeared they had sucked their subcutaneous insanity out of their
own manumit minds and gifted it a greater gragarity. Lincoln played a pained
expression at this pompous pleonasm and voiced her comparably colloquial stance on
their sudden deviation in direction, although she too could often be charged with
similar literary crimes; "I've always wanted to see the sights; witness how the wealthier
wastes of this primal plutocracy lives; and perhaps indulge in a little gatecrashing along
the way. Yeah; I think it's time we hit society where it hurts. Afterall, you know how
evil prospers?"
"By good people doing nothing; yeah, I know the drill." Iron sat back like a big game
hunter having just made his dream kill. Gladly, Lincoln had developed the habit of
putting his own understanding into words with more encouraging exuberance than he
could manage himself, even though; if memory served him correctly; it had been he
allegedly experiencing the understanding. "Well, I'm glad you've cleared that up."
Lincoln partitioned a jocular military salute;
"Pleasure. I think if its the divine and not
the mischievous who's prompting us to make that much shirked from stand against
those insurmountable odds, its our duty to take the hint. Either fate or suicide beckon,
huh? Whether we're slaves to an iron curtained democracy or a gun toting junta, the
motivation of the authorities is always the same; power; control. You can't fool all the
people all the time, but as long as you fool the rich and apparently 'prosperous' most of
the time you seem to get away with it. I'd prefer to be poor; wealth tends to distort
your view of reality; you can't appreciate things. The fact that you can have anything
makes you forget what you already have; intrinsically. Nobody's yet been able to
package and manufacture happiness. They even have problems defining it. Egotism,
from it's severest application down, is the biggest cause of suffering in this world."
"Yeah, if you're too comfortable in life you loose your place; your humility. Work
makes man humble, they say. To be wise you have to be humble; modest. Personally, I
don't think I'm humble enough yet." In delivering this pronouncement, Iron was not
sure whether he was being wise or if in realizing the above calculation he should
profess a lack of humility. But since all that surely amounted to a potentially humble
admission of inadequacy, it all worked out OK. It was a crafty conundrum he had not
actually intended to draw himself into; "Nothing is really necessary except an innate
understanding of the present moment. All these idle wonderings about the future are a
waste of time. Some of us don't have the luxury because we're not assured a
prosperous future."
"Past doesn't exist anymore and future is always waiting to be. When either do exist
they're both renamed 'the present'."
"We're confined by so many things; even by our own peculiarly human conventions."
"But when freedom explodes in man, god can do nothing."
"Oh yeah; Existentialism. I had those lessons too in the institute. Man has to make
himself, right?"
"Yeah, so I'm glad I'm a reactionary; I'd wilt and die without a battle to fight. But we
aren’t an especially lost generation. OK so we live under a military minded monotheism
where social saviors are more preferably sophistic succubi than perspicacious paladins
of truth and vir...."
She trailed off as Iron sat dumbfounded like a humanities student in an applied
math test at the verbose vernacular she had apportioned into a cornucopia
circumlocution. Actually he felt sorry for her; perhaps the padded cell she which used
to comprise her eternal habitat sported recreational facilities which amounted to no
more than a shelf full of dictionaries. "I know what you mean; at least I did when we
were speaking English;" Lincoln appreciated that ridicule was the given lot of the
poetical, and so silenced her artistic tounge. "It's always been a case of the oppressors
and the oppressed; even in the former regime. Democracy is a fine thing when applied
correctly, but just like Communism I don't think it ever has. The US needed it's
Seventeenth Century imperialist psyche kicked out of it years before it's profiteering
powerhouses were bought from under it's nose by people who persuaded them they had
always been loyal, patriotic... whatever other rightist rhetoric they saw fit to spout.
Ever since the second world war, the US dominated the world; thinking they were the
cradle of democracy. Democracy in American hands is regulated autocracy, and though
it's own citizens have been constantly bombarded by propaganda telling them
otherwise, the rest of the world quickly realized how hypocrisy and paranoia tended to
spread in the world's richest nation with the audacious and deliberate acceleration of an
automated locust plague."
"The more you have the more you convince yourself other people want to take it
away." Appreciating Iron's challenged vocabulary, this comment was mercifully
succinct. Afterall, words are tools not the understanding they allude to; which makes
comprehension superior only when it circumvents language. "America was no less to
blame for most of the conflicts it involved itself in as those it criticized for doing so."
"Takes two to tango; with Russia, with Korea, with Vietnam." Vietnam; due to certain
ancestral grievances; was a subject close to Lincoln's heart; "America was huge and
rich and Vietnam tiny and poor in comparison. But the Americans had never had much
luck against the minute nations they terrorized, even when they planned their wars to
coincide with prime time TV. In any country sporting a media network which possesses
the merest drab of virtue, such an act of sick profiteering would have it's inventors in
jail for life. The US first let all the good, resistant members of the community die
against their military oppressors then turned the whole thing into a huge propaganda
exercise to boost the polls of the most 'patriotic' presidential candidate. They would
plug any 'yellow man' who crossed their path, and urged the great white hopes of the
USA to do the same at home. South Vietnam was basically an American colony for
years; some liberation. They treated it like a football match; like a school bully
thumping the little kids to a pulp in the name of fun. And even in the midst of conflict
they wanted more; they toyed with going on to China after tackling Japan in the
Forties, regardless of the fact that they weren’t a significant threat. I might not have
the keenest military mind but its clear to me that the only sane description of generals
who pursue further military incursions when they could leave it and go home to peace
and harmony is that of madmen."
"And if we don't all stand up and cheer in the cinema when the American hero saves the
world again from the evil commies, devious Japs, backward English, brainless
Canadians or whatever 'foreigners' or ethnic minorities the authorities currently see as
public enemy number one, we're probably liable to all manner of civilized persecution."
"Hiroshima is another example of American military muscle flexing. It wasn't necessary
to save humanity, however awful Japanese fascism was. They'd already moved to
surrender. American foreign policy was always crafted around the notion of posing like
a Venice beach bodybuilder; they were big, strong, powerful, but slow, lumbering and
ultimately had very little clout where it counts, and I mean in the brain not the bicept.
Just because your opponents use the most terrorfying methods to extinguish their
enemies doesn't mean you should stoop to their level. In fact, you can only be a real
hero if you don't. Gandhi wouldn't have been a hero if he'd triumphed by rampaging
through Delhi with a nine millimeter uzi rather than sitting down and humbling himself.
Martin Luther King wouldn't have become the patron saint of the civil rights movement
if he'd had a dream about inflicting the world with nuclear warfare." Realizing that her
own volatile vocation hardly measured up to these pacifistic heroes' she held her breath
before lashing out again at the constitution confined confidants of the good old US of
A, but Iron was less wary of the witch like heckle of hypocrisy; "The atom bomb just
stole the media spotlight; so the Americans could persuade themselves that it was them
and not the old Bolshies; the Russians, who won the war."
"Nah, American democracy; what I've heard of it at least, doesn't convince me; it was
as democratic as Stalin was Marxist; invariably not very."
"War was often just a money making tool with which Americans could lounge in their
rich, luxurious sitting rooms millions of miles from any stutterings of warfare, chomp
their popcorn in front of their big TV's and say 'we kicked their ass.'"
"Alright so I don't have a solution to offer this or the previous decimated society, and
the current regime must be a hundred times worse, but to have anything loosely
resembling human freedom would be good. Whether it's an anvil of democracy or the
torture rack of totalitarianism on which our ideals, beliefs and aspirations are so
constantly burned, beaten, wielded and discarded doesn't really matter. I suppose one
thing that the current administration has going for it is that it doesn't deny it's violent
streak; to us anti socials at least."
"Yeah; they're not liars even if they are tyrants."
"What the old government used to let us know about was bad enough; the chemical
tests, the bombs, the savage weaponary, the exposure of island natives to radioactivity.
How bad could the things they didn't let us know about be? The systematic subjection
of citizens to genetically 'perfected' diseases perhaps? Or maybe random murder. All
those tax dollars spent developing speedy new jet fighters during peacetime and the
odd presidential indulgence in illegal activity which could have been spent on cleaning
up the ghettos and fighting crime; getting people out of poverty."
Unintentionally changing the subject, Iron was becoming distracted by his
surroundings, added to the fact that he had had this conversation not long ago with an
admittedly less scholarly philosophical sparing partner; "That gashed lip looks nasty."
Lincoln looked back in time to the point where she had carelessly received that
particular branding in a less technological form of warfare than that which they had
been alluding to in quasi-political conversation. Iron was already enjoying the cajoling;
"but then, I wouldn't know really; never had one myself."
"Don't rub it in." She bore the countenance of a child who had lost her lollipop, but
appreciated the off gray humor of the thing. "No, no; suits you." Now she had to at
least pretend to take this derogatory digging to heart in order to save her own honor;
"If you weren’t who you are, I'd give you that gashed lip you've always dreamed of...."
"Yeah right; that'd be great." He pointed an inviting finger to his face which Lincoln
flinched at motioning towards as if a samurai about to leap to cleave the skull of her
lifelong nemesis with one fatal sword swipe. "I'm not gonna strike you down like some
sick gothic sacrifice."
"That's city life, you know. Traps your mind; condenses it. It cripples your spirit, you
know; blunts your reflexes. You can't see a sitting duck when it glides past your eyes."
The fact that sitting ducks generally don't do much gliding not seeming to bother either
of them, Lincoln pressed on; "City life, huh? It's not my fault I've spent my entire
existence caught in this claustrophobic choreography, but culture; soul is an acquired
thing."
"Yeah, yeah. I'm not really a stickler for this urban lifestyle either. It isn't exactly my
forte."
"No; it's psychology. You're a walking case study."
"Child's mental development, right?"
"I wouldn't comment on the development front."
"Well, I seem to remember a certain fellow patient in a certain mental asylum; broke my
leg with a baseball bat."
"You know it's not good to bare grudges."
"OK, I'm not worried; if I see her again I'll just punch her straight in the lip." At this
point Lincoln had to resort to throwing cushions to shut him up. "I've never had anyone
to.... talk to like this."
"That has something to do with living alone and only ever going out to trounce a few
employees of our esteemed government. Reactionary; hippie; revolutionary; shocking...
shocking."
"Don't start that again. Its funny how things work out. I'd always pictured myself doing
the same thing 'till I died; acting the consummate vigilante when I should be collecting
my pension. Actually, on more realistic ventures into prophesy I'd imagine myself dead
by that time. Now you reckon it's time to up and dive into the mouth of the beast; leave
all this behind and make a dash for the gold; a shot at the big time."
"A man must play many parts, and it's time for a change of scenery."
"It's a dangerous although natural step. Death must be egging us on; convinced after all
these years he'll trap us."
"You never worry about death." With a suspect frown, Iron mused whether the
recalcitrant reactionary had lost her nerve, but faith was soon to be restored; "Not my
death; no. Death's easy to take when it's your own."
"Well at least if fate works true to form whatever happens to one of us will happen to
the other."
"Assuming. Yeah. If it's any consolation, I'd like you to have everything I have if; well,
if I don't need them anymore."
"You don't have anything." He gesticulated open palms like a favorite grandson feeling
hard done by as it was revealed by the solicitor that his deceased relative had left her
substantial estate to a local charity. Lincoln took this apportioning of 'wealth' to be an
ideological one, which suited her fine; possessions tend to obsess the possessor. "No,
honestly. Death can be an intoxicating prospect on occasion; sometimes a promising
escape. Work makes man humble, right; and hard work makes him exhausted."
"Incredibly hard work makes him suicidal, but servitude makes him fight." Something
Iron had said had touched a raw nerve which hushed Lincoln like receiving news of a
gross natural disaster in her home town. "You haven’t been tempted to walk that road
have you Saz; suicide?"
Lincoln screwed up her face like an unkempt garment hurled into a cluttered
closet to indicate this was something she wouldn't normally wish to talk about; a
spurned secret she would endeavor to conceal even from her mother, provided she had
still had one. It was one of those regrettable bad decisions in life she dreamed she could
turn the hand of time back upon, but inevitably these dreams would fleetingly become
nebulous nightmares. But still, councilors always spread the soundbite that it was
beneficial to get these things off your chest. "Yeah." the admission was initially as
painful as the event; the words sliding out gratingly as if she was an untrained sword
swallower having got half way through her trick before realizing she wasn't much more
than an aspiring artisan and that she'd better remove the blade quickly before it
hollowed out her ribcage like a stray dog gutting an abandoned KFC takeaway; "I did
take a short stroll down that road."
"Yeah?" His classical clownlike character had to be sacrificed; pro tempore, at least.
"Yeah." It was almost as if she was in a police cell with a piercing spotlight in her eyes;
"When the institute turfed us all out I wasn't in great shape. I vented my anger on
myself, I felt downtrodden; I felt cheated. I felt life had trampled all over me and I
wanted a little power; a little control. Life could kick me all it wanted but I would
decide whether I lived or died. My childhood slipped through my fingers, you know;
well, obviously you do. I didn't know how to deal with trauma; with loss, so I suppose
I blamed myself." She looked down at her dispairing palm as if it contained an autocue;
"I thought if I hurt myself enough the pain would go away; like when you walk far
enough you meet yourself. I'd be preoccupied with a different kind of pain; a physical
agony which was decidedly preferable to the emotional one."
"And death was an escape?" If the aforementioned premise about meeting yourself was
true, Iron evidently hadn't done enough walking. "It was a getaway; a shirking of
responsibility. Call it insanity, stupidity; whatever. I couldn't get out of the city. I
couldn't get out of my own mind. I was trapped in there. My own private padded cell;
built in. I grew to like the sight of my own blood; to hold the cards; to make the
decisions. Control is both the preoccupation and the failing of mankind; to try to
control the uncontrollable. I wanted to decide when I lived and died; I wanted to prove
that what the world could hurt I could hurt too. The flirting with that eternal blackness;
the holding that power in my hands to turn everything on its head with a solemn slice of
the razor. I used to slit the tops of my fingers just to feel the blood flow. It's like water,
you know; the stream of life running dry." She motioned an imaginary dripping finger
and understood today that it wasn't like water at all; it was grisly and hateful; curdling
and coiling like a vermilion serpent rushing out of her as if the steam from a boiling
kettle. "The flow of it; the process of life; the elixir. I wasn't content to feel it pulse
through me; I needed to see it. I needed to persuade myself I was alive. I'd convinced
myself I was less than human. In bleeding I proved to myself I was just like everyone
else; flesh and bone; alive."
Iron turned his bottom lip like a sprouting snowdrop and shook his head as he
contemplated how fate would have felt if she had been more decisive in her self
defacing slashing, then realized that if such a tragedy had occurred it would have been
fate's will anyway. "That's heavy, Saz." She nodded in a repetitive slo-mo; deeply
regretful of her own past stupidity while at once almost religiously thankful that god
had thought to pull her out of the gruff sludge of self destruction in which she had
enveloped her own heathen soul. "So how close did you get to; well; escaping?"
"Oh, close enough. Close enough to kick the senses back into myself. Close enough to
look into the empty eyes of the reaper. Close enough that only the will of the almighty
could drag me back up to earth. Pain's a funny thing; an enigmatic thing. Its quite subjective, really, depending
on who's dishing it out. I was lost back then. I mean, not like I'm in some all pervading sense 'found' in comparrison nowadays,
I mean it was a helplessness; a complete and utter hopelessness. Everything hurt me. I was brittle. I was like the hand held piece of one of those
electric bleeper toys- you know, where you're supposed to guide the thing around a metal shape without
the buzzer going off. I was the cursor and life the circuit, and everything I did the damn thing
went off like I was tumbling down the bottomless elevator shaft of life just wishing to high
heaven the bone jaring collisions with the unforgiving walls on the way down would stop and I'd
just splat into whatever stern surface lay below and never have to think about any of it ever again."
She shivelled a little like a bumbling calf just introduced to the cruel, cruel world from
the inside of its mother's cousioning stomach and timidly drew back a sleeve to reveal a faint
but nonetheless nerve jangling near noughts and crosses board of asthetically displeasing stringy
scars etching into her forearm in times thankfully now consigned to history; the worst of which
a jagged slash scored clumsily across her fragile wrist and only bearly shirking beneath the skin.
"I never used to intend to hurt myself, I don't think. To be honest its a bit of a blur. Selective
amnesia, perhaps. It was all just, I don't know, instinctive?" Her manner would have suggested
she was asking a question rather than relaying a long unsung lament. Iron's concerned reaction
offered her a heart warming feeling that he understood her pain, afterall, his suffering had been
uncannily similar. He wouldn't either condemn or neglect her, however unappreciative of her own
mortality she had been in the past. "I suppose I thought that if I could call the shots, I could
dictate my own destiny."
"But it didn't work out that why, right?"
"It never seems to work out for me that way. It was always my lot in life; frying pan, fire,
frying pan, fire... I thought if I took a knife to myself the world would take pity. Mabye
at the very least it would leave me alone like a small mammal mauled by a big cat- to choke on my own blood.
It's addictive, that power. Power over your own destiny; your own agony. It's pleasure and pain rolled
into one. You feel like you're kicking whoever's hurt you right in the teeth by saying hey look;
I can do it too. You can hurt me, I can hurt me."
"When really you're just helping them out."
"Putting the boot into your own chest. Helping the undertaker dig your own grave. Whatever metaphor
fits. It feels like an escape' a release, but only a fleeting one. You're not outrunning your suffering,
you're just putting your head in the sand like a particularly dim emu thinking the hunters will turn away baffled
just because you can't see them. You're saying if you can't beat them, join them. That's why it's
like a drug; to see your own blood flow. to hold life and death in your hands and say each time things go wrong; which one
will I choose today? It's empowerment; it's like for once its up to me. Little, cheated, pathetic, worthless me.
But it isn't. You're deluded. The devil in your head's cajooling you; laughing at you. It's laughing
because it realizes it doesn't even have to bother expending the energy. You're going to punish yourself. You're
going to punish yourself of your own sick, morbid, retarded volition."
"So how did you break that; that addiction?"
Well, on a particularly negligent self serving, self sacrificing
bloodlust; a near fatal foray into the darkness we all harbor deep within our own
souls..."
She closed her eyes to allow the thing to seep back from lost history like the
arduous rerun of a dour family matinee she'd sat through a thousand times right on que
every Christmas. "One brash slit of the wrist. The moment I let that striking arm fly my
soul cried out in discordance. That moment lasted for ever; the dying moment. I was
left alone with my thoughts; as if god was looking over me saying; 'do you really want
to do this?' like a game show host on who wants to be a millionaire or something trying
to dissuade me from staking all my winnings on an answer I was about to get wrong.
Asking me if I was sure; giving me the chance. I'd cut myself before, for the rush. Just out of
bare, brash, twisted animal instinct. you know, you get in, you kick you shoes off, put the kettle
on, rip into a few fingers or an arm with a serated balde. It's... natural." She frowned like a techno
DJ forced to listen to his mother's old Sinatra collection; "...It seemed natural at the time. But I'd never before
cut to kill. My soul cried out; it cried please GOD
don't let me have done what I just did. How could I deprive myself of the greatest of
gifts; how could I put a razor to that most beautiful of things? I thought in that moment
as I watched that blade rush towards my limp wrist; I thought what an idiot I'd been. It
was as if I'd been chopping myself up with a blindfold on; I never understood what I
was doing until god asked me; took me aside like a bright kid in class wasting her
talents on mucking around. He showed me my parent's faces." Eyes welling up, she
struggled not to relive the whole thing as she shared it, but to no avail. At least in the
sharing the guilt would begin to diminish. "I saw how disappointed they'd have been in
me; how distressed. It was bad enough they had to die; worse still they'd have to watch
from the heavens as I ruined myself in that asylum. How could I drive another nail into
their coffins; strangle away the gift they'd given me? I'm the culmination of their life on
earth; the continuation of their lives as well as the continuation of my own. Parents love
their children because their children give them life; and vice versa. How could I let
them die all over; pull the trigger myself?"
She wiped her eyes as she imagined herself at a funeral; a multitude of black
clad mourners; family who had already passed away, all shaking their heads at her as
she looked down at her own frail, pale form in that polished chest. "But something
saved me that day; pitied me. Something deflected my arm as it plummeted down on
my flimsy flesh. An angel; a divinity; a god; a consciousness; I don't know. Maybe it
was just chance, but it was the most magical thing I had ever encountered. In the end
all I suffered was a briefly debilitating loss of blood and a guilty conscience, but it saved me; it
cured me. It gave me life; again. I may have missed a bulging vein by fractions of a
centimeter but the wound still hurts; in here." Iron gave her a reassuring hug that she
was still here and not a fiction of a vivid afterlife dream, and the failed kamikaze
shivered off her self inflicted scars as if venturing from an icy plateau into a cosey
cottage with a roaring hearth. "Aw, its not a problem anymore, honestly. Its just when I
think about it my mind plays tricks; makes me think I'm still the person I was. Makes me revel
in the memmory and recall the buzz; the adrenaline. That gaunt, metalic taste. Makes me bleed inside. I tend to
relive things mind, body and soul, you know. Jeez, I should be careful of you. You
know things about me I wouldn't want all those vicious comic characters out there to
know; weak spots. You know how I am inside; fragile; wounded."
"Look, if someone up there decreed you'd become a thankful failure in terms of that
particular adventure, then someone must care. It's not weakness to get through things
like that; God saved you for a reason, you know."
"Yeah." Reassured to reassert the reality of the world around her, however nasty it
was, she rolled her sleeve back, rubbed a pair of scarred fingertips together as if
shaping putty and shivered as the ghostly hand of sins past scratched down her back as it
retreated into history. The markedly brighter present had reasserted its presence, and she could be philosophical about these things. "Things turn out the way they
should. The path we're set is the path we need. I used to sit there ready to end my
punishment; my existence on this earth; thinking if but some vengeful god would call to
me from up in the sky and laugh; 'Thou suffering thing, know that thy sorrow is my
ecstasy; that thy love's loss is my hate's profiting.' Then would I bear it, clench myself
and die." Iron nodded with honest sentiment. He too had harbored similar views in the dark,
terrifying past, and had never realized the last of these words had originally come from
the eloquent pen of a poet occupying a far gone epoch, which only seemed to prove
that human beings are the same regardless of the environments in which they reside and
the professions they persue. "But God turned out to be more benevolent?"
"Yeah. And at least that bout of selfish self mutilation did the trick; turned me around. Better to fight the
injustices the world throw at you than turn and fight yourself. Better to battle the beast and leave the
victim rest."
"It helps to know where you're going. It would be nice to have a tour map; see what's
round the next corner. The nature of God is a pretty insurmountable thing. Does God
think like us; feel like us? What's God's motivation, if we can speak of such a thing;
what are God's politics? Is God a socialist or a conservative?"
"Most definitely socialist; love thy neighbor and all that."
"A human being shouldn't ignore divine commands. From who, what or where those
commands emanate is insignificant. Its the forge of God in your own heart; the will of
the greater reality. The divine command can quite easily be your own spiritual instinct,
which really amounts to the same thing."
"We're all god, right?"
"At least we are all part of God."
"Spinoza said god didn't create the world just to stand outside it; god is the world. In
him we live and move. Nature; or god; is the inner cause of everything. He's not a
puppeteer but a oneness. The things to which we cling prevent us from attaching to
free will; from traversing fate. Only one with a pure mind and soul can do it."
"God brings you back from the brink of being completely lost in your own mind. Yeah,
we need guidance, but if we're true to ourselves we'll see God in everything. You don't
need temples, churches, scripture, books. All you need is to see God, and where's God
needed more than in the ugly and the decrepit? God's here right now; God is where we
are and even what we are."
Without really realizing she was doing it Lincoln cradled that mischievous gun
of hers which had almost become a permanent appendage like a newborn baby or like a
famished laborer refusing to submit her last loaf to the officious authorities despite the
object being as out of place in the current environment as a realist at a Star Trek
convention, and imagined what her father would have thought of her sudden and
irrational new enterprise had he been there today; which surely would have negated the
necessity for such a conversation in the first place. In Iron's eyes it was god's will that
they walk into the belly of the beast Her father had been a spiritual man though of no
obvious institutional disposition, and she felt he would have been modestly proud of
her; which admittedly as a doting father he always had been in life regardless of what
she did. He had had a clear work ethic; hard, honest toil and tribulation in whichever
sphere in which one led his or her life would produce a wholesome character; a sound
mind. When the final bell tolled, what you'd done in life and what you had to show for
it didn't amount to a whole hell of beans. But honesty; to yourself as well as others;
crafts a courageous character, and that the angels of the apocalypse would take into
account. "Heavy disappointment makes man just as humble." She fidgitingly played
Russian roulette with her hand covering the barrel in an arbitrary motion which she
hardly noticed. Given that with that sort of firearm you'd be even madder than was usually required to
bet against your palm being blow to smithereens when you plucked up the courage to
pull the trigger, Iron mused that she would have become violently aware of the
unconsciouss action pretty soon if he hadn't drawn her attention to it with a subtle
cough. Luck didn't side with the absent minded. "You can't cling doggedly as
things rot away. You have to move on, otherwise you're static."
"You can either bumble towards death and the next life with no purpose in hand;
forever cowering at the inevitable prospect, or you can live life; when and where it's to
be lived. The only sure fact of life is that it ends. It's grim but true."
"If you have life; live it. If all you have is death; well, you may as well live it as well.
But you know what they say, Saz; life itself is suffering."
"That's not to say it's essentially negative though. It sounds a pessimistic statement, but
it is accurate. Pain is nothing more than a sensation; be it mental, physical or even
emotional. Pleasure is little different. There are simply different strengths of suffering.
Pleasure is cool and easy, but it's still pain. Agony is ninety percent proof; and on top of
that, convention teaches us to develop a semi natural aversion to it. But having said
that we can't make distinctions between good and bad feeling; it goes both ways.
Simultaneously as existence itself being suffering, existence is also heaven; heaven and
hell together. They exist interdependently everywhere; in all their savage, blissful
glory."
"You can't have one thing without its flip side; life and death, heaven and hell."
"But even then we must tend towards the good; with all of ourselves; not just in duty
and at the hand of provocation. You're right; we shouldn't ruin ourselves. That
godliness inside tells us the way to go; the right; the intended. There's no ethical
dynamic in society. People are just left to fend for themselves; everyone's just tossed
into a wild skirmish to survive."
"You'd have been a politician if you hadn't been a headcase." Surely that was the
secondary qualification behind corruptibility. Having said that, he was glad she had
grown up a head case, since the word of God is oft ignored by those of apparently
healthy psychological disposition; dismissed as conscience; as illusion; when perhaps its
the world which is the great illusion. "We like to con ourselves into believing we can
live forever. Mabye back then a part of me wanted to prove we don't; though that
wasn't the brightest way to highlight a point. But one day there won't be any tomorrow.
That's why I guess I've come to the conclusion that if we're to really be; if we're to
verify our status as beings rather than objects; we have to act, and we have to do it
now, because in doing so we make ourselves; become ourselves."
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