The first 13 chapters of my new book. Mystical Ennui is now available on Amazon. Enjoy!

**Note** this excerpt does not include the powerful introduction by the one and only Bronze Age Pervert. Only available on Amazon!

A Preliminary Note to the Reader

This book explores such topics as pure being, singular will, beauty, and relating to the good in a world of satiation and seeming ugliness. Through various essays I seek to plainly spell out such a manner of living. Some of it might come off as too abstract and philosophical, not applicable enough, so there are short stories highlighting the ideas of the essays in both positive and negative manners. There are also a few short poems that seek to do the same. I believe that stories are some of the most effective ways of introducing a strange sort of concreteness to lofty ideas that seem too airy to be grasped. To live in a character’s inner world is to get a foretaste of the ideas presented in a fleshly manner (although the blood might be ink) that is closer to reality and application. With that said, as fantastical as some of the stories can get, at their root, they are inspired by the infinite wellspring of the inner man desperately descending into himself in preparation to see and relate to the world outside. I pray that through this, you might come to know what it is that mystical ennui can be and that you might explore it in your own existence.

Chapter 1

Boredom

You are already aware that something is not right. It need not be repeated or spelled out, but if you know that something is wrong, that something is missing… then you know. So, what is there to do with this awareness? One is not better for it if one does nothing with this knowing. If anything, one is worse off than the rest because the temptation towards self-pity and resentment is an abyss not easily escaped. There are many types of abysses, and with this knowing, there is a certain type for each that is meant for a leaping into. I ask that you seek not to escape this abyss of awareness, nor to pretend it isn’t there, but to dive deeper in. In your awareness, there is an action you can take. There is a darkness so dark that it brings about the greatest of lights. That is what mystical ennui is: the dissolution into inescapable being.

But one can be easily saved (I use the word facetiously) from this leap. Even if it is made and the plunge begins, the cold waters make most want to leap right back out. Or the helping hands of the many reach in to pull one back, for they do not want one’s otherness to expose their sameness and threaten their shallow selves. The world wants you to be bored too! But not any type of bored, no, no, the specific boredom that halts any meaningful change of power or movement. This is a bourgeoisie boredom that is weak and pathetic. The common state of man today is of that sort. That boredom is one of passive acceptance, consumption, busyness, and lack of a beyond in the sight of soulless eyes. Mystical ennui is the opposite. Instead of acceptance it is the refusal to be satisfied with the state of today. But to refuse is not to sit on the side. The greatest refusal one can perhaps make is in participating and gaming the game, so to speak. For one that might be working as little as possible for Soul Sucking Incorporated and accepting the paycheck with the satisfaction of not being another cog, but a leak in the machine of humiliating business. Enough of those leaks and a flood will one day come. The waters get higher every day. For another, it might be to own land and raise a large, good looking and healthy family. But even still, no matter the actions taken in the game itself, there is still the issue of resentment and begrudging acceptance.

Here is where mystical ennui really begins, for a few might prefer to work their hardest and be honest men in the eyes of coworkers, and that is well and good if they feel so obliged, but the question to ask is: what of the inner man? How is the power of the individual spirit burning in daily life right now? The first step is not to question society—that comes later—but to interrogate the self. Every thought examined. Every action considered in the great tradition of the heroes of old. No doubt the self will pale in comparison, and it will resist such cold and harsh exposure to its own weakness. But this first step is not one that can be skipped, for it is a step that is continuously taken no matter how far along this path one goes.

There is no one right path either that I can point towards, for each man has his own spirit that he must learn to know. Another man cannot speak to this spirit. Many find religion at this point, in despair of the decay in themselves and around. Others might turn to stoicism, worship of the will to power, or philosophy and classic literature to form this new worldview. And even more, with or without the previous methods, might fling themselves fully into total self-improvement. None of these might be for you, and that again, is only something that can be answered by the self. There can be no comfort in these early stages. But when the rusted filth of the modern world is chipped away from the self (something that continually needs doing, for we are born and live in this world regardless of being a part of it), then the time to build your own foundation has come. And build upon the strength of your fathers and kin before you! Blood is a bond that holds across time. You are you because of your kin before. Acknowledge and honor this.

Now, I’ve written before on my own experiences in the past with this terrible weight of becoming new after tearing down. I nearly died in my selfish despair. I had desperately been tearing myself apart, not out of a desire to build up, but a decadent desire to destroy. Those around me did not relate at all, it was a dark world of unreality in which I found no foundation to rest upon once the old one had given way. So I tried to end, and blessedly failed. And how is one to emerge from such a low state? One, it helped that nobody knew I’d fallen so low, doctors declared it a freak disease from some insect or whatever, and I played along, laying there in the hospital bed and holding onto the singular thought of surviving with dignity intact. My family’s love renewed me, but alone with my despair, I had to return to this world I’d sought to flee. I was back and alone with my secret that I cherished, for it was a promise that I could go no lower, and now was the time to explore the depths of myself uninhibited and free.

Leading up to that fateful day I had acted on pure instinct, walking out of my office of work, not speaking to a soul and wandering down the highway meticulously planning how I would end. The details are grotesque and I need not go over them again here for I have elsewhere, but this desperate flinging of myself into my own darkness, and the fateful survival of my failed leap, was the scorch from Hell that burned away that despairing boredom that had only destroyed.

Here rebirth began, the painful eradication of lingering weakness, the acceptance of my own shadows, no longer fearing their cold, and focusing my will on establishing something that was beyond… what, I did not know, but I knew it was the only region to go from where I now found myself. I am a Christian, and had been in my despair, and still was at the bottom where I found myself. Yet I did not turn to religion then, for that sparkling world of goodness and eternity was too distant. And I’d tried philosophy and creative acts before this as well. It hadn’t been enough. But, in the aftermath of my near death, and jobless and alone, I had to go look inward and I did not like what I saw. I asked why? Why did I survive if only to be flung back into weakness, worse than before? And my questions exposed the intensity of my fear, which had puffed itself up under the guise of pride. I had been proud of being different, even in absolute despair I convinced myself of this, excusing my weakness and vice as some hidden power. All my thoughts came from this fear until at last I let them go, smiled, and nodded at the self I now saw at the root, and the infinitude of potentiality with each choice I brought into being in passionate action not of fearful pride, but of faithful power.

For me, it was the beginning of the building of the inner and outer together. I was a skeleton, dropped to under 120 pounds after the incident, and at 5’ 11 that is frightening indeed. But for me, beauty and sublimity had always been abstractions. There was no weight to any of the lofty ideas about existence I held before and immediately after my demise. I sought to bring weight to these ideas. I sought to bring the abstract into the concrete. I built up my body, painstakingly slow, in an effort to know and experience beauty as reality in my own world, in the self as a temple unto sublimity. It is funny because I did this without quite realizing exactly what I was doing, only that it felt like the surest Truth for myself. A few years after, when I finally came to read “Sun and Steel” by Mishima, I found myself smiling at this same Truth so elegantly put into words.

I still worked unfulfilling jobs, went to graduate school, played the same game but only with one idea in my mind: I must know beauty and become it. Concretely. Beauty lived. Death to abstraction! I’m not saying get muscular and all will be well. I’m not saying maxing out all your physical traits will cure your boredom and disgust with the world. But what I am saying, is that by inhabiting beauty, in a real and physical sense, my inner man was strengthened and set closer than ever towards that beyond. There were many times when I asked myself why I was even bothering, but as soon as the questions would come, I’d step outside in the sun, feeling it pressing my flesh. I’d breath in the southern air and admire the tiniest details… beauty had become real at last to me. I no longer only saw it, but I experienced it as a part of me, as a relation of myself.

There was much more to all of that then simply working out. I served others. I acted as powerfully as I could with each decision. I refused to let my thoughts of weakness wither my flowering spirit. I identified no longer as another someone else, but as a man blessed to know and love beauty, and to inhabit it with my being that was always made for just that. This can be done without getting strong, of course, and it differs once more for every individual, but the main foundation that life and the self should be founded on is beauty. That is power. That is meaning. That is the joy of the rising and setting sun. It is bringing reality into the self. It is knowing what those in antiquity knew based on their societal belief systems. It is the full expanse of existence—yes, still today—that is the foundation of all those meaningful and purpose-driven souls that lived in the daily sublimity of knowing the good—the beautiful—and becoming a part of it with their own lives. How another might bring about this realization is an individual case. Whatever makes it concrete, knowable, and within you, pursue it fully and thus set off into the glorious realms of being.

Now we leave my own little path and return to this concept I’ve introduced as mystical ennui. It is the boredom of ugliness, and the acceptance and partaking of beauty. I hope this does not seem too abstract, for the temptation as always is to dismiss this as trite, mere ideas, or vanity. But I believe that to know oneself is to question all ugliness, clinging to the purity of will and burning that ugliness away in the reality of what one is.

There is something I must add here as I close this chapter. And this is something I don’t want to linger on for too long, but for sake of clarity in our muddied times, I want to define what beauty is, in a general sense. It is the good. It is the right-directed power. It is glory and it is eternal. Tastes change over time, but beauty is good health, it’s heroic action and blessed partaking in life worth celebrating. It is honoring the nature around you, admiring it and cherishing the world of life. This is lofty again, I know, and it is something that shouldn’t be overly defined because beauty truly can only be experienced. By beauty, I mean intrinsically what one knows in their heart of hearts as good.

Chapter 2

Be like Children – A Dialogue

He looked at the child who was himself. The child looked at the man he was to be. Both were each other right then.

“How can this be?” the man asked.

The child smiled up at him.

“I go to sleep and dream of my past. Here it is. Here you are. But you are still me, somehow. What is this dream?” the man said.

“I’m awake,” the child said. The man shook his head and rubbed his tired eyes. The child grasped the man’s legs and held him like a long-lost brother.

The man stood there trembling. “I do not know who is me, nor do I know who I’ve become.”

“Become like a child. We all begin and end this way,” the child said, his head pressed against the man’s side.

“What is it to be like a child? Ignorant? The bliss of not knowing the truth?”

“Ignorance is a word the foolish throw on those they cannot understand. They fear their own ignorance.”

“Then what is it to be like a child?” the man asked, his voice heavy with doubt, his body aching with exhaustion.

“To be like a child is to trust in the place before the womb. Did you fear in the nothingness you sprang from? Did you weep? Did you know?”

“I do not want darkness. I do not want to be like nothing.”

“The state of eternal childhood is in knowing that you are what you always were. The will pollutes this being the moment it begins to question why it should even be.”

“I will not be blind!” the man said, pushing the child away.

“My eyes see clearer than yours do now. I have no mist that I willingly hung there, no pride in what I’ve become because I already am. You choose blindness and declare it is good, and that those with clear sight are really the blind ones. Tell me, when is the last time you stopped and looked at a stone, and marveled that its presence there was a miracle and good? The mechanisms that brought it there were eternal, so vast, flowing from before time, that your pride hides yourself from your own smallness in the face of such immeasurable design.” The child’s look was serious, and his eyes burned brighter in the strange darkness of the dream.

“Now you speak like a man! What words you possess, child! But no child speaks with such lofty proclamations. Children play and think only of themselves.”

“A child need not speak what he feels with his very being. He thinks only of living as a part of this bright world because the dark from before still burns within. All is bright to windows first opened.”

“You know not the pain of this world. The suffering that is the lot of all in this life of death.”

“A child scrapes his knee and weeps. Yet he rises and plays again, just as happy as before. When you let suffering become who you are, let it pervade your being, you identify as one who is lost. The identity of a child is eternal, for he knows only life and its immediacy. For this, the child is timeless and more a part of that ancient flow than any suffering man who refuses to sing like the birds do.”

“Once a child knows true suffering, a mother’s untimely death, the maiming of the flesh, the lack of love, then such frivolity withers in the heat of reality.”

“And this is why we must become like children again.”

“Do you say that we should deny reality? Ignore the truth?”

“I simply say that we should remember, and in this, forget the fog of our false selves. Remember that you are you, and that all the suffering that comes is but a fire that cannot change who you are. It burns away the cobwebs of reaction and reignites the restoration of the unblemished heart. You choose who it is you now are. You did not choose the pure self that emerged, but you chose to stain it with the filth of identifying with this suffering you so deify.”

The man sighed, his eyelids were heavy, and his shoulders sagged. “How does one remember without longing for something that never was? How does one rightly remember without once more constructing a false self?”

“He accepts what is and does not pretend to be what is not. This is done through the remembrance of the eternal dark before. Then you can reemerge from the womb of reflection and know that you are alive and yourself. You will then see the stone and smile. You will then see death and weep. But neither of these sights or reactions will change your soul, it will only remind you that all must be children and live as pure will. Feel yourself miraculously breathe, and march through this world with the knowledge that you are you in this time, and that all the mechanisms behind it are so grand that to catch a glimpse of it in action, is only a reminder that there is much more. With this knowledge as feeling, you can live and be free.”

The man reached out his arms and hugged the child. “I must sleep. We will wake together.”

The child and man closed their eyes and rested, each of their hearts beating as one.

Chapter 3

The Mystical

What is the mystical aspect of this right-ordered ennui? Is it merely the self stripping down, beating down thoughts until one knows the self as related to the beauty within and without, and then to bridge this relation? Is that the mystical? I chose to use the word mystical because this is beyond mere materiality. It is a spiritual awe that is felt at the core of being, and extends out through experiencing life as it is, which is a great beyond that defies mere senses and is unlocked through fully taking it in. The ennui is dissatisfaction with the state of modernity and ugliness, but the knowledge that it is a world we must live in, for it is our day and age and there is nothing one can do to change it without first burning inward.

Returning to the mystical, it could also be called sublimity. It is the state of transcendence over the weakness surrounding so much of daily life. With mystical ennui, one can transmute this ordinariness into yet another stone building up the self, always higher, yet already finished in the infinite. It is not ornamentation, but as the story in the previous chapter mentioned, the building up is the purity of sublime childhood, the state of pure will that sees the magical in the ordinary. A rebirth, a return, yet an infinite increasing while remaining finite. But all this is already there, the stones added are made from the material of your own soul; right-ordered experience only reveals them inside you and they are begging to be built up. The stones cry out.

Again, I feel to speak about this is one thing. As I write on it, I fear much can be lost in translation through these ideas remaining still too abstract. Is there some esoteric formula to follow? Some creed to fully believe in? If this is what you need, go for it. I’m not here to tell you this, or what to do. But I am here to help uncover this good kind of boredom that offers a path to power in a world of weakness.

It begins with the questioning of each thought. What does this mean? It means not letting a thought flutter by without asking where it came from and why. It is best to do this in silence, letting the mind run free to see what bubbles forth. The origins of many thoughts come from weakness. The worry of tomorrow. The question of what I am going to do today. It is a frightening process, but the end goal, which only few I imagine achieve, is to get into such a state of pure will that one needs not tell oneself reasons to do, but only to act on an instinct bursting forth from a foundation of power and beauty.

This is what the monks in Eastern Orthodoxy seek to achieve with the Jesus Prayer, though they would not agree with my premise, as they do it to know God and not a state of power. But through knowing God they come to know themselves, and in this an ultimate power. The stillness of the mind through repeating the prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me the sinner,” or some variation. It is not the exact same as what this book is about, but their turning to God and reigning in all idle and weak thoughts, not accepting them as parts of themselves, is not that far off from what I’m trying to encourage in a secular manner here.

While I’m less versed in Oriental religions, I believe they seek something similar, though I think it unwise to strip away the ego and passions. Is a child not passionate? Does passion not animate even God himself, in all the great religions and myths? Passion is power acted in a moment. There are bad passions, and there are good ones. It depends, like so much in this world. But to strip away passion is to strip away life, and this is a message of power and life in this book, not of an automaton-like death into some dissolved nothingness that is empty bliss and nothing but. I fully believe that suffering is good, and that even in heaven, we will know it in some form or another. I am for whatever brings transcendence, not destroying the self and ego, but fulfilling its fullness. We are ourselves, and to lose this in pursuit of some lofty creed is something I strongly stand against. I am a Westerner, so perhaps I’m too blinded to understand, but I will be myself in eternity, burning with my own light fed from the infinitude, smiling with my smile, and as nobody else. Individuality is yours, do not let it go for emptiness. Fill the self up to the seams until you burst in rays of golden light, beauty pouring out that is uniquely yours, and flows from that same infinite source, whatever you think it might be.

Forgive that aside, but it is easy to fall for the temptation of ego death. The kind of questioning and self-examination I’m encouraging is not a death of the self, but a method to uncover the purest foundation of the self. And that includes the ego. Once nearing the point of absolute silence but not quite, for that takes a lifetime that many a monk or sage cannot even reach, but when you feel assured in your you, and that the shackles tying you to our modern world are all but broken, then comes the seeing and knowing. You know yourself at this point, but to go even deeper is to step into nature. And this is where sublimity shines with a frightening power. It is the seeing of symbols of something more in each aspect of existence. It is the staring at the moon and picturing its reflecting light of the sun as extensions of your own inner light reflecting out and taking in, the interconnectedness of life and knowing the links of the causal chain. This is when words falter, and experience takes hold and a feeling of absolute being courses through you. Your blood feels warm, your heart keeps beating, it is an awareness that takes it all in, holds it and absorbs it deep, and gives it back out tenfold through acknowledging the miracle of life and beauty that surrounds you.

Yes, even in the modern world! Even when ugliness is encouraged, those ancient markers of beauty still surround. Nature remains and this is the purest place to discover it, but even if for some reason you find yourself away from unadulterated wilderness, and you are stuck in a city as so many are, see it in the sky. The sun and moon remain. See it in the architecture, see it in the beautiful woman and the handsome man. In the cat. The dog. In love of neighbor and in the strength of soul. It is there if you only look. Sometimes you just need to look deeper.

Chapter 4

A Mausoleum to Live For

I was bored of sickness in the world. Not enough people died from it for it to be interesting. Death bored me too. It was just another something that I would never know until I was no longer this current I, whatever that was supposed to mean. I was bored of meaning too. What a character I was! And here I am telling my story. But I can promise you one thing: it is not a boring one!

In my boredom, sitting there at my job that so many liked to view as important but really was just babysitting and repeating lessons—I’m a teacher if you hadn’t guessed. There were moments when children showed a sudden clarity and strike of something so strange beyond the ordinary… in the act of kindness as well as in the face of the startling meanness children can sometimes enact. But my class was a kind one, and the students were of an eccentric and well-meaning stock. Yet those moments of beyondness, if I could call it that, were stretched too thin from the daily drudgery of dealing with mantis-like parents always trying to clasp me in their grubby pincers. I don’t get paid enough for this! Though in my opinion teachers complain too much and this story is not about my occupation, I linger here to demonstrate that I am even bored with my so called “important” work that I neither hate nor love.

You see, everything and everyone bored me. Though… I didn’t bore myself. In fact, I quite loved myself to the point of basking in solitude. I worried my overly friendly coworkers who tried and failed to pull me out of my shell they imagined, but it was no shell. It was just the face required to keep my job and also not involve myself with any of their boring conversations or escapades. But in and of myself, I was by no means remarkable either. Just a bit of a bored loner, like so many others of my generation.

But I did have one peculiarity which makes my story just a bit spicier than most. I was obsessed with the mausoleum. It was my particular and perhaps pathetic desire to be placed in one of my own upon my death. This informed my every decision. I wanted a mausoleum crowned with black spires just like the one that stood proudly in all its celebration of death in my city’s graveyard. But you see, my solitude and boredom had glazed my eyes with distance, and my shoulders hunched over as if to make sure my inner life was kept secured and close to my breast. To be worthy of such a mausoleum was as unlikely as being born into its worth, like the dead heiress who occupied the mausoleum was. She’d done nothing but die young, pretty, and rich. Her family mourning yet celebrating her now eternal beauty. There would be no dying alive for her, that was my station. Unworthy life of death!

What was I, the lonely teacher in a lonely city, to do but go to the graveyard as much as I could, and look up at the black spires and contemplate? And contemplate and contemplate and contemplate until the I that was myself would dissolve and the mausoleum would become myself. And in those moments of losing the self, I would taste of a glorious sort of death, imagining myself swallowed up in the black halls of the mausoleum, resting well in such a worthy abode. But here in the world of light I was a shadow, unworthy of true darkness! I lingered and languished each day, my self dissolving a little more each visit until even when I was away and at work, the mausoleum was in my mind’s eye as if I stood before it constantly in the graveyard, offering my prayers and worship as if it one day might find me worthy.

Well, perhaps my prayers were answered, for my continued lingering there had not gone unnoticed. I don’t know how many countless weeks I spent there in the yard—months, perhaps more than a year. All I know is that one beautiful summer day, freed from the responsibility of my work for at least another month, a man garbed in a suit of black almost as black as the spires themselves tapped me on my shoulder, pulling me out of my blissful dissolution.

“You come here quite often, friend.” The man spoke as if not to me, but to the mausoleum.

Still in my own reverie, I answered as if emerging from its black entrance. “Yes. She sure is beautiful, is she not?”

The man held my shoulder now, tighter. “The family would prefer you spent less time here gawking. It is unbecoming of someone who has no connection to her or her blood.”

I still stared forward at the mausoleum. I looked inward, and now down at the black clad man from among the spires’ heights. “But I am connected to the stones. My blood is in the spires. My eyes are in the dark.” I laughed, enjoying my possession and the increasing tension of the black suited man.

“The family has asked that you stop coming here.”

“This is not their land. If they wanted to hide away their heiress in her death, they would have hid away this mausoleum. Or they would have buried her like the rest. I have done nothing wrong.”

“You mean to continue standing here like a freak?”

I left my mausoleum and returned to myself. I looked at the black clad man who had a face as dark as the stone, and a countenance like that of death. I laughed at him. Now this was not boring! Let him do what he would!

And that he did. He snarled as he swung at my face. While I may have been one who was often bored and merely a teacher, and even with my hunched shoulders which might well have been yet another symptom of my boredom, I trained my body up. With such training, I’d found a key to a beyond the boring. Whatever it was, feeling the blood hotly flood my muscles after a good training was something that kept the despair and listlessness at bay… at least for as long as the pump lasted. Though that too faded, and so I chased it. And my chasing it seemed not to have been in vain.

I threw up my forearms and blocked his first blow. His wild swinging went low and I stepped back, shoving him as I dodged his attempted gut punch. Now it was my turn, and I strove forward with a flurry of jabs, my boxing too much for the thug to deal with. He grunted and grimaced as he tried to block to no avail.

Was this the best help such a wealthy family could hire? Riches alone should not be able to create such a glorious mausoleum! No! It was the heiress’s beauty, and she herself was worthy, but this common thug was certainly not worthy of his expensive looking attire. After several of my body blows and another playful shove, the thug retreated, spitting at my feet and scurrying away like a rat. I turned my back and looked at my mausoleum. It seemed to be brighter in its glorious black, more so than ever before.

I returned the next day. And the next after that, lingering longer than ever before. Reveling in the rapture of being so consumed by this beauty. The power I felt knowing the same thug stood there watching me, even taking pictures, no doubt to return with a frustrated report to his precious family. I didn’t care who they would send next. No, that man was boring. And if he was the muscle of the family, then perhaps they were boring too. But the mausoleum was more alive and brighter to me than ever before. A state of bliss had taken hold over me, and I had no worries or thoughts of what might happen next.

When my reverie inevitably was once again interrupted, I prepared myself for a fight. But to my surprise, a woman stood before me in the graveyard at my favorite spot. She too wore black, not a dull suit like the thug but a short and clinging dress of some fine material I had no knowledge or recognition of, other than the fact that it was possibly velvet and worth more than a year of my salary. She was more beautiful than my beloved mausoleum. Her presence pulled me down from the black spires with a sudden desire.

“You are a strange, strange man,” she said.

“And you are just as strange. What is wrong with my presence here? Nobody ever comes, and if they do, they have no relation to you. They take their pictures and move along. I appreciate the beauty of this, more so than you.”

She smiled at me, a wry little grin like she saw something funny in my serious expression. I blushed, for in looking at the woman’s beauty up close I was overcome with the urge to flee into the safety of my solitude. Yet at the same time my blood burned and longed to be one with hers. Her eyes were clear crystal bright as if sourced from some cool, enchanted forest spring. Her hair was so black and long, thick like an ancient tree’s ever-growing hanging moss, yet silk and smooth, and so black! The blackness was greater than any black I’d ever seen! It rippled and ran down her back to her waist in waves like some honeyed sea in a frozen storm. And to think of the body that the dress so blessedly wrapped. Mountain breasts like Mother Gaia and a wide waist and slim form that pointed straight towards a glorious creator of beauty. My face grew redder, but I stared in awe.

She laughed gaily, shaking her head, causing the frozen sea of black hair to ripple in silken waves. “So, the strange man who stares at the monument to death can appreciate life!” She laughed and moved closer to me.

“Your name?” I said, standing tall now, my spirit alight with faith in this woman and her beauty.

“Ava. I am here on my own will. My family does not know.”

I swallowed. “Your family?”

“This is our mausoleum. And she was my sister, though she died when I was too young to know her.” Ava sighed, her eyes deepening in their icy blue as a soft strand of hair fell across her brow.

“Why are you here?”

“Why are you?” she said, tilting her chin up and searching my eyes.

“Because I am bored with the ugliness of daily living. In this mausoleum…” I paused and shivered as I realized how much this monument of beautiful death gave me life. “In it I see something more. Beyond the mundane. Something to move towards.” I sighed and looked up at the familiar spires which looked taller and sharper than ever before. “In its stillness. In its reality, its unmovable beauty, I see something I am missing myself. I’ve built up my body. I have a nice job. But none of it is worthy of this. Nothing I do will be remembered. Nor will it last. I often feel more dead than your sister entombed there.”

Silence followed my speech. I didn’t look to see her response. I was lost once more in the contemplation of something I was not worthy of. Even with this new ripple of excitement, the boredom at being myself was more pronounced than ever before. The silence was filled with nature, the murmuring ripple of the summer breeze. The sharp sunlight that pressed against the black stone, seeking to pierce its depths in vain. The graveyard flowers filled the sultry air with the scent of fresh life. I breathed it all in.

“I came here because you seemed so entranced in all the pictures and surveillance we have. You pushed away our attempt at intimidation as if this mausoleum and my sister were as much a part of you as it is to me and my blood. We sought to drive you away because we are of renown, and to have someone so unknown and strange standing before this was unbecoming of our noble image. But hearing you now… Lord forgive me, but nothing nobler have I heard outside of the books I’ve read. You speak like a poet. And you speak as a fool.” She stopped talking and her silence drew me back towards her. I looked at her eyes, which were dark and wide now that she squinted, yet more distant than any imagined mausoleum I longed for. “I came here on my own. My family doesn’t know, though they will surely see. But I had to see you for myself.” She shook her head, her hair spread about her like a mare’s mane.

She turned and left. I did not watch her exodus. I turned back towards the mausoleum and let myself go into its familiar black. What had changed? I still returned as usual, even after all that, to my beloved sign of beautiful death, and I stood the same as before. Yet how could I resist the temptation to sometimes look away, imagining I saw the form of Ava in one shadow or another? Still, she did not return. And for a time, nobody from her family did. It seemed to be the case that they had resigned to the fact of my resolve, however much it pained them. Did people know of me? Did people gossip of the strange man who spent so much time before the mausoleum? Probably. But gossip bored me. And whatever others said or did, it had no hold on my actions unless they sought to interfere. Nobody did, at least for a time. I lived in a city, not so large as to swallow up all those strange souls like me, but large enough that such eccentricities were expected to an extent.

Alas, the summer was coming to an end. Soon I’d have to return to my work and my visits to the mausoleum would once more be shortened to a more respectable trickling appearance in the eyes of the family. Or so I figured. Maybe this knowledge emboldened me, as I was spending more and more time there, more so than ever before, as if to dare them to act. Why hadn’t she returned? Ava. The beauty like that of a living monument, beyond memorial as she so consumed life. The beauty around her was swallowed. What was bright appeared dim in such a countenance as hers.

Sometimes when I stared at the black mausoleum I saw her surging hair, her bright eyes looking over the spires and failing to see me. And now there were two monuments of unreachable beauty that I could only contemplate, yet had no way of knowing. My silent contemplation continued as the summer swayed into a mild autumn, until one day again, my silence was interrupted. My heart leapt as I heard voices call out for me. But when I turned, Ava was not there. Three men in black suits, like the one that enforcer thug had worn, came to me.

“We’d like you to come with us,” the bald and pale one in the front said. The two men at his side were strong and tall, but of blank and average appearance.

I shrugged at them. “I’d rather stay here.”

“We’d really prefer you came of your own will,” he said, stepping in front of me and blocking out the mausoleum with his height. The spires soared above his body like they had sprouted from him and sought to flee their unworthy root.

“And why would I do that?” I calmly said, focusing my eyes on the spires.

There was danger here and an obvious threat, yet whatever they sought to do through intimidation was much less interesting than my hope of her return and my ceaseless reflections on the mausoleum.

“We aren’t here to take you to some back alley. We are here and sent from the family, who is of noble and righteous stock. They want to meet you. They want you to come and see.”

My heart skipped and my eyes lowered. “And why would they want to see me, the strange blight to their proper appearance to the rest of this ugly city?”

His flat face went blank and still, and his pinpoint eyes looked at me with confusion. “They did not say, nor is it our place to ask. But I can swear to you that they want you to come to them. Anything more, I cannot say.”

“Then I will come.”

I followed the three men without glancing back at my glorious mausoleum, for the road ahead would hopefully bring me closer to being worthy of one that was truly my own. I entered their roomy black Rolls-Royce, luxurious and beyond anything my poor little teacher eyes had seen. Yet the beauty of the car was lost to me as I envisioned her, Ava, standing alone in that black dress like a living shrine to beauty.

We silently drove along; no words were spoken, and I was grateful for it. I had no questions to ask, and they no doubt could not have answered them even if I had. The cityscape, dull and gray, peeled back as we left behind the busybodies who suffered under the boredom of working to die. How my heart leapt, not caring about any danger, only alive with the heat of a movement into something more. Was this what it took? Was this the act of contemplation made concrete? Yet in the spinning of my mind, I couldn’t help but doubt that this was not my answer, for it hadn’t come through my own acting. If anything, this had all happened because of my inaction, my standing still in my reflections on something I longed to be but grew no closer to through ceaselessly staring. None of this was due to my worth, my own reflections hadn’t burned out into worthy self-willed actions. I simply had waited.

Is the answer to boredom in doing nothing? Can a man escape the nothingness of daily distraction in unworthy somethings, by dissolution to all the ugliness outside? But something had to come from the dissolution, like creation had come from the nothing in the beginning of all. In the black of the mausoleum, I’d immersed myself in a darkness that was the unpolluted self, relating only to the beautiful. Still, it was not yet myself or my own. Now it was time for my nothing to become something. The car continued on its way, taking my thoughts into the potential act of making something out of my nothing.

The gray blights of the artificially lit city had darkened behind us, and night rapidly descended as we continued to drive. How far was this manor of theirs? The sky was full of clouds and their silhouettes sought in vain to blot out the full moon, its pale circle always riding above the sea of black below. Its light was of a pink-white color that suggested the image of a glowing pearl.

At last, after our silent crawl through the countryside, a towering fortress revealed itself in all its glory, beating back the night with its presence, and swallowing the moon’s glow and spouting it back twice as bright. It was a massive structure built of completely white stone, and it branched out into three arms with marble pillars lining the front, each holding up an elegant arched roof with wide balconies running along the great home.

We pulled through the silver-toned, wrought iron gates which were interlocked by towers of pale, tan stone. We headed up the wide driveway where a backlit circular fountain played its continuous arpeggio of blooming water bursting free from a mischievous looking marble satyr’s grinning mouth. The car came to a slow halt, and I waited for the men to let me out. They walked me to the main doors of the manor, the splendor of the doors befitting the surrounding glory. They were made of gold-foiled bronze with swirling triskelions etched in seamless continuity along the borders. The two door knockers were silver-headed wolves with their jaws clenched around golden rings.

My three burly escorts didn’t need to knock as the doors were flung open. A distinguished looking butler took my arm and led me into the foyer. Here my eye for detail was lost, and the rich colors and furnishings so overwhelmed me that I sought refuge in the blackness of the mausoleum which always remained somewhere in my inner sight. I can only say that while the outer manor was of hard stone and pristine white, the inner was of rich mahogany and deep colored wood that made one feel as if the entire interior had been carved out from some ancient forest.

But the powerful beauty of the interior was nothing to the face that greeted me. Ava stood there and I lost myself in her beauty. She wore a dress of dark ocean blue—it pooled around her goddess form and stopped in a circle just at her ankles. And her feet were exposed in their golden slopes like two Greek arches, wrapped in olive-colored sandals. Her eyes were even brighter in the well-lit room, brighter than all the light around. They were so wide and battened by thick dark eyelashes that they seemed to close me off from any other lesser forms of light. A face carved of soft marble, prominent nose adding classical weight, and cheekbones so profound that any truth was pierced by their perfection. She was not alone, but stood beside two others, yet how could I note what the other two looked like when presented with such an image as hers.

“We’ve watched you very much this past year,” one of the other two said.

I forced myself to look away from Ava, who seemed unwilling to take me in the way her eyes looked right on through mine, as if I were unworthy or perhaps not real in her sight. The one who spoke was an older man, a high and tight hair cut speckled with black and grey, his face sharp and cold.

“We would have preferred you to leave our dear daughter alone in her rest.” He paused and looked over at Ava as if she were the one buried there. “But you persisted, staring at that grave as if the stones themselves spoke to you.” He stopped talking and stared at me as he stroked his squared, bare chin that had a dimple in the middle like a cleft in a powerful mountain.

“What is your name, dear?” Now the woman spoke. Just like her daughter, she had a dark and serious beauty around her, only more distinguished and refined by her age. If not for the slight crinkle in her wry grin as she looked at me, it would have been hard to place any exact year on her, so ageless did she appear.

“Conrad,” I said.

“A fine name.” Her smile spread out like a mother’s arms, and the warmth of it soothed my anxious spirit. “We apologize for sending our dear friend to persuade you to leave in the past. But hear me now: your persistence and monk-like… no… more noble, more animal… wolf-like focus on the mausoleum is something we’ve never seen. Do you even know who our family is?”

“No idea,” I calmly said. “The mausoleum drew me alone. Not the name attached to it, nor the body that rests in it.” I paused, but they seemed unoffended, so I continued. “It is nothing I haven’t spoken of to your daughter. She once came to me there… I never saw her again. And then I started to see her in the stones.” I swallowed and looked over at her, yet her eyes remained uninterested in mine. “Forgive me if I speak so unclearly. What I mean to say is that the mausoleum represents my desire for something more, and in its hard black stones there is something concrete. It holds a meaning that represents beautiful death and in doing so, the fullness of life. It is that of which I do not possess. I find myself so lacking, no matter what I strive for or do. I speak so freely now because this obsession is the only thing that makes sense to me in a world so senseless. It is the boredom of despair at being stuck in a world not worth living in. But in the mausoleum, I have found a semblance of worth. How I long for this worth to touch my own soul! That is what I contemplate and in spending so much time in its presence, it seemed as though my waiting was only a forging of something more. Though I then could not know it!” I finished with a passionate wave of my arms, and with heaving breath and darting eyes, I looked at my listeners. I could make no sense of their blank faces. They betrayed nothing.

“Do you know why we’ve brought you here?” Ava asked, at last acknowledging me, her eyes meeting mine yet remaining distant and cool like a far-fogged ocean blue refusing to reveal itself in fullness.

“To make me stop standing there and making an awkward spot on the trousers of your family name.” I shrugged and smirked, making no effort to keep the bitterness from my remark.

Now her father spoke, saying sharply, “Your obsession with our mausoleum has caused an uproar, though in your aloofness I doubt you noticed the pointing fingers and whispers around you. A man stands before a dead woman for hours on end, every day, rain or shine. What do you expect? People say you’re some lost lover of our daughter. Others say you are our kin. And still others say you are simply some madman lost in psychosis and better left alone.” He took a long, drawn out breath and made his features as smooth as they could be for one with so sharp and square a face. “We took you in because Ava told me what you said to her. You feel more dead than her sister because what you do you think will not last. So, your mind is so fixed on this strange ideal… and we honor this for reasons you cannot yet know. We are no simple people here. Despite our wealth displayed in such a home as this, our money is directed and focused on much more important matters.” And now he glared at me, his brow lowered and jutted like a bulge at the ocean’s floor. “We say that perhaps you too can matter.”

I frowned and looked at each of their faces. What was this? What did they want with me? My only crime was perhaps loitering but nothing more, and nothing so egregious as to bring upon me such strange and dangerous circumstances. For danger was oppressive in the well-conditioned air. Their bodies all stood tense and upright, despite their faces projecting a calm coolness. There was much more to all this than simply my lingering at the mausoleum. There had to be some reason why they’d drive me out here and not just file a complaint with the law enforcement that they no doubt had sway over.

“I ask of you only this, will you dine with us?” the father said. The corners of his eyes twitched ever so slightly in such a way that repulsed me. He seemed afraid of my denial.

What did they think I wanted, or perhaps better yet, what did they want with me? “I suppose I will.” I tried to keep my voice steady but spoke slowly and with a slight shake that I couldn’t quite keep from faltering into an awkward, higher pitch.

“Then we feast!” The mother shouted.

I turned my attention again to Ava and this time she stared at me with frightening clarity. Her eyes seemed to mock me in their cold gray, two ice caps like impenetrable glaciers refusing to let me know the person beneath. Hardly windows! Where was the soul? Now my desire for her beauty was faded into a sudden fear for my wellbeing. And to think I was bored with my old life! Here I was in the face of such wealth and power, yet all I could think of was the safety of my old dreams. Distance kept yet closeness desired. Once that closeness comes near, fear runs rampant and a man reveals himself. Is he worthy of what he desired? Or does he long to flee and return to the distance he’d for so long hid himself in? That was where I now stood, in the whirlwind of actuality, the closeness of my mausoleum blazing forth in life, and I could feel something coming nearer. What was it? There was nothing normal about any of this. I couldn’t help but feel set up.

I turned from her frozen eyes and followed the mother and father through the grand foyer and down another long and wide hall, lined with headless marble statues carved in masculine, nude forms and in various warlike poses, some with weapon and some without. I swallowed my fear and doubt, gulping stale air hard and heavy as I tried not to dwell on the stone specters threatening me along the walls. Finally, we reached the end of the hellway and found ourselves in a dining room just as large and grand as the foyer, with the same ancient wood rich and knotted all around. The table was already covered with silver plates filled to the brim with every culinary delight one might imagine. I could hardly describe the sight of this vast array of food, but try to imagine full-bodied animals roasted to the finest golden hue, plump chickens, ducks, plucked and prepared in the most masterful of ways. Airy, golden bread… as a matter of fact, much of the food had an almost golden luster which was intensified by the silver plates they rested upon.

I waited for my wealthy patrons to be seated but was hastily directed by a butler to sit in the chair right in the center of the long, wide table. It was strange to see such a table filled with all this food, and yet the eight other chairs on the far side of the table empty. We all sat gathered on the one side of the table as if the other side were part of a sinking ship. Yes, our last supper! God save me! The father sat to the far left of me, Ava to the right of me with two chairs in between, and the mother to her immediate right.

“I thank you sir, and your good family for having this all prepared. But what have I done to deserve such a welcome? Have I not been a hinderance to your name?” I paused, but was unable to read their flattened faces, and continued, “I have done nothing but bother. I cannot comprehend.”

The father cleared his throat. “But you have showed us something. And now we will see if you can continue to do so. Waiter!” he shouted, and out came a bustling young man of unremarkable appearance, with an unlabeled bottle of what I assumed was some fancy wine.

The waiter came to me first and poured out a liquid as gold as the food around us, and I frowned as its sweet scent wafted from the glass and made me uneasy. How could wine, or champagne, or whatever this drink was, smell of honey so saccharine? Yet my glass was full, and it sparkled temptingly. The waiter proceeded to pour out this strange nectar into the surrounding glasses.

“We drink to eternity!” Ava shouted with such ferocity that I started straight up in my seat.

I was entranced by her priestess-like appearance and I wanted her more than ever before as those cold eyes melted in the heat of her fervor. She stared into her glass which she now held up in a toast… or perhaps an offering. I didn’t know, but I followed her lead and drank of the cup as she did too. And the sweetness of the drink overcame all my senses, until my sight, my taste, even my hearing, was burned in a golden blaze. And as the golden light intensified—seeming to exude from every object, everything, the very air itself—I was swallowed up in the sweetness of being until a sudden darkness blotted me out, and I was no more.

But there in that strange and sudden black… a light! Yes, a bright light on my dark horizon! Whatever I’d become, I willed myself towards this light, for there was nothing else. And as my being crawled, I could feel my legs sprout beneath me. And as my body returned, so did the light, and I found that I was no longer dining in some grandiose hall, but outdoors in the midst of a dark and emerald forest so dense and thick that the sunlight now above me was filtered in such a way as to appear almost as moonlight, or as a sort of eternally twisted twilight which this forest itself only knew and possessed.

The golden light on my dark horizon was gone, and now only this lush and dark forest remained. I turned around to look behind me, and the same forest stretched on all sides. All I could know, was that there was something here for me… or maybe something hunting me. What was it? Who was I? I shuddered as I struggled to recall anything proceeding this forest. Had I not always been here? Where was I to go? There had been a banquet… it was too hazy to imagine so I brought myself back to the present.

The trees around me were tall, black pines of some northern variety but elongated into such shadowy heights as to seem more nightmarish than any possible reality. I walked forward and tried to recall how it was that I’d come to such a place. My mind refused to settle on one thought, and the more I focused, the more impossible my task became as my head ached and the chill of the forest intensified. In fact, the more I tried to make sense of it all, the more noises broke free from the surrounding trees. Howling wind shrieking so strongly it might well have been wolves, or very well could have been both. Perhaps wolves riding the wind. It seemed possible here. The shrill tear of this canine wind struck all around me, leaving my body untouched but assaulting my hearing, bursting any clear bubble of conscious clarity that I managed to for a moment catch a hint of. My thoughts became as murky as the gloom around me, and I found myself more and more enveloped in this new mode of being, that of the forest and nothing before or after. With such acceptance, a scent now came with the whipping of the wind, and it was of such a kind that is hard to fathom. Imagine overripe fruit that one moment smells sweet in a tempting sort of way, and the next smells of rot and refuse. The simultaneous back and forth was nauseating as I continued my stumbling forward.

At last, my sight offered a new sense, and I saw two glinting eyes, red as Mars, burning ahead of me. They hovered there straight in my way as if they’d suddenly decided to at last reveal themselves in plain sight. The eyes belonged to a beast of a hideously fantastic sort. It had the head of a dragon with the body of a wolf. The head was covered in scales of a midnight purple hue, and it had a mane of white fur around its neck. The beast’s body was plumed in a deep scarlet color, and it had a furless, rat-like tail at its back. Perhaps strangest and most grotesquely of all were the beast’s broken and stunted wings. They were leathery and black like a bat, but they lamely hung at the beast’s sides and were much too small and gangly to be of any use.

The beast ran like a wolf towards me, and then slithered like a serpent. Its useless wings twitched like a trapped fly desperate to break free from a spider’s web. I stood there without much thought, awaiting whatever desolation was to come. The beast panted like a dog and a bloated, purple, forked tongue hung out from its mouth. That mouth! It was full of stalagmite-like teeth that remained sharp and jutting outside even when its mouth was shut.

“What are you?” I murmured, giving a start at hearing my voice so detached from my body in this place. It seemed harsh and belonging to someone else.

Of course, the beast could not speak, but it seemed to have some understanding of my words as it fell to its belly and slithered up to me. I shivered and did not move as it nuzzled its cold and slimy scales against me like some satanic feline. It growled in such a weak and warm way that I think it might have been its attempt at purring, of all things.

“Her name is Erin,” a sweet voice said behind me.

I turned around with the beast still nuzzled against my side and saw a woman of pure beauty. I remembered her from before. Ava. Yet now she stood clothed in light, her body hidden in a bright white and her face shining like a sunlit moon, with those same blue eyes swirling like arctic whirlpools.

“And why is she attached to my side like this?” I asked.

“She is yours, my dear child. You have no idea what this forest is. You have no idea of the vast darkness of your own soul. How can you hope to comprehend what you cannot recognize in yourself?”

“But… what am I to do with all this?” I threw my arms up and Erin cowered away from me.

“You long for a worthy grave, so find it. If you cannot find it here, you will never find it out there.”

I frowned. Her face had grown brighter as she spoke, and now the light that cloaked her body swallowed up her head until she was nothing but a burning white orb. Her light continued to grow, until it swallowed me up, and in a sudden flash it was gone, and I was alone. Or… not completely, as Erin remained cowering there in front of me. Not wanting to look at the foul beast, I walked by her and continued my hopeless trek. I didn’t need to look back to know that Erin was slinking behind me, close enough to serve as a hideous shadow to myself.

A worthy grave, was it? So be it! I guess that meant I was meant to die here. But that hardly meant much when I didn’t know what “here” was, or who I even was, or had been, or was now. I walked forward with my dark shadow behind me, with no expectation but just a heavy sense of necessity. What use was it to wait and decay without an idea of who I was? The trees remained as ever present and surrounding as always, and the sunlight above remained trapped in an eternal twilight from the strangling reach of the dark evergreens. I didn’t feel any physical exhaustion as I went on, but my will was weakening and my resolve darkening with each heedless step ahead.

Perhaps I had slowed down without realizing it, or perhaps Erin had grown impatient in my stead, as the beast loped ahead of me and off to the left. I briefly considered ignoring her and continuing straight, but because of the ferocious way she stood staring me down with those red eyes and growling at me as if aware of my stubborn thoughts, I decided to follow her lead. My own steps had been quite fruitless for some time anyway.

Erin trotted ahead of me in her half-slithering, half-prancing gait with her little wings longing to soar. My walk had become a sort of jog that awkwardly matched her ghastly movement. Now at least, a change on the horizon appeared. We were still in the forest of course, but now before us stood a silver, columned temple in a state of ancient ruin. It was the color of foggy moonlight, and it had six columns holding up its triangular, marble roof. Or at least they had been holding it up long ago. Three of the columns were broken in half, toppled over, and the roof sagged and leaned in such a way that I figured the only thing really keeping it in place was the red ivy that covered the top of the temple and snaked down the columns, stretching out like veins along its base. The color of the stone was pristine and polished as if time had respected its glow… or had tried and failed to taint it and had been forced to satisfy itself elsewhere through the toppling of the columns.

Erin wagged her ratty tail back and forth, proud of her achievement and expecting of my loving embrace. I looked away from her as she begged and whimpered, and I stepped towards the broken temple. I walked beneath the pillars and through the arched door, which was nothing but a black hole. Yet when I crossed the threshold I was struck with a brilliant light and blinded. I found myself heading downward without sight and almost by compulsion, the stairs leading me who knew where. At last, the floor was level, and as my feet touched the ground, I heard the roaring of the sea. My blindness was banished at this noise and an incredible sight revealed itself in front of me. I now stood on black shores in front of a frothing ocean of stormy red. The sky was gray but there was a dull light that seemed to hang in the background without apparent source.

The ocean smelled of iron, and my face was struck with a sudden warmth, a humidity fitting of some tropic paradise, though my eyes could hardly attach such a sense to what I was feeling. I was so stunned by the sudden appearance of such an impossible setting that I’d nearly forgotten how I’d come here in the first place. I turned around to see the staircase gone and the forest and its broken temple nowhere to be seen. Even stranger, behind me the same red ocean surged; I apparently stood on the only small stretch of shore to be seen.

And how I missed my beast! Erin was gone too. Had she not followed me into the temple? Was I alone again? I found myself actually longing for her ugly head to look at me with the understanding she’d so unconditionally shown. There was little I could do here but stand useless before the terrible sight of this ruby sea. The smell of iron became more and more oppressive and I began to think that the ocean was not of water but of blood. Was the black shore I stood on but a vessel that would soon be filled?

I fell to my knees and dug my hands into the cold black sand, letting it run through my fingers as I stared at my own nothingness in the face of such power. “What is the point?” I mumbled. I clenched my fists and threw the black sand at the red ocean. “What is the point!” I screamed. And the ocean answered me in thunder.

Where do you point? The ocean is wide and requires no guide. The compass of self. Encompass the self. Inhabit the nothing. Be the nothing. In the beginning was void. In the beginning was spirit. In the beginning was water. Light burned the black red. The dust became breath. The ocean blood. The mind the sun. The moon the soul. And a body arose from the mingling of all. Can the self rise with the sun? Not without the moon. Not without the blood. In the beginning was nothing. But there was something before. Become the nothing to know the something. The compass of the self. The creation of the self. Something from nothing. You are. You will.

The ocean ceased speaking and its red waves peeled back, opening up a path of white sand beneath. The water like liquid iron formed canyon walls of shimmering crimson light. I got up from my knees and walked forward. As soon as I stepped upon the white sand the walls caved in and the blood buried me in a burning baptism. I swallowed the iron and saw only red. And then just as suddenly, I was tossed gasping back into the forest, out from the black entrance of the ruined temple of moonlight. As I flopped like a fish, I heard a crash. The temple at last collapsed in a heap of stone, no longer glowing, but now as black as the towering trees around me.

I felt a hot tongue scraping against the nape of my neck, and I cried out in joy at my Erin looking over me. I hugged her scaly skin to my breast and kissed her ugly snout, and she purred and kissed me back. Overjoyed and holding her, I grasped her mane and pulled myself to my feet. But as the joy of freedom waned, the reality of the forest remained as bleak as ever. I was still stuck here. Still me. Still unsure of who I was, why I was, and what I was to do.

“Will you guide me to where I must go next?” I asked, bending my knee and stroking her mane.

She whined and shook her great dragon’s head from side to side and looked at me with a sorry sort of expectation. So, I would have to lead again. But where? How long was I to walk through this land of inconsolable darkness? Useless questions when little choice was offered. I supposed I could have just not moved at all and laid down in despair, letting myself die. Though I felt as if Erin wouldn’t have let me be so weak. Nor was it my desire. The ocean of blood had swallowed any thoughts of turning back. Its warmth had seeped in and flooded my own blood with mightier currents.

I went forward and continued my walk through the forest. Erin walked beside me, her red eyes anxiously looking up at me, and then eagerly ahead. But she restrained herself and stayed there, matching my strides with a slow slither. Her wings, still as pathetic as ever, had ceased their awkward and desperate twitching at impossible flight. They now hung at her sides relaxed like worn sails grateful for a calm sea. We walked once more for some unknown time, as if ages were contained within every moment. The trees remained unchanged, until again something appeared in my line of sight that was bright and unfamiliar.

An empty door frame carved of freshly sanded wood stood alone and straight with nothing holding it up, as if some invisible string were tied above in perfect tension. I approached the door with renewed expectation, considering what had taken place at the ruined temple. Erin hissed at the door frame and curled up off to the side with her gross tail tucked under her chin. She watched me with fear but did not budge, for she knew as well as I did that I had to go through this alone too. I nodded at her and stepped through the frame and was again struck blind by white light.

As my vision cleared, I was no longer in my forest of darkness but now in an infinite desert of yellow sand. Dunes swirled up in the distance in precipices of blazing bronze, and the sky was lit by a brilliant white sun that scorched the air with its impossible size. It took up half of the heavens, and its hot light stained the surrounding sky with a bright gold. The heat of the desert and its unbearable sun was heavy and dry. I wanted to turn back and go to my cool forest, yet I didn’t bother turning for I knew it would be gone. In truth, I wanted to proceed.

Along with the oppressive heat came the scent of smoke, though I could not make out what might be cooking. I went forward and doggedly marched towards the tallest and closest looking sand dune I could find. Once I neared its slopes, I scraped my way up like a cockroach, scurrying as fast as I could before my footing failed me. Yet it was to no avail: I slid back down the slope only about halfway up. Again, I tried my climbing, this time slower, and my slowness brought me even less far. The sand was loose and hot, and my sweat ran down my body and drowned my eyes with stinging salt. Resolving to make it this time with all my power and fury, I dug into the sliding sand and loped up it like a mad mountain goat. At last I met its summit.

Now standing atop this loose and everchanging peak, I looked out upon not more desert, but a shining city of a rich turquoise light. Large onion dome roofs towered about like ever-extending flower buds, forever trapped in the frustrated potentiality of being ready to bloom. Their rich and deep colors were dark under the sun, the deep hues swallowing its burning light and then proceeding to emit its own glimmering sparkle like that of a green sea. I eagerly slid down the other side of the dune and raced towards the bejeweled city, eager to find people like myself.

Joyously, this was no mirage or haunted abode, but truly a living city that was inhabited by a proud and beautiful looking people. As I approached its limits, I found it interesting that there were no walls around it, no gate, only the sudden start of civilization with no clear break from desert. There were buildings arrayed on the outskirts in such a way as to inhabit a strange in between realm of the wild desert and the urban society within. Even more splendidly, not a building was without a turquoise dome, and all the buildings were of large enough size to not look ridiculous with such remarkable crowns.

A bare-breasted woman of rich olive complexion clothed in a loose pearl-pink skirt beat the sand out of laundry in her yard. Children ran about with their tan skin exposed in the sun, its white heat a familiar companion that only strengthened their dark complexions and smiling faces. Most of the people had white-blonde hair matching the color of their enlarged sun. I found myself smiling along with the children as I walked further into the city of turquoise. The streets were built with worn, tanned stones and the walls of the buildings lining the curving streets were made of tiles of all colors, forming geometric shapes and patterns that swam around like schools of fish at the surface of a sun-drenched sea.

The beauty of the city was matched—even surpassed—by the beauty of the people I passed. Their golden hair flowing over bronze skin was like something out of some ancient mythology, and I drank it all in yet was too shy to speak to any of them. Some of them noticed me, as one might expect when a pale stranger such as myself wandered into their midst, though they only smiled and did not intrude. How I wished for their intrusion!

I went up to a woman who stood alone, clothed in loose white silk that was split from top to bottom and exposed the flat, bronze expanse of her stomach. Her eyes were green, and her hair a red gold which was rarer among the mostly snow-like hair that surrounded me.

I smiled at her and she returned the gesture, though her eyes, bright like gemstones, held a glint of detached suspicion as if their color had darkened into that of the forest I’d left behind.

“Madame,” I began, trying to sound as stately and respectful as I could, “Where is it that I have arrived?”

Her brow furrowed and her nose crinkled, and I felt my heart quicken at her pure beauty. She had a dusting of freckles across her tanned face, and there was not a drop of fat to be found, only prominent bone structure like an elegant feline. Her ears were pinned back, the lobes attached to her head, and her wild sunset hair was pulled in a messy bun that failed to contain its thickness.

“You do not know?” She shook her head and her hair struggled to break free as it wobbled atop her sloped skull. “This is the City of Turquoise, where life is all and death is nothing. The center of being.”

“You speak of this place as if it is not merely a location, but something more.” I rubbed my cheek and thought back to that fiery ocean, and to the forest too. What was my connection to this place? “I came here from a forest through an empty doorframe.”

“We know.” She took a deep breath and pointed her slender hand up at the looming sun. “There is no night here, and our endless day is about to be fulfilled. The sun gets larger every moment. Soon it will swallow us whole.”

I shivered, first at the thought that she somehow knew of my arrival, and then at the threat of annihilation from the white sun, which now seemed even larger with my knowledge of its coming.

“You all seem so at peace here… joyful. Why do you not leave? Or do something?”

She laughed, her red lips exposing white, square teeth. “You do not flee life. You are always doing something when at the center of being.”

I swallowed dryly and looked at her unworried smile. “And you said you knew of me… how I came. And you referred not just to yourself, but to ‘we’. How?”

“Your forest, your ocean, your beast. And so here too—your city. I will say nothing more, for we too are a part of you.”

“Then what must I do?”

“Swallow the sun before it swallows you.” She suddenly grabbed my face with her soft hands, pulling me close and looking me dead in the eyes. She held me there for a moment and nodded, before letting me go with a determined smile. “Head to your palace. There you will be prepared.” She pointed over my shoulder and I followed her manicured finger to see a building that towered over the rest. It had four large turquoise domes over a fortress of tanned sandstone sparkling with swirls of rubies on its walls.

“What is your name?” I asked her.

“Carob. And perhaps you’ll know me once you do what you must.”

I nodded at her and walked towards this palace that she said was my own. Was this city mine too, then? Was this all me? I shook my head. It seemed as though the white-haired people now looked at me not with mere smiles, but strong nods of recognition and kinship. Perhaps they had participated in the conversation. They all seemed to know more about me than I knew myself. They watched me quietly, and the joyful city grew silent as they rested in my action, and I felt a something welling within. An eagerness towards something. The fear of the sun’s wrath was nowhere to be found within in me, only an excitement at the prospect of doing something to greet such greatness with my own action.

With all this driving me forward, I walked into the palace, for it had neither guards nor doors, only a great opening under amethyst pillars, seven of which formed an expansive portico at the entrance. And through this entrance I walked to a throne room of opulence and power. Here, every gemstone known and unknown covered the floors, walls, and ceilings, and seemed to possess their own light. What a spectrum of color! Forgive me for even trying to describe what I saw, but I can only say it was like walking in a room full of infinite rainbow that was solid yet brighter and realer than any promise one might espy when the sun shines haughtily after a rain-soaked day.

Notwithstanding the near blinding splendor of the ocean of multicolored gemstones, there was an even more impressive sight high above the rest. There at the center of the room stood a throne, so large that no mere man could sit in it without appearing like a child. This empty throne was made entirely of turquoise gems, yet it shined brighter than the rainbows around it. Like the heavens bursting forever entwined in stone, it seemed like the full expanse of the sky was right there in this lone and lofty seat. And beside the stone were two headless statues of men, which reminded me of something I’d once seen, though I could not clearly recall where. They held long swords and were made entirely of gold. But I looked closer at their forms and noticed that they were not without faces, for their faces were in their chests. The one on the left had a roaring lion at his breast, and the one on the right a screaming eagle.

I stood before the throne and stared at it. The more I looked, the more I began to remember what it had been that I had longed for in the past… that plane of existence which bore no resemblance to my being but was merely some shadow which no light could banish. In that past, there had been a mausoleum. And how I had stared and contemplated its black beauty! But this throne burned brighter than that monument, burned brighter than Ava, and burned brighter than all else I had ever known. I had no desire to stand there contemplating, and in a burst of rapture, I threw myself onto its seat, clinging to its giant back like an infant to its mother’s breasts. In such an immediate embrace, I became like flame, and a storm of powerful longing and fullness raged within, greater than the sea of blood, higher and more a part of my self than anything else. It was this moreness of the self that was only enhanced by the paradoxical notion that this moreness belonged to the infinite, and from it flowed my being, and I was it, yet it was not merely me but a more… always more. With such power I longed only to keep it close with a childlike innocence in cherishing a loving gift from a parent. It was not about what I could do with it, but that I now had it in my hold, and that I would never let go.

As if the throne were aware of my satiation, the image of the falling white sun returned to my mind and I knew then that the throne was within me, and that to stay here holding onto this moment would be to lose it forever. I leapt from the great turquoise throne and ran out from the palace, ready to face the sun.

The city of being was burning, the domes glowing in strange white-blue fire like stars in day. And what of the people? All that remained of them were piles of ashes. Above the flames and ash was the white sun, now so large that there was no sky left. I glared into its flame and withstood its impossible scorch—somehow this sun was not merely a ball of gas but something more… yes, if not like the throne it was still a something more. Something I must also embrace. I turned back to look at the palace, which was untouched by the fire and still as whole as ever. It was even more resplendent in glory as the white light glinted off the burning blue in a celestial haze.

I ran to one of its pillars and wrapped my arms around it. I pulled myself up and shimmied to the ledge of the roof, hoisting myself onto it and scrambling to my feet as I raced for the highest domed tower. I scaled the jutting stone walls of the tower that protruded and made for sturdy and solid footholds. At last, I reached the top of the highest onion dome. Its turquoise was like a shimmering beetle’s wings buzzing at noon. It was smooth to the touch and impossible to scale. I smashed my fist into it with impatience, frustrated at my halted ascent. I somehow knew that I needed to be atop this dome to greet the coming sun. I was driven by the fire alight within me, which was just as dominant as the scorched landscape. Again, I smacked my fist into the dome, scheming desperately for a way over this last impediment.

On the ledge I now stood, pressed up against the dome, there was little else I could do but throw myself forward in one last desperate charge. I jumped up onto the incline of the dome and with two great bounds and nothing to hold onto, I leapt for the rounded peak. With outstretched fingertips, I held onto the top and pulled myself with all my might, my feet scraping across the smooth turquoise. And now like a mountain climber standing on a narrow summit, I stood balanced atop the dome, with the white sun glaring down at me from above.

I released my hold on the top, and stood with my feet firmly planted and my knees clutching the point of the dome. I stretched out my arms like a prophet and welcomed my sun.

“Come! Swallow the city whole and I will swallow you!” I shouted.

And like the ocean had spoken before, so now did the sun, in that same voice of thunder.

You stand on the precipice and don’t fall

No glory for those who reflect

You stand on the precipice firm yet small

No glory for those of respect

Abandon yourself to the burning act

There is truth in passion

Abandon yourself to the higher fact

There is truth when ashen

Embers of being in those who climb

The slumbering ones do not see

Embers of being beyond all time

The watchers lack eternity

The sun stopped its thunderous song and now its scorch at last touched my skin. I burned up, and before it could take me under without my own movement, I leapt off the dome and into the falling sun. Its white fire lifted me up and I was wafted into its circle in a pillar of smoke.

And as I solidified, I was in the forest, though this time I stood up and smiled at Erin who happily came to my side. Patting the great beast, I walked away from the doorframe which had fallen into a pile of gray ash. I headed off in a new direction with Erin looking to me for guidance. The forest was thinning, and the trees were growing sparser and more spread out, though they were still the only objects within sight. The light above, which had been a sort of twilight before, was now a golden hue like that of the dawn. Ahead of me I saw a shimmering pool in a perfect circle without banks or walls.

The water stopped at the edges and luscious forest undergrowth ran right around as if to keep it from any harm. The ivy that grew around the pool crowned it like a wreath. I walked up to its glassy surface and peered in. I saw no reflection, but only a clear green airiness in the water as if it were made of some invisible liquid. Though in its clarity, there was no bottom to be seen, only a distant green that could just be made out, though it ended in darkness. Erin too peered into the pool and we both stood staring at it. Was this another portal to yet another strange realm where I would have to act? The only way to answer the question was to leap in. I stripped off my clothes and dove in, as Erin whined behind me.

What a strange sensation this water brought about! It felt as if I’d been submerged in nothingness. There was no warmth or cold; the water didn’t even ripple from my movements as I floated there in the middle with my head above and my body below. The water smelt of nothing, no different than the air I’d breathed in the forest… though, no… that wasn’t quite accurate. Half-submerged in the water as I was, all my senses were dulled and pulled into that realm of nothingness. The water seemed to swallow it all. I took a deep breath of the air and dove as far as I could, and what a sightless sight I saw! I could keep my eyes open in the water and see just as if I were on land, but I still had to swim, and swim I did as I went down as deep as I could before being forced back to the surface for lack of air. So, it wasn’t a portal then. Now I had to wonder, what was it? I climbed out from the water… or tried to. But as soon as I swam to the edge I sank like a stone and lost all strength until I drifted back to the middle of the pool.

All the while Erin watched me and whined, scraping her taloned feet at the ivy edge, shaking and hissing as she could do nothing to help my predicament. Her sad little wings were fluttering desperately as if she sought now to fly above the pool to lift me out, but we both knew that was just as impossible as my climbing out of it on my own accord. Yet, the nothingness of the pool was not draining at all—if anything it made me feel stronger than ever as I treaded water in the middle. As long as I stayed there in the middle, I felt immortal with life at a steady increase that somehow leveled out yet climbed and climbed as my energy rose with it—a peaceful power.

A sudden roar surged out from the depths of the forest. I watched as Erin turned to face this fearsome noise, which again boomed like a coming stampede. A multitude of the most grotesque beasts appeared, storming forward from out of the dark and thicker parts of the forest that I’d left behind. The horrid sight of such a ghastly horde! They made my dear Erin look like a precious kitten compared to their hideousness and size. Some were like elephants, only instead of trunks, they had gross and dripping beaks. Others were like rhinoceroses, only instead of horns, they had squid-like tendrils squirming out from their bodies. There were gorillas the size of towers, with human faces and crab-like claws for hands. Essentially, the horde was made up of monstrosities of chaos, beasts mixed with other beasts that had no business being of the same kind. And those were just the ones I recognized as animals. There were others made of black mist, some like living mountains with red eyes—all beings of unknown origin and disgusting appearance. And they gathered around the pool, first on the one side, but as more and more poured out, they soon surrounded us until poor Erin was forced to join me in the waters, and she floated there in a strange sort of doggy paddle, barking and hissing at the monsters around us.

“Speak, you wicked and foul monstrosities!” I shouted.

Even floating in the nothingness, their stench penetrated my lack of sense and I can only say it was the smell of rot and death. I would have wretched, but that strange water I swam in strengthened my resolve. The monsters stood there still and staring, offering no answer but a collective groaning.

I watched them from the pool and tried to see what it was that they wanted. How did they come to me here? What was it that they saw in me? And what did I see in them? If I focused on the parts and not merely the whole of their multiplied repulsiveness, I could perhaps appreciate them a little… for if they were in this forest too, did that mean they were a part of me?

The parts. Yes, the parts. There in that elephant beast I could see strong legs that were wrinkled with age yet firm and steady with resolve. And over there, a smaller chimp-like form stooped, but his tail was like that of a peacock, with red feathers bright and wide. I searched and searched among the ugly whole, looking for parts not so offensive to the eye of beauty.

“What do you want from me?” I asked in a calm and steady voice that was carried and enhanced from the pool’s tonic-like effect.

“Are we nothing?” they all thundered in a voice of one, spreading out and then crashing against my ears in a strangled whisper. It was like the sound of a stagnant summer breeze beneath the boom of a storm, all at once.

“What are you to me?” I answered with a question of my own.

“We are as we are.”

“But is that all you are? I see parts that if separated from your whole, would be glories in their own right. Can you not see such parts, and can you not try to extend their reach into your own?”

“You. You. You. You say you. But are we not you too?”

I frowned and did not answer, though Erin let out a hissing howl that stung my ears.

“The forest is you. The ruined moon temple is you. The bloody sea is you. The falling sun is you. And as we are a part of this land, so we too are a part of you.”

I knew this but I resisted. “I have no such part of me so ugly.”

“Perhaps. But here we are. How do you relate to us?”

“The parts. And in the parts by the thread that binds the self together. But that thread goes much farther and higher than you.”

“Well answered. And what will you do now, stuck in your nothingness?”

I didn’t answer but felt the call to action, so immediate and clear, clearer than this crystal green water. I dove into the depths and swam and swam, and the farther down I got, the brighter it became. My lungs screamed and my mouth forced itself open in desperation, but when my body wanted to go back, just when it seemed like I’d give in, I felt a strong push from behind me, and there was Erin, her wings like perfect rudders in the water, and she pushed me deeper and deeper until all my air was depleted and the light of the endless deep consumed me whole.

***

I stood before the black mausoleum, in recollection of myself as Conrad, the man obsessed with the monument of death, alive once more. Only now I was more myself than ever before. For now, I could see how wrong I’d been. Had it all been a fever dream? Had my indulgent contemplation concocted such a hallucination as to distract myself from my unworthy stasis? How long had I stood here before this monument? How long? Ava was a myth. The family was a myth. This mausoleum and its beautiful dead heiress were both rotted with the past. Meanwhile I was rotted with the future. But now… Erin, my beast had pushed me back towards self-awareness and I’d left the forest of myself with four pillars of being holding me up. Blood, shadow, passion, and beauty. Yet what was one supposed to do once one recognized such pillars and made sure they were firm and understood? In the pool of nothingness, in which I had dived right through, there was my answer. I hadn’t fled, far from it. No, I conquered the nothingness by diving right through it in a feat of forward action. Pillars were of no use if they had nothing to hold up. And what was held up was of no use if it stayed forever level and of diminutive height, which inevitably sinks without renewal. Build upward with the pillars growing stronger under the ever-increasing weight of action.

Whatever my vision was, real or unreal, did not matter. For in my fevered imagination, I now understood what I had to do. No more could I merely stand in stillness, contemplating it all to death, reflecting and reflecting until I had no reflection of myself, but only a reflection’s reflection that dimmed each time I stared at the mirror of my increasingly faded self.  I turned my back to the mausoleum of beautiful death, for I had died to death. Now I had my own mausoleum to live for, for every breath I took was another towards becoming the being I constantly built up through action. What it was I had to do… I wasn’t sure. But I knew I had to do. To act. To live. My body was my mausoleum. And it would be a monument of beautiful life, as the weakness and ugliness within and without, died to myself.

Chapter 5

Poems of Nature

If Only Fairies Were Real

Fairies don’t exist.

The boy didn’t care as he skipped into the forest.

The sun dripped onto his bare shoulders.

A perfect day for fairies,

if only they existed.

The creek filtered through stones,

playing a watery arpeggio of

a harp more fine-tuned than any instrument of

human hands.

The boy ran through the tree limbs,

reaching out in a game of tag and

breaking through a silk chef-d’oeuvre.

He stopped.

“Sorry Mr. Spider.”

Onwards he continued.

The creek hadn’t ceased its performing.

It wanted him to enjoy it.

At long last he broke into the water.

The water hugged his ankles and didn’t let go.

It seemed as though the creek had missed him.

Laughing, he hopped through the water.

The water waved at him, rising and lowering,

kissing the bottoms of his mossy shorts.

The sun sifted through the canopy of green

and onto the creek’s surface.

Dust sparkled in the rays.

If he stood still,

he could hear tiny worlds humming to him.

But fairies don’t exist.

Cardinals chirping ripened the air,

luscious and sweet melodies that left the boy hungry

for more.

More melodies.

More miracles.

More magic.

The birds sang louder as if to appease him.

He was growing bored in the creek.

Where were the fairies?

He wanted less now.

Less melancholy.

Less madness.

Less moot.

Fairies don’t exist.

The boy cared as he trudged back to dry land.

The creek seemed to pull at him now.

The water no longer hugged but tugged,

an anchor that ensnared.

A sharp prick pierced the bottom of his foot.

Yelling, the boy leapt out of the water and ran.

Angry buzzing from hidden hornets condemned.

He stumbled through prickly bushes,

thorns poking at his weary shell.

The boy crashed through a terror of a web,

the obtrusive silk clinging to his face.

He pulled and yanked, but it stuck.

The awful tickling of hairy tarsi at his neck

made him scream.

He blindly grabbed at his throat,

slapping at the spider until he felt it no more.

No longer blinded and momentarily free

from the trappings of the web,

the boy set off for home.

The sun wrapped him in a blanket.

As warmth spread, he could hear a song

he hadn’t noticed before.

A breeze gave silent whisperings, calming his

weary heart.

The sun hugged him closer.

The boy skipped home.

Tomorrow he would search for the fairies again.

In Nature

Amber light falling softly in the air

A beautiful sight, I become more aware

Morning dew, fresh and clean

Smelling like the earth, nature so pristine

The comforting blanket of mist cools deep

Waking me up, I don’t ever want to sleep

A canopy of gray over my head

Am I the only one who prefers clouds instead?

A blue sky is beautiful, yes it’s true

But a gray one makes me think things through

Appreciate the glorious creation surrounding me

Initiated love from the maker’s majesty

Breathe deeply, the life-giving air

Never sleepy, when I’m out there

The wind nipping gently at the nape of my neck

So serene, I bow my head in respect

Mountains, trees, a green-splashed pure masterpiece

In nature, I’ve discovered something deep

An inner peace.

To One Day Prowl

Pale black butterfly, a tiger of the white air, guide my labored climb.

Quarantine

Writing. Reading. Walking. Bleeding. Self receding. Beauty is meaning.

Root

Rootless man longed to feed the rooted tree

Would it welcome his screaming spirit?

Nature dark and cold, death her light to see

Would she spit out his ashes and fear it?

There in the sunlight he saw what he longed

A woman gold and brazen

There in the dark he knew what was wrong

A man alone and craven

Rootless man walked down the knotted hill, knowing not why he kept on.

Rooted tree waiting in peace so still, knowing all was finished, done.

Turtle Crawl

A turtle trundles off a cliff and lands on its back

with a crack—

it rights itself before crawling through foreign surroundings.

The shell is weakened, showing signs of struggle

and the turtle keeps going because it knows

only that it isn’t done until it stops

moving.

The turtle wishes it could be cruising 

like the far away ocean ship

but instead it moves so slow that nothing ever seems to change. 

Nothing seems to change except the will to move another centimeter— 

still the turtle crawls. 

It hadn’t noticed that it had wandered into the desert. 

It tries to remember the green forest from atop the cliff but cannot 

when dust and sand choke it, suffocation 

only a few glorious seconds away. 

Still the turtle crawls, 

yellowing with the ashes that surround it. 

Any beauty once there covered in the dirt that is all the turtle sees.

It is funny that the turtle never noticed it was alone

until the sun laughed in its brightness,

calling it a slow fool destined for nothingness.

Harsh heat descends so strong the turtle stops to hide in the shade of its broken shell. 

Night falls black and the turtle tries to exorcise its inner darkness

into the star-filled sky.

The stars force the darkness onto the turtle with their distant examples

of brilliance too good for the turtle’s damaged form.

The turtle longs to be clean.

The turtle longs to befriend

anyone, anybody who might listen or help. 

But the turtle ignores the sun, the stars, the moon, and everyone else.

On the horizon, a pale mountain approaches.

The turtle is tired, longing for the end, but the distant

peak offers promise of salvation.

With a heavy sigh the turtle drags itself on,

hoping that this new cliff will share its height.

Still the turtle crawls.

Chapter 6

Mosquitoes as Well

The sun glistened outside the window, seeming to laugh in its luster at the workers within the lifeless gray walls. An office in a city like so many others, there was nothing of much importance about this place, yet here we find a man of a different sort by the name of George. You wouldn’t be able to tell from the way he sat there in his chair, far from any windows, and clacking away at the keyboard within the even grayer, flimsy walls of a cubicle. The sun’s sparkling dance outside his walls was invisible to him from where he sat. He had only the harsh and cold blue light of the screen and the burning white artificiality of fluorescence above. But he was different in that while he typed away, while he stared at the vacant screen, his thoughts were elsewhere. His thoughts were on a German poet long since dead. Yet this poet was much more alive than most of, if not all, those busily buzzing around him.

“To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.”

George was reflecting on this quote from Novalis and thinking hard on how he could apply such a promising idea to his own life which was so mired in the mundane. But there it was, the mundane as sacred. Could it truly be done without kidding oneself? That was what George was interrogating himself with as he typed away.

George was a healthy, fit young man. Just out of college he’d landed a job many had fought for. Most would have been overjoyed, and he was for a time, built up by his family and friends’ congratulations. But once the satisfaction waned in the face of daily drudgery and oppressing sameness, he was terrified at the thought that the rest of his life, even with climbing the corporate ladder, would be nothing but this. He’d pursued physical prowess, to fight off the laziness of imagination that his job so naturally produced. It helped, and it was something he would never stop until physically unable. He walked through parks, and on weekends drove into rural areas in search of pristine nature, or as pristine as one could find in his overdeveloped sector of the country.

He read books. He journaled. He even dabbled in music. He sought to create art, the act of creation a stabilizing force in the madness of banality all around him. Where he found the least success was in pursuing meaningful friendships. Yes, he went out to bars and hung out with old college buddies and coworkers too. It wasn’t all that difficult for him to attract women either. Yet all of it, the social aspect namely, felt as empty as his office work and it too had begun to feel like a job, an obligation required of him to fit into society as those around him expected.

None of these pursuits were enough to stave the boredom that left his soul stale and shriveled. Looking from outside as we are, it should hardly surprise us to see that he felt like this, because in all his relations, he wore a mask of propriety. The mask was now a parasite and had leeched so deeply onto him that even when alone he could feel himself losing the desire to get out of this boredom, to go to some beyond, to be a something in a sea of seeming nothing. This was a dangerous time for him as he was closely sinking into acceptance that this was fine. That all was fine in its nothingness.

Then he had found the German poet through his readings of Jung, who made mention of him quite a few times. Finding not enough spirit in Jung’s work, George decided to see if Novalis could offer some key to unlocking himself that he hadn’t yet noticed. And there in the Hymns to the Night and Spiritual Songs,George had encountered the Romantic in such a way that had never quite captured him before. It was as if he were reading nature’s scripture. Everything in Novalis’s world was sacramental. Nothing was a nothing, but the world around was a glorious display of beauty and majesty. And where not obvious, there was a symbol in even the cracked pavement, that of the great chain of causality that held all life and matter together as one web of grandeur so far above the finite senses and mind that to ignore it was to be blind in spirit. This was a Romanticism that was reality!

He read Henry von Ofterdigen and was in awe of the poetic desire of love. I would recommend all those reading George’s little story right now to go and read Novalis too. He was pure spirit, and so in tune with life that he reached beyond it, or better yet, completely through it, and found the other side.

But George’s readings of Novalis, while fruitful, did not change his current lot in life. No, he still worked in the same office and had the same acquaintances and same mask still clinging on. How could he make this world into the romantic? Sure, the great causal chain had brought him and those around him here, but what was that to his feelings of despair in such a dull state of being? As Henry in Novalis’s tale searched for his blue flower, George in his life didn’t even know what his blue flower, his great self and ideal, was. He had no lover, and little desire for it right then and there. He had skills and had some success with his creations. But even if he lived off his art, society would remain the same, and he feared that when it came to it that sort of success and then revelation might end him. He didn’t want to just blindly pursue some lofty goal in hopes of escape. He wanted to live, to stand, and to be himself, not find something outside of it to keep him enraptured with distraction until death! No, he refused to accept such a proposition that most gladly took and in turn pursued.

Yet he sat and typed, still thinking over that quote. Still wondering what he could do. He left work that day in a dark mood and kindly refused any invitation to go out drinking with his friends. He went home to his apartment for the weekend and sprawled out on the couch of his sleek and empty room. His thoughts beat against him like an endless, jealous tide, and he stayed still and let them come and have their way, until they were satisfied. Then they’d slink away with bellies full and with George left wearier than before. Although the thoughts first raged with desolation, after a while they lessened into a storm, and then a drizzle, until nothing but the occasional thought breezed through his mind and left him behind, seeing there was no energy left to steal.

But the thoughts were wrong because George now was an infinite well, though he didn’t know it. Now he was alone with himself, no thoughts to pull away his attention. The essence could not be taken away, and it but awaited the right spark to awaken him to a romantic existence that he so desperately wanted. The spark was not yet to come, but this was an important flickering. For the fireplace was uncovered, and the self in George was unencumbered by those hasty thoughts of otherness—despair, hopes in something not himself, worry, memory. All distractions were then dead. He was in a state of pure recollection, which is to gather the feeling of soul and rest in it and nothing but.

He sat there in this stillness for hours, when the sudden desire to seek out nature in a wilder form overtook his silence. Alas, it was too late in the day, but he decided he would drive further out into nature this time around. Not the semblance of it, not the sparsely wooded grounds where houses and noise pollution were still nearby. No, he would head to the state forest park and walk and walk until he was the only human being around for miles.

The next day came and he awoke early, a refreshing vigor infusing his desire in a way he’d never quite known before. Perhaps it was the sort of exuberance a child feels when inventing some new game to play in an unfamiliar place. The excitement of living, of adventure. He drove without music, not wanting to distract himself from this clean, pure and primal state he found himself in though he had no such words for it. He only knew that this state he was in, this state of still clarity, was not one to be disturbed by something other than himself. George drove fast and away from the cluttered city and out through the traffic-choked roads until finally he made it to the dirt parking lot of the forest. There were only a couple other cars there.

He rushed out of his car and strode straight onto the nearest path. He walked for hours until satisfied with the distance he’d covered, and he randomly left the path and stumbled through the overgrowth of the forest. The trees were old pines—thin, tall, and green like a fresh lime submerged in a crystalline glass of water. The air was fresh and heavy with the scent of unfettered life. A wildness exuded from this very smell, and the slight rustle and crack of the wind through the branches, the scrambling squirrels, and the rustling leaves, all seemed to sing aloud in such a way that George felt as though he were silence embodied. It was a barricade against those thoughts which still came but were dashed against the wild sounds and forced to submit in ashamed silence at the grandeur of the surrounding theatre. And above all other sounds arose the singing birds, their different calls whether discordant, combative, or sweet, combined in such a way that George looked all about and above him, longing to sing and rise as high as those majestic little creatures.

Like a strange creature himself, he heavily made his way through the forest, something driving him on though he knew not what. He heard burbling water, faint enough to belong to a creek, but it was water nonetheless! Sure enough, a creek emerged from behind a bright blooming bush that had blue flowers dangling between rough ferns. The creek itself was a charming source of life. It was wider than most and bubbled and trickled in such a lovely and shallow manner that it seemed to be in a constant state of aesthetic exuberance of itself. Beyond the creek a white birch tree stood lovely and alone, her green tresses dangling pleasantly close to the creek’s bubbling water. Three large boulders stood out from the midst of the shallow creek, and George lightly leapt across them, and with full satisfaction sat beneath the birch’s bright green, shaded canopy. He reclined against her white trunk, sitting at last and letting his stillness move forth at the lovely pace of the creek.

He sat there for some time in a state of overwhelming peace and fullness. The thoughts, which he’d thought had abated, came forth in a rush, perhaps frustrated at being beaten back. They joined together in more force than ever, and they overwhelmed his solace.

“You found a moment of peace, of romanticism, but you still must return to your city and job.”

George’s heart beat faster and sharper with the reality of the thought.

“How pretty this nature is, but you know you wouldn’t last a night here. There are beasts abound and even this phantom of peace can easily be taken away. This too is just another distraction.”

George pressed himself hard against the birch’s cool bark and looked desperately up into her leaves which hung golden in the sunlight as if the light came from the tree herself. He considered the accusatory thoughts in light of this goddess of a tree. Here she stood, unashamed in all her fullness, more alive than most of the millions in his city. But how could he bring her truth with him? How could he live in such a state of beauty when surrounded by the ugliness that was his daily life? She had her companion the creek. She had her wild forest, her loving sun. She had an outside to match her inside. Then George stopped himself for a moment, and sat a bit straighter, still pressed longingly to her bark. Was the nature around her outside her? He didn’t think so. No… the more he thought on it the more he considered that the beauty and glory around her was an extension of herself. He lingered on this idea, and kept it repeating in his mind for some time, looking around at the humming creek and the green trees, the rich soil and lovely mossy stones. Then he looked back at her, her white bark like ivory, her green leaves like the hair of some fairytale forest maiden.

He started to feel the heavy heat of the forest, the creek’s coolness and the birch’s shade waning in the strength of the midday sun. He sat there now conscious only of the sweat forming like swamps in the crevices of his body, and after some time, he stripped off his shirt to find some relief. Only, relief was not to be found, as mosquitoes, as if excited at the exposure of his pale and tight flesh, came out of whatever mire they’d been bathing in and bit at his skin. It wasn’t horrible, but the constant swatting at the one or two that always seemed to appear was too much. Now he was in a state of agitation, disgust, and these little inconveniences were enough to make him long for the comfort of his apartment, for at least then his body wouldn’t be so uncomfortable, never mind his thoughts. As he swatted, the sweat dripping down his brow, he saw down at the far end of the creek a blue heron, standing as still as a building, staring into the clear waters.

Entranced, he watched the majestic bird, its beak a sharp spear and its legs like twigs, yet so steady that they appeared unbreakable despite their spindly structure. Its head was bowed as if in prayer, but its eyes were yellow and watching—the only movement showing it was alive were those all-seeing eyes gazing into the water. Its feathers were shining a bright silver, wet with a sparkling sheen, and its dark-blue-streaked head was regal like a crown. George stared, forgetting the heat and bite of bugs, and watched in awe as the head cut down through the water and came up with a frenzied frog. The heron threw back its head and swallowed the unlucky amphibian, and then turned its attention towards George who froze with a trembling, delightful awe. The heron looked at him for a moment, then took a step towards him as if considering hunting him too. But it stopped, then flew away in a mighty, rustling leap, leaving him under the birch and in the unbearable heat.

Too excitable to remain seated, George took off his pants and leapt into the creek, laying down until his entire body was submerged. He burst out of the water and screamed like a primate, beating his chest and laughing at himself as he went back to the birch, the cool water soothing the heat of his body and soul. Filled with life, he walked back to the path after putting his pants back on, dripping with creek water, and with his shirt still removed.

He considered what had taken place as he walked back to his car. He thought on how such a full circle of nature might find itself into his own corner of existence, as it now stood. Could he be still like the solace and beauty of the birch? Could he rush forward in fullness of the joy of himself like the creek? Could he hunt like the heron? Could he bite like the mosquito? But how could he live as such in his office with his friends? To be like Novalis, to romanticize the world! Was a mosquito mundane? No, for their thirst for blood was a pain that he’d felt and would scratch at after, however small. The symbol in all. The lingering life they stole, leaving their little marks. How was it that those he worked with and spent so much time around were like these same mosquitos? He knew it right then that they weren’t so different in terms of his relation. But how to transfigure such relation into that of he and the birch tree. Or that of the creek and its pleasant relation to her instead.

To be in fullness of himself. The mask could be torn away; he would be himself even in moments of necessary propriety. He would seek the symbol, the image of the romantic in his daily existence. To identify with the creek, to identify as full of life and as truly himself. Then what could those around him be but extensions of the pure well within? It mattered only how he related. Sometimes that meant biting, even hunting. It was a matter of will. And as he left behind the forest, he carried it still within as he drove back to his city.

Chapter 7

The Distant Muse and a Concrete Bridge

In my workplace, I am one of the few men there and by far the youngest. It is a profession dominated by women. They gossip and talk about nothing of note, with progressive politics and fit shaming (yes, I’m serious) those women who care to look good. I was lectured by an obese coworker on what to eat when I said with a sneer that I prefer raw eggs. Her face twisted with rage and she didn’t speak to me the rest of that day but for snide remarks as if I’d committed some great blasphemy. These same harpies always ask me why I don’t speak about my relationships, as if my solitude and stillness with myself is an affront to their constant shifting between partners with no breaks in between. One of them told me she thought I was gay because I was so fit and cared about my health. This is what I have to put up with, and I do so with a distant stare. They cannot touch my stillness and they have no idea of the depths I intentionally show as shallow to avoid them polluting my waters. Thank God my work is of a meaningful type, for I’d long since have found some other career or gone into willing poverty instead.

I share this with you now because I don’t doubt there are similar, maybe even worse work cultures of vapidity that you too suffer through. But in keeping with the spirit of mystical ennui, I stay within myself and rest upon its foundation. Now you might wonder why I don’t go out looking for romance or finding another woman. For me, that is not something I absolutely need (though it is something I have recently found). I’m sure there’s plenty of Casanovas out there reading this and I do not want you to stop dabbling in your art, but there is a certain kind of art that I’ve found in my own experience, which is one of a blissful and detached transcendence. It is that of the muse. Kierkegaard and Regine. Dante and Beatrice. And in Demian by Herman Hesse, Sinclair’s aptly named Beatrice who is of an altogether different sort. It is the divine feminine, like that of the moon, that becomes a sort of ideal that one doesn’t even want to meet but uses as a sort of heavenly breeding ground for ideas of rapture and sublimity.

Like Dante who still loved Beatrice while being happily married with children, I still loved other women while loving the supreme ideal of a woman in my own muse who I call Sixela. Dante only greeted Beatrice in passing and never quite knew her, yet he transformed the beauty of her image into a divine figure of love and wisdom that informed his poetic longing for something beyond the mundane. It is in this distance, when properly configured, that the spirit can truly soar, as it longs to leap over this infinite chasm to find this ideal that doesn’t quite exist, so the spirit soars ever higher, these heights truly the depths of the greatest well springs of the soul. It is the finite infinitude—transfiguration.

In Demian, which I mentioned previously, the main character Sinclair is in a low state of constant drinking and darkness. His grades slip, and he becomes unbearable even to himself. This changes when he goes walking in the park and catches a passing glance of another woman. The sight of her awakens something in him, and he immediately seeks to change himself to be worthy of such beauty. So enraptured is he with finding his own being, wiping away the soot he’d covered himself in, he forgets the actual woman that sparks this awakening. He only holds in his mind the image of his idealized Beatrice, which later in the novel he finds in a real woman, Demian’s mother. He is able to assign this muse to a real woman, but I find this to be dangerous and rare, because in reality such women do not exist and the closer one gets, the more likely it is that the ideal expectation will be shattered in the face of familiarity. One should not place all one’s hopes in another, be it a woman or friend. The muse is meant to awaken the self, because it is another extension of pure will.

The relationship to that of the muse is entirely a negative one. What I mean by this is, the moment the awakened man breaks the distance of ideality and seeks to find it in another, the relationship becomes positive and ideality becomes mundane. A muse is not meant to be married! That is based more in an eternal unchanging love, that is of course beautiful and romantic in its own way, in that of duty and steadfastness, but the muse is in a different realm and lies in the abstract, only made concrete in the man’s awakening and what he does with this power. And what is it that the muse awakens in a man? It is the experience of immortality. The ideal of beauty, unreachable to such a point that it sinks into the man’s self—this is what pushes a man into a ceaseless striving. The muse as negative: an awakening of man to immortality through the ideal. It stirs the ceaseless striving of constant growth and ascension.

In the beauty of the woman that has been transfigured, like the troubadours pledging their undying but never-to-be-satiated love, the movement towards something higher is all that is left for the rapturous longing of the soul for something that simply cannot be. Kierkegaard’s story of love with Regine is most interesting to me and has had a great impact on my own life and longing. He had Regine enraptured; the two of them were promised to be wedded. Yet he inexplicably scorned her, acting like a fool in public to take the blame for breaking it off with her. His reasons for doing so were pure will. He wanted to live in his own thoughts and work, not to be deceived by the somewhat comic existence of erotic love. That is, he wanted to belong to his own thoughts and self eternally and alone, so that he could marry his craft and write with a longing that had Regine in mind yet reflected infinitely into his own self until his idea of her became a part of himself. It might well be foolish to deny oneself the happiness of coupling as he did, and he certainly admitted to regretting it at various points, but his writings were aflame with his muse. One could argue that his work as such would not have existed without this pulling back and worshipping the distance of beauty and exaltation of the self. He never loved another like Dante, but in these great geniuses’ actions, I believe there is a sublime truth to be discerned, especially in a day when romance is so tragically ignored in the fear of stepping on society’s expecting toes.

By intentionally pulling back and finding a muse however one might, for it is something that happens only from the heavens and cannot be falsified or forced by any mortal hands, the self ascends a step higher into the realm of the ideal. It is as if you love the moon, the divine female form that has taken shape in this distant beloved that you refuse to draw near to. I will say that with Sixela, she is no goddess as I’ve written her; she honestly was never quite real. It was more of a Demian-like experience, where I found myself in a glance. But as this glance was in my mind—myself—she has become pure sublimity. Her stone in the scaffolding of my desire to climb ever higher is a pulsating gem of beauty that radiates out my own light and passion.

I feel like my words might seem too detached here, unrealistic even. Why forsake a loving relationship for the realm of passionate ideality? I would never suggest this. For Sixela to me, was nothing but a moment that I used for something more. And now I can love myself and others more for it. The muse is a strange being, and when she reveals herself in the unlikeliest of places, one would be a fool to deny her strength.

In a time lacking romance, with many women falling along the same line of tired and tedious looseness, to move one into the ideal is to improve upon your own. Finding a muse and accepting her beauty as your own is just another way to lift one’s soul from the mire of modernity. It is a romantic remaking of someone perhaps not worth another glance. Just one. It is a mirror of ideality that reveals the true potentiality of the self. This is the passion that is eternal. Don’t let the gossiping coworkers who encourage boring, flingy relationships weigh down your spirit. For to transcend the banality, and to make it your own, is the truth and driving force behind the mysticism in mystical ennui.

Now, with the muse, which is again a sort of self-revelation and new relation from the beauty within to that without, there is the concrete romance that is worth finding. I for a long time never sought this, as I was too focused like Kierkegaard on my own work and life. But to love another! To look in their eyes, to become one flesh as Scripture says, that is a whole other sort of being that hardly needs advocating. How great! I have found this in a woman and I love her dearly. She is no mirror but another being worth relating to in the closest form of love, the kind that is an image of God’s love for his creation. This is when the glance, the passing muse that was the self ascends (not descends) into reality. Like the beautiful mind reforming the body into well shaped flesh, to encounter romance in reality with that infinitude within, is something I am blessed to have at last found. It is comical, as so much of life is, that I found it when not looking for it, when expecting little. To love another is to love the self, beauty, and the eternal. We were made to be beautiful, and love is one of its highest forms.

This is the concrete bridge. The distance closed and forgotten by something much greater. Perhaps Dante never loved his family quite the same as Beatrice after all. But in Demian, when the muse became himself and then another, that is something worthwhile. I warned before that intentionally seeking to find the ideal in another isn’t recommended, but to find the ideal within the self and then extend it out to join with another is something quite different. Distance is a sort of pasture, where one walks freely. Closeness is an enclosure, where one walks wounded and lame but with a smile that bursts from the spirit. This lameness is momentary, as two learn to walk as one. To share the self. I do not mean to be simplistic or trite, but I implore most to not stop at the muse, to take it in, use it as part of the self that was already there, and extend across the distance, over the bridge, into an impossible reality blooming blue with the infinite. Sometimes the bridge collapses. But the lameness, the suffering, this is what purifies and brings out that fiery will within. Passion pains, but it drives off normal malaise through heroic overcoming and destruction of the weaker, ugly parts of the self. This is a bridge worth crossing, again and again.

Chapter 8

Power as Creative Relation

With the renewed foundation of the self, and the romanticizing of existence brought concretely about through relation with the self, how can this be enacted in a manner of power? Well, the initial act of viewing the world in such a way is one of power, but there is still the matter of feeling powerless in such a society that uplifts the false virtue of submission to the ugliness and detachment of the bureaucratic state.

As always, it first begins with what one does with oneself. The act of creation is a good and noble path. This need not only be contained in the arts such as music, writing, or painting—though all three are excellent acts of power. Gardening, building up the body, reading and then applying the ideas and making them one’s own, finding unique ways to succeed in work or perhaps even creating one’s own businesses and crafts; there are many forms of creation one can take, and every individual has their own path here that can only be discovered by themselves. But creativity, even in what appears boring, has the power to transform life into something beyond. It is finding the sublime in what seems banal and acting in such a way as to enact one’s own power upon daily happenings. This is tempting to leave in the abstract and quite difficult to bring into actuality.

For example, the man who arrives at his office and encounters dull gossip with a twinkling smile and responds in such a way as to provoke admiration or respect through that of self-mastery and witticisms. Even if silent, that state of being so enraptured with being—those around begin to be created in one’s own image. This is a reflection of the eternal that was first related in the image of oneself.

Nietzsche was well known for striving to create his own values. And in this he certainly was on to something, the recognition of creating oneself as an act of power in will. Those values that are found in the stillness of the uncluttered self, when purifying the sight to see such reflections in the lowest of places. This brings about sublimity in the mundane. How easy it is to forget this as day after day of sameness rolls over the soul! Is not the sight deceived, is not the act of creating such relations an illusion and nothing but a distraction from mundane existence? I reject this premise because when one is honest about how all this surrounding us, even as ugly as it gets, came to be, then one cannot help but wonder. The unlikely fact that one is oneself now and not in some other time, and that all the infinitude of effects from that initial act of causal creation in the beginning came to be—this cannot be destroyed through drudgery, only dimmed and stained. But if the spirit is cleansed and the eyes sharpened, the daily gets brighter and one need only reflect on the improbability of it all, and how one might act to taste this creative cause in their own actions of will.

And here is the lovely enchantment of pure possibility. Sure, one can stay focused on what one sees and be discouraged, but if one slows down and takes a moment to reflect on that eternal beginning, and then seek to see it in the present, then possibility flares up like a burst from the sun and acts of power reveal themselves in the most startling of ways. In the way a woman’s eyes light up at her lover, in the way a genuine smile unfolds in the face of someone dear to you. In the rage of a rushed morning, and in the frustration of another tired day. Even in the negative, not pretending it is positive, but drawing it inward and looking at it in the scope of the self. Your rage, your frustration—it can be a catalyst in finding something more about yourself and your place in life and how to move forward. Let yourself rage! Let yourself be frustrated! There are good reasons for such feelings, but in your acceptance of them, there comes a peace amidst the storm of anger that oddly soothes even as you burn. It is hard to bring words to, but the next time such feelings come, draw them into the well of your renewed spirit and act authentically in the moment. What this means is not for me to say. Sometimes you must not hold back, and sometimes you must walk away. But if these actions are done with the eternal beginning fueling you, they become beautiful in such a way that only the individual experiencing them can truly know.

It is a matter of awareness and acting upon it with the foresight that you choose who it is you already are. This breeds anxiety, not necessarily fear but the uncomfortable feeling that you are not living as yourself. Circumstance can exasperate this, but even a beggar can be himself if he knows that he lives truly. The dizziness of freedom, that Kierkegaard spoke of. In his book the “Concept of Anxiety” he spoke on the infinite possibility in creating the self, or rather in the act of willing to be oneself. This anxiety that comes is a despair of not being what one finds one should be. Or, it comes from being it indeed and not knowing why or what to do with this frightfully free self that longs to act as one truly is! Drink the poison of this despair and cleanse the falseness out through the pain of revelation.

What a conundrum! This creation, this drawing in, this pure will, leads to a terror like nothing else. But possibility blooms in the man who is willing to be himself. “But I must wear a mask!” says the browbeaten teacher, who must teach what he is told. Teach what is necessary and required until you can no longer be yourself in such a place. Then search elsewhere, willing to lose comfort instead of your soul. Yet, sometimes the most powerful act is one of patient submission and biding time, but never at the cost of soul! These are scales of eternity we speak of, and they are not to be trifled with. It is a fine line we all walk, and the path is narrow that leads to the way of Truth. There is a reason that so few follow this path. How difficult! There is even more reason to be one of those few. Truth belongs to the few. It belongs in the realm of spirit, which cannot be flattened or repeated into multiple sames. It is the herd versus the shepherd, or better yet, the sheep versus the wolf. Sometimes the wolf needs to wear the fleece. Sometimes it needs to move on. And other times, it needs to hunt freely.

But again, it is the freedom to act in such an apparently unfree world. There are always limitations, and to break them all like a raging bull is foolish—a path of frustration and loss of soul. There are very few times where this is needed, and I myself would leave such an act until there was no alternative. But there are so many ways to go. So many. Look for the smiling faces. And if they aren’t there, form them through bonds you build through being who you are. Even the curmudgeonly can have children. And if you know no love for the moment, well, it starts with finding that love at the base of your being and building from there. Love comes to those who seek it patiently. This I can promise, but one must be willing to love the self and the relation to all those selves outside. Again, we return to the image of the chain of being. There is so much life in this world of death! Even in death life bursts anew. The bend of the universe is not one towards darkness, but of glory for as long as the light of the eyes look out and see Truth.

But death to platitudes! I find myself reaching for words again to describe a state one must come to alone. In this act of creation, each and every choice in the heart is like the gods creating something from nothing. It is the image of the eternal deep within the right-willed self. How can it be far off when it is right there within? Sink deeper into those rich depths, through the darkest wells and into that bright darkness that has no name. Sometimes you must drink some poison to get better. Accept your cup! Own it! Sometimes you must die. And then you start anew. Possibility blooms forth with each rising sun. The something in the nothing—the something from the nothing. That is where we begin. That is where we continue. And that is where we end.

Chapter 9

Detachment

There are many different forms of detachment, some of them useful, some of them deceitful. It is good to be detached from what is bad so that it cannot touch the inner self. But to be detached from living in this world is not good. How can one enact change upon the self and not in turn change the world around him? Of course, many make the mistake of trying to change the world without first changing the self for better, but to enact that good change within necessarily means that good change without will come. And therein lies the problem with detachment from the state of things as they are, with no hope of changing but only surviving as some illusory aristocrat that holds no power, but only abstractly, i.e., not at all.

This is not a comment on politics or even culture, but on human relation. I’ve never much liked the so-called thinking of the “Benedict Option”, that of cloistering oneself with a few others away from all as if the world were already dead. Perhaps it is indeed dying, but mystical ennui requires living and thriving, not merely surviving! Imagine if a Napoleon bowed his head in shame at the decadent and degenerate revolution that tore apart his nation, and he slinked away to revel in the imagined glories of himself alone. No, he acted! Even the great thinkers who left behind society in a physical sense—Nietzsche comes to mind—still wrote to reach others and inspire some sort of awakening and change. To detach oneself from positive change, even when all appears negative, is to lose. There is no such thing as winning by losing continuously. That is nothing but surrender, and that is what such a type of detachment brings.

When someone encounters a strong and self-assured soul that is beautiful in mind, body, and spirit, no matter the worldview or the person’s own corruption, they cannot help but start at such an uncommon being. You’ve probably heard the famous quote “Beauty will save the world” from Dostoevsky many times over, but that doesn’t take away from its truth. The full beauty that starts from the pillars of spirit, up through the sloping walls of the body, and spreading into a glorious white dome of the mind, is not something that can be ignored. It is often reviled, especially today, but it is a power in and of itself that causes reflection and pause long after encountering. And those few people it touches in just the right way—well that is how brethren are made, in the powerful and creative relation of the pure-willed self that sings a song of harmony and attraction that is hard to ignore.

We often find a vapid class of so-called beauties in Hollywood, the media, and the general celebrity culture of today. But when that rare soul who matches the outer with the inner arises, detachment is the last thing on peoples’ minds. If anything, they want to attach themselves to such a mind state and movement that brought about such a being in the first place. It is the authentic beauty versus the plastic kind that is intentionally put forward. Ask yourself what might happen if a truly beautiful individual were to enter the political realm, or work his way through the cultural? Yes, most people will probably resent such a man, but a select few will see and want to join themselves to such an eternal enterprise.

And even that is focusing on too large a picture. The local is always what comes first, and the greater impact you have on those in your vicinity the more the eternal influence of beauty spreads. To detach from such hope of change is to hide away the self, and to do such a thing is nothing but a waste and a sin. It is wicked to cower and cling to your own image and hide only in the satisfaction of your imagined superiority in hopes that after everything collapses, then you might arise. Why would you wish destruction on those who might be saved? Have not all of us been once lost in shadows, or might still be lingering there now? To turn the back to these souls is a weakness and a pathetic mindset that is unbecoming of the good.

Here, mystical ennui once again answers the ugly boredom encouraged by the majority. Remember that it is the refusal of accepting the state of things. It starts with the inner, but it necessarily burns outward to others. It is not something that can be contained, otherwise it would not be of the mystical. To be beyond the material is not to flee from it. To be beyond the material is to own it and transfigure it as it is meant to be. Herein lies that saving beauty! How many times has someone asked me why I work out? What inspires me? Why I go on as I do? More than you’d expect, and not merely the first question, though it is quite common. I am by no means some Greek God when it comes to physicality, merely above the fray do I stand, which is a low bar indeed.

When I explain my pursuit of beauty inward and outward, and my desire to see the world reflect it, this often excites those who ask. So be prepared to answer in such a way as to encourage that same pursuit. It doesn’t take much for people to notice that one is not like the majority. So, answer in simple truth. And when people begin to pursue beauty, well, the world begins to reflect that truth. To be detached from it all is to strangle out life. People long to live, and most do what they most easily see and are told, but there are those few who will ask, who will pause, and who will consider whether the current state of things are as they are meant to be.

I encourage a supreme attachment on the individual level, in one’s own pursuit of beauty, to help ignite these sparks in others through example. Whether you’re a construction worker, an office jockey, an artist, or a man with political aspirations, you have this power to inspire others to change. Beauty will indeed save the world, and it starts with the self. You.

A system is nothing but a building that can be restructured once new inhabitants begin to move in. The scaffolding of truth cannot be removed without it collapsing. It is still here and standing! Don’t run from this building that is our world, don’t declare yourself too pure! Move into it and make it better. To wait and let it burn is nothing less than to die and descend back into ugliness that will take hold of the self that you sought to keep pure. Purity and power are only won through acting and willing the good. There are always others who have eyes to see, but if there is nothing left for them to see, how can you expect them to know?

Now there are good sorts of detachment, like that of not caring about certain forms of media, various movements, and other ugliness that is not worth the time or attention. One need not be affected by this or that new pleasure, hope, or cultural milestone. Too much ugliness is never good. But being detached from such degeneracy is not running away. It is simply not letting it lay claim to your thoughts or wellbeing. To be too obsessed with these kinds of things is often to fall into negativity and despair.

Again, I encourage all attachment at the individual level. There is always a gem to be uncovered there. We are not as barren as one might think! Think of where I came from. To think of the darkness that I for so long wallowed in… the detachment that is encouraged today would have left me in my own filth if not for a bright few who encountered and encouraged. Look at the good in your peoples’ history, even if it seems as though most of the day despise it. Learn from your forefathers and seek to lay hold of what it was that bound them to their time, and what it is that applies now to us in our own day. The good and beautiful is of the objective and eternal sort, and there are always those who will see this. And remember that there are only a few at the very top who encourage all this blackness and boredom of modernity out of shame and resentment of their selves. Their hatred or unimaginative natures does not belong to Truth.

There are more good people out there than social media or your favorite negative source would tell you. It is always easier to fall into the negative. Take hold of the positive, claim it and become it, and bring those good few into your fold until there’s enough people there to inhabit this building of our day. It is getting worn and the walls are thin, but they are begging to be restored and made greater than ever! The darkness of today only means that the opportunity to shine is simpler and brighter than ever before. How easy it is to stand out! Only stand for the good. To be a hero now is easier than ever before because there are so few. And as always, the fate of the world is decided by the few leading the many. Be the few and inspire the many. Anything else is cowardice and surrender.

Chapter 10

Sight’s Eclipse

The sun was black and the sky was white. On this day of the great eclipse, the young man Fredrick continued his work in the fields without noticing the silent uproar of nature in sudden halt at such a symbolic and frightening occurrence. He tilled the soil only with the loudness of his own frenzied thoughts, for, two weeks before, he had seen what one cannot unsee.

When he had gone for his daily summer swim in the pond in the nearby woods, he’d seen a woman unclothed and so perfect that he wasn’t certain she wasn’t just some fantasy. The way the water had glistened on her moon-white skin, the way the pond’s ripples seemed to cling to her gentle movements, was not of this world. A water nymph. Was she true? He had stayed there beside the pond like an invalid, hiding in bushes and watching as she treaded peacefully. He had been in such a state of ecstasy that when he heard a noise behind him, perhaps nothing but a gust of wind or some creeping beast, his attention was drawn away thinking another myth might be coming. When he turned back, the woman was gone.

And now this silent eclipse hung over his work like some harbinger of blindness, for he feared he would never see such beauty again in any of the girls in his village, or even in the ways he used to appreciate and admire the cultivated nature surrounding his humble farm. Yet he tilled as the day darkened, and his thoughts intensified as he imagined her again. As the dark of the false night increased, his image of her burned brighter within. Then the sun returned white hot, and the animals shouted out in a bustle of confusion at this short night of day.

Fredrick’s will to work faltered, and he flung down his hoe and went to the woods as he had desperately done so many times after that strange day, and always without any sign of her.

He rushed into the raucous woods, where animals still were in an uproar at their disturbed schedules and normalcy. He rushed past the beautiful blooming life and went to the pond. And sure enough, it was as empty as the white sky above. Not knowing what he was doing, and in a primal urge to wash himself clean, he tore off his clothes and plunged headlong into the cool waters. He stayed submerged for as long as his lungs could hold, until his body betrayed him and forced him to surface and once more face the terrible brightness of the very present daylight. When the water dropped free from his heavy eyes and he looked at the mossy banks, he saw someone. Not the someone he was looking for, but a someone, nonetheless.

“Forgive me,” the girl mumbled, her head lowered and her cheeks as red as the setting sun. Her hair was bright yellow, and she wore a loose summer dress as golden as his field.

Fredrick now stood in the shallows, the water rising just above his waist and doing a poor job of offering any modesty. But he stared at the girl deeply, as if his staring might bring about the transformation of her into that nymph he was so certain he had seen. But it was not her. This girl was called Alice, and many in the village considered her to be the fairest of women in all the land.

“The sun was black. What ever could it mean?” she said innocently. She smiled and looked up at him with startling blue eyes, deeper and darker than the very pond he swam in.

“That I am blind to any beauty. There is nothing as bright as the sun.” He said it with a sneer, and thought of his feminine sun, that glowing beauty who refused to return to his pond.

Alice frowned at him. She held her pointy chin and tilted her head, unashamedly looking at Fredrick as he stood there blind to her, with only his thoughts before him. His eyes were as eclipsed as the sun had just been, focused on his own shadows.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it then. But I think I quite like this pond. This wood here, it belongs to nobody. I will likely return for a swim. Good day,” she said. She turned away, and with one last glance over her shoulder, smiled at the blind man standing there in his darkness.

Soon after she had gone, he got out of the water and went to grab his clothes. They were nowhere to be found. He shook his head and made his way back to the farm, unashamed as he seldom had any visitors on his land. Standing tall and with his head still wrapped in the clouds of the vanished nymph, he stepped out from the woods and into the sunlight. Alice stood there waiting for him with a devious smile and his clothes clutched in her hands as if she were a squirrel clinging to its most prized and stolen acorn.

He held out his arms and glared at her, not bothering to cover up. She laughed and pulled the clothes back. “My dear Fredrick, do you really think I will give what is now mine away so easily? Many a girl in the village has watched and admired you from afar, yet you keep to yourself. What is it you have out here that we villagers don’t?” She laughed again, her voice as light and attractive as her glowing face. She was not blushing now.

“Give me my clothes,” he said, his voice hard. He took another step towards her with his arms outstretched in expectation.

“Maybe I’ll give them back with my own clothes too.” She laughed at her own shamelessness. “You really are a farmer. There’s a lot of white there as if you still wore a shirt and trousers.” At this she blushed, stealing a glance and still holding the clothes tight to her chest.

“Did your friends put you up to this? Has the village gossip driven you so mad? There’s plenty of flesh to be found for you there. The blackening of the sun only shows how wrong everything is.” He shook his head in disgust.

At this, Alice clenched her little fists and threw the clothes down in disgust. “Then what is it that you want? And so what if we conspired to have a little fun. I see you and you are not so great as you think you are.” She laughed, this time with mocking ferocity like a distant, passing storm. “That black sun was much more beautiful than you and your little farm. But you are blind! Good riddance, enjoy your loneliness!” She stamped her foot and walked away.

Fredrick picked up his clothes and headed back to his home. He still had more soil to till. And he still had his hope of seeing that nymph again.

How many weeks passed with his darkness only ever increasing? The nymph was not seen and his desire for her image blinded him to all else. He no longer stopped to admire his work after a long day. He no longer stopped to tend to his abundant garden. His ideal had blinded him to all that had once given him joy. True beauty had died to him and only remained as a singular idea focused as the nymph in his mind. His life continued in ever increasing darkness, until at last, one day, his vision returned.

He was heading back towards the pond with little belief he would see her, but he had to go and make sure. The weeks had not dulled his desire, only increased it, if not ever decreasing his hope of it being fulfilled. And there in the pond, as he walked with his head hung, she swam as graceful as ever. As perfect as ever. His heart leapt and his eyes opened wide. He stepped from out of the coverage of the trees and onto the mossy banks where Alice had once teasingly stood.

“Excuse me,” he called out, his voice cracking with uncomely desperation.

A voice laughed, and her head turned. “Fredrick,” she said coldly.

And his despair nearly crushed him at the clear revelation of the nymph’s face. It was Alice. It had been her all this time.

“You… you returned.” He managed to croak.

“Are you blind?” she laughed, dryly and without any enchantment.

“But you disappeared that day. I saw… I saw someone else, I’m sure of it!”

“Foolish boy.” She shook her head and now stood in the same shallows that Fredrick had once stood when facing her. Her breasts were like two full moons, and her face was aglow with sunlight, intensified by the reflecting water. “No girl likes uninvited eyes. But you turned away, and I left as quick as I’d come.” She shook her head and walked out of the water and by him. Without another glance at him, she gathered her clothes and left.

He watched her walk away with eyes wide open, the beauty of her form coloring the landscape with an even brighter light than ever before. He turned his eyes to the familiar trees he’d forgotten and smiled, as she left him behind.

Chapter 11

The Dangers of Abstraction

He who has eyes to see, let him see, and he who has ears to hear, let him hear.

How blind we are to so much glory around us. In our past it is abundant and often clear, but that is because we know what we are looking for, longing to find it there. It is clearer in hindsight and much easier to romanticize that which we do not intimately know. But as soon as we wake up in the morning, indifferent to yet another blazing sunrise that sets the heavens in a sea of gold, we only see our own dark image of the world in which we live, blind to nothing but this negative thought that is so easy to confirm. But… this is the danger of wanting only the idyllic. Such reflections which are contained only in desire and longing, and detached from reality, are of the utmost danger. But how sweet the bitterness can taste!

The idyll only exists in myth, in the legends our forefathers told and I myself honor. But those times were not attainable outside of myth, because as soon as man sought to make himself into this abstract desire, all concreteness was lost, and nothing attached him to the earth as he sought to leave it behind in some impossible state. To work towards the good and to build up a paradise is a righteous desire indeed, but to hold it into the realm of the idyllic is to worship the unattainable and lose the self in the desire to burn away all cobwebs of darkness. But do not forget those cobwebs still exist in every man.

How can one seek to find the idyllic when almost no man can obtain the idyllic in himself? And those few great men who achieved such a miracle, did not desire to build such a home, but instead sought to awaken others to the reality that they themselves could know as an individual. An individual creating oneself in the realm of the idyllic is good. An individual seeking to force the idyllic upon others who do not even know how to recognize it, is disaster. The kingdom is within, and to build without, the cobwebs must be accounted and cared for too.

The idyllic needs to be pursued without the conscious acknowledgment of pursuing it. What I mean by this is that to hold the idyll as one’s ultimate end means one will perish, because it is something undefined. Some bliss to seek but with no way of knowing what it looks like in actuality. And here abstraction rears its unreal head! To rightly pursue the idyllic, is to not pursue the ideal of it, but the Truth. And this is where mystical ennui stands so tall, the self-actualizing of the good and beautiful within your own self. Then the building upon it. Then the seeing it outside yourself, by relating yourself to what you see. The Truth is the beautiful and can only be met through experience. This is how the idyllic is pursued, by pursuing the Truth and not its ideal—the distant and detached image that has no place in concreteness.

I need not waste too many words on ideology, which is really just a poor substitute for the idyll. Ideology is when one lets oneself be told what that idyll is by some other group. That is for the bored and hopeless to play with, for it entertains and disguises their own lack of beauty in the shambles of the foundation that is their beaten and flattened selves. One mustn’t let someone else create one’s own image! That rests only with you in the infinite. And with ideology in mind, I see a certain negative type rising among groups that hope for destruction. Some call it accelerationism, but I call it an excuse based in despair. Would you watch the world burn as you yourself burn down with it? You cannot remove yourself from the time you were placed in. You are here for the purpose of bringing about beauty first within and then without—that Truth I so love. And while destruction and decay of ugliness can be beautiful in an intoxicating way, know that you are not a man detached from this here and now. Know that in its destruction, so too will you perish along with countless forms of beauty that cannot be restored once gone. The true and good destruction is creating something more beautiful to supplant the ugliness that so pervades.

If you cannot walk around your country and see any drop of beauty, I ask you first if you are capable of recognizing a positive beauty in yourself that doesn’t rely on differentiation. “I’m better because I do not like ugliness. I hate it!” Excellent. But do you love beauty? One cannot build a better world from the ruins if one is incapable of positive relation. And again, this desire for destruction and detachment from the now is based in abstraction, as if one might rest in their distant idylls and not act in a concrete manner of Truth—that of creation. Enough on this insidious form, for to cure such a polluted worldview one must be willing to see and relate to the always present splendor around them. It’s there. Enough with the resentment! I loathe those who walk around in a constant state of negative relation to the world. Can one truly be so blind to Truth?

But the issue of sight and the senses is one I’ve already covered in the chapters leading up to this one, through the return of childlike awe, through the relating to the miracle of the causal chain, through nature and beauty that will never be smitten, and through the right-willed self at the core of it all. But in this chapter, I seek to clarify what sight is, and that one might not mistake it as merely an inner sight but both the inner and outer in harmony, bringing the resolution of beauty within into the concrete without.

Assuming one has made that first resolution within, and found the foundation of beauty there, then one can proceed into the realm of seeing. I’ve used the term chain of causality quite a few times thus far, and this is simply because the unlikeliness and absolute glory of existence as it now is took an infinitude of effects to get us all here. I was looking at microscopic images the other day and taken aback by the glory and beauty of what is almost never seen. Imagine what rests in the realm of the unseen, what is there but can never quite be known! These are the effects that hold up the universe and all its glory. There’s always something more than meets the eyes, and that is why experience demands we acknowledge the unseen. There is always more. Nothing is ever ordinary. All is of incomprehensible complexity. Be grateful.

Think of the rich depths that lie within the self, that only you can know and nobody else. Now imagine those same depths, however unexplored by others, greeting you each and every day. In the annoying gossip of the obese secretary, and also in the alluring hair flip of the beautiful waitress, these depths show themselves as ripples. Sometimes they are of bright and obvious lighted beauty, and other times they are sick and diseased, reflecting the ugly. But one needn’t let the reflection of the ugly touch the self, for that is the deceit of darkness, merely a reminder of what could be if one falls to the normal boring malaise of weakness and submission to death. When encountering such ugliness, one need only relate to it in such a way as to recall what once was (if it be true), what might be, and what one must avoid becoming. The ugly is only a reminder of the temptation to being bored with the beautiful. To resting in the comfort of eventual death. That is no way to live! Let the sight of such hideousness lead to staring right through it, seeing the unseen, that is—seeing the untruth that boredom brings.

Now make sure not to go seeking such ugliness—to long to laugh at it and thank the gods that it is not your own lot. Such a path is a dangerous one, for it is once again one of negative relation. It is preferable to avoid having to see the ugliness, for it is a dangerous temptation to rest on one’s own merits and fall into satisfied stasis, which ultimately leads to the boredom that breeds such ugliness. But, when the ugly is unavoidable, which unfortunately is the case for many of us in our daily lives, the sight that looks through it and seeks for the unseen, the relation to the self that calls for continued building up—that is what one must look for. It is difficult and not something that should be sought out intentionally; there is a reason “guard your eyes” is such a simple yet true statement. Even in the sight of such temptation to negativity, one must bring about the positive relation of the assured self, and see it as a warning, perhaps even something that might one day be restored. For those of ugly spirit have eyes to see as well. Perhaps, by seeing your beauty based in eternity, they might catch such a spark. I only beg caution, for the sword can fall the other way.

Here I am focusing so much on sight, but is that the only sense? Of course not. The beautiful sounds that swirl around us are concrete reminders of the glory we can all strive for. In the grand and epic symphony, in the songs of the birds, in the voice of a lover—all these sounds are reminders of the Truth that abides. For taste the same can be said! The application of sight and ugliness can be applied to all the senses. Go through life desiring positive relation, resting in the beauty of the self that can only be corrupted or strengthened by the self. It is your will. Will well and act! Do not let these feelings of belonging and assuredness encourage complacency. That is the last thing I am trying to get across—the very opposite!

Abstraction is a real scourge to many thinkers. They think and think, and no matter how pretty their thoughts, they do not act. You see this in their deformed, ugly, and weak bodies. You see this in the way they conduct themselves and constantly harp on the negative and disparage those who encourage improvement and the positive. Existence speaks louder than thoughts. Words are empty without the weight of willed actuality. Live in the now, not the past, not some imagined future, and not some coming destruction. Live in concreteness and walk through this life as a paragon of Truth. Trust only those who relate in the positive and beautiful forms and doubt any who question purity of heart and will. Those who encourage nothingness—the boredom I’m seeking to discourage all from in this book—do not heed their screeching into the world that wants nothing to do with them. They’d screech if there were only one other person to listen. And in the end, they will fade away into the foggy horizon on their boat in the sea of boredom, until the waves of the unremarkable wash them away in the filth of their ugly abstractions and inaction.

So, work your job with assurance. Live your life with the sight that sees, and the ears that hear. Woe to those who refuse to see the unseen and listen to the unheard! How remarkable a man is who lives in the fullness of his being, relating positively and in beauty to the world around him so that in time, it begins to take on his reflection as others follow in his footsteps.

Chapter 12

Your Birds

On a small farm in the rural south, a bent, middle-aged woman, who appeared double her age due to illness, was tending to her mighty peacocks. The farm was spotted with dirt and the road leading up to it was of dusty gravel rutted over worse than any adolescent’s oily face. Yet her birds blazed a brilliant bright blue and green under the midday sun. The sky above was paved over with a white-blue, spotless like a heavenly highway leading right to a bright yellow sun that glowed in a comforting manner, for the day was one of pleasant warmth instead of the usual oppressive heat. A cool breeze gently played through the woman’s carelessly frizzled hair and ruffled the feathers of the bright birds. A young man approached the farm, walking slowly into the yard.

“Your birds, Ma’am, are beautiful,” he said.

“Oh, you mustn’t indulge me too much. They are but colorful chickens, and a lot louder and worse for care. But I thank you.”

“Peacocks. What a job. I wish my work were of a similar sort…” he sighed.

The woman held her chin and tilted her head, squinting thoughtfully as she looked the young man over. He was a gangly figure who was beginning to fill out his frame, though he still had the look of the entrapped awkwardness of youth. His shoulders were rounded, and his head was a bit large for his body, and it seemed to press him down and forward with its weight. He stood in such a way as to appear unaware of his outside, lost in his own thoughts. His distant green eyes were clouded with a dark and unknowable black like an expanse of German forest. He was pale and sweating, despite the pleasant weather, which meant he likely had walked some way to get there. The woman smiled at him.

“What is your name? And how far is it that you have walked?”

He started at the question, as if embarrassed. He brushed his unruly bangs over his large and wide forehead and gripped his narrow chin. “My name is Aaron.” He cleared his throat, holding onto his chin as if afraid his head might fall off and forward as he stood there in his permanent hunch. “From town. Just a few miles. I… I’d always wanted to see your peacocks.”

The woman laughed. “Well, is the town gossiping about the crazy woman broken by illness and only kept alive by her colorful birds?” She laughed again and smiled warmly as Aaron shook his head in shame. “You can call me Mary. My bright little chickens might make for pretty friends, but their voices are loud, and it gets lonely out here without humans to entertain. Would you like to come inside, for a bit?”

Aaron nodded, his face reddening at the invitation.

Mary shuffled up to him and looked him clear in his hazy eyes. “You may wish for work such as this. But these birds are no simple peace. I find joy in them now. But I found joy once as a clerk. All things have their joys. Even the deserts.” She sighed at this, and before he could respond she turned away and limped up towards her front porch.

The peacocks, of which there were seven, ignored their mistress and continued pecking at the dusty grounds. One particularly stout one stood in Aaron’s path, and he was hesitant to get too near. But there was no way around if he wanted to go into Mary’s house. This one’s tail was tucked respectfully behind and veiled, but as Aaron took a hesitant step forward, the peacock stared up at him with small, curious black eyes, and stood tall like Moses with his tablets. And then in a sudden burst of brilliant fanning, the tail opened up like the heavens after a rainstorm, and the many eyed cloud of feathers bloomed before him in such a startling and eternal way that Aaron froze, stunned and unable to move in the face of such foreign splendor.

Mary, now at her front door called back, “I think he likes you! Come on now, walk by. Moriah is one who likes to show himself off to anyone who will care to look.”

Aaron swallowed and made his way forward, and he had the irrational fear that the bird was intentionally blocking his way. His faltering steps forward stopped, and the bird’s brilliant fire of feathers blazed up under the cool sun in a deep blue, deeper than the sky’s color, and apparently vaster when so close-up.

“He won’t bite! He’s a friendly fellow. Just stand tall and walk right by.”

Mary still waited at her door. Whether it was out of bemused curiosity or out of the pain that walking might bring, she smiled all the same.

A cloud approached the otherwise clear sky; it was tattered and lopsided like a stranded wreck of a ship, and there was a piece of white fluff that dangled out the back like a clinging sailor. Aaron looked up to watch it while the peacock watched him. At last, it shuffled out of the way and went off to go bother one of the females. Aaron breathed deep and long, nodding at the cloud as if its distraction had been only for him. He walked up the porch steps to Mary, whose grin had widened into a horizon.

She welcomed him into the house through an old, yellow-white door. The house itself was nothing much to look at. It had a rusted tin roof that sagged. It was just as dented and marred as the gravel road. The walls were painted a barn red color that had been chipped off to give the house the look of leprosy, with patches of mottled white pushing through like boils and blisters. The inside was much more welcoming, though one might find a sort of rustic charm to the outside.

It was like stepping into a tree trunk: wooden floors, wood-paneled walls, and old wood furniture like something out of a fairy tale. This was where the fairy godmother lived! Aaron chuckled at the thought and Mary gave him a jokingly mean glare, pretending to be offended at his laughter. He failed to pick up on the sarcastic gleam in her eyes and smirk, and he turned bright red and cleared his throat. Mary chuckled and shook her head, turning her back and motioning for him to follow her into the den.

“Make yourself as comfortable as you can.” She pointed at a wooden chair that was pulled up in front of a stone fireplace, the chair gnarled like bark and cushioned by a red-frilled pillow covered in a pink floral pattern. “I’ll make us some coffee and we can chat.” She left him to sit there as she went away into her kitchen.

He took a deep breath and looked in reverent silence at the fairytale home around him. While wood was everywhere, not everything was so dead, for there were potted plants and bright blue flowers flourishing on every table near the many windows surrounding the room, which filled it with an almost clear, ocean-like shimmering light, rippling and reflecting with the bright flowers’ blooms. Hanging on the walls were shelves covered in pleasant looking nick-nacks, here an old smiling homespun doll with red curled hair of wool, there some smooth and rounded white rocks, and pretty little books with amusing and wholesome titles that made him think of nursery rhymes.

Where there weren’t shelves and plants there were framed paintings of different animals. Several of peacocks. One even looked like it was a painted picture of Mary holding up one of her prized birds and grimacing out at him in a pastel color. There were a few others that were photographs of dogs, a couple of bears, and one human photograph of Mary and an ancient looking woman beside her, who stood tall and proud in her old age.

He took a deep breath and sought to formulate his explanation for why he was truly here. Of course, such a formulation was difficult when he wasn’t truly sure, other than out of some need, or better yet, out of lack. He sought in vain for the right words but felt at ease once he saw Mary’s smiling face holding two mugs full of steaming coffee, the wisps of it tickling Mary’s pale countenance and giving it an angelic halo.

“Now, my dear man, please tell me why you have come to my humble home here.” She pulled up another chair and placed his mug on the fireplace, doing the same for herself as she took her seat.

“I… I…” he faltered and reached for the mug, taking a timid sip of the hot liquid and welcoming its scorching and bitter clarity. He avoided looking at her and held the mug in front of him, staring into its black circle. “I don’t like my life very much right now.”

“Hmm. So, you came here. What do you hope to find?” Her voice was gentle and kind.

“I don’t know. People always spoke of the strange sickly woman on her farm in peace with her peacocks.” He looked up at her from the side of his eyes and mumbled on. “They call you crazy chicken lady. But I don’t know, I felt as if I had to come and see.” He shook his head, his eyes lowering back to the black of his mug. “I sound like a fool.”

Mary laughed with warmth and looked at him with sparkling eyes filled with rich life, though he could not bear to see them just yet. “These peachicks are much less useful than chickens, I’ll tell you that much! But their use is not for me. It is for themselves. That is their beauty. At least when they have their colors and feathers in the right seasons, which you luckily have chanced upon.”

“I’m just tired, Mary.” He sighed and at last looked up, putting his mug back down. He still could not see her kindness reflecting himself back just yet. “I came here in hopes of something. A strange something, a difference to my terrible sameness. I wake up and work at a store, serving people who do not care for me and my wares, cleaning, loading, selling… the only thing that changes are the faces. Yet even now they blur into a blob of sameness too.”

“You think what I have here is not the same, everyday? I care for these ingrateful showbirds who only seem to exist for themselves. I limp around on my crutches, alone yet alive. My sameness sustains me.”

“What is the difference then? Is it because you own this all? Is this the charmed and simple life so many romanticize in their fictions?” He sighed again and reached for his mug, taking a long gulp before putting it back down to continue. “What do you have that I do not? You are alone here yet your beauty shines through in your life. Forgive me for being trite, but as affected as it sounds, I felt a change as soon as I saw you at work.”

“Beauty is in the eyes of the peacocks’ feathers.” She smiled and finally Aaron smiled back. “I see what I need to see. And I do what I feel I need to do. Any sense of sameness, like that of which you spoke of, is meaningless when I see such eyes looking back at me.” She paused, and her face turned deathly serious. “Before I had these squawking chickens, I saw the same eyes all around. In the trees, the skies, and yes, even in those faces you say blur into a blob. Distinguish them and see their reflection in your own. There rests my peace.”

“But what if the eyes are ugly? What if that which surrounds you lacks such sight?”

“Start with your own sight then. You see what you must. But it is you who accepts what you see, and you who can see like the sun sees us. Nothing is too far to be made near.”

Aaron furrowed his brow, itching his sharp chin and pulling at the skin of his neck. He looked up at the painting of Mary and her bird, and as grim as she looked there, he thought he could see a smile in the pastel pools of her eyes.

Suddenly, he burst out with a cry, “See, you are as beautiful as your birds! You knew!”

She laughed and shook her head. He nodded at her.

“Come, let’s go see Moriah again. You have eyes to see.”

Chapter 13

The Death of Pan

The old god Pan played his flute alone in the green hills of Arcadia. It was a song of emptiness, no words or melodies, only harsh longing for an end to it all. How far had this god fallen! The god of gaiety and delight, the god who knew the highest aesthetic pleasures of theatre. The god who danced and drank merrily for most of his eternity. Yet his eternity was a circle long since collapsed, and now all he did was wait for an end to his endlessness. He’d heard the cries reverberating prematurely around the world, “The great god Pan is dead!” It meant nothing to him for he had died to himself and remained as such long before this supposed truth.

Yet there he sat, alive in death, playing his somber flute which once had driven even the purest maiden into a zealous fervor for life. He played death. His song went something like this.

The world has gone dark with my dead delight

Gaia gone, Zeus asleep, and the Titans forgotten

My love for life has fallen from black sight

Nothing to see when the soul is always rotten

Where have all the muses and maidens of song gone?

The animals left me to sing and sing sadness

The music has fled and I’m nothing but a pawn

The animals left me to pursue their gladness

My half-goat form not enough to be free untamed

The wild bursts into a wilderness of fire

The human half, the god half, is what’s left me maimed

The civilizations freeze all my desire

Now I sit in uncomfortable sloth

Once my laziness had me higher than the busy

Now I sit atop hills, imagined aloft

But so high up am I that I am always dizzy

And so I sing along with those who remember me,

Great Pan is gone and dead!

And so I end along with those who dismember me,

Poor Pan is one with dread!

His singing went on in verses of similar malcontent. Yet his songs carried neither passion nor effort as the words and rhythms were lazily put together out of a crippling boredom. His life lingered because he was too tired to die and rest well. He slept uneasily, alone with his dead godhood.

And every day he awoke and mourned the loss of his beauty. He sang in vain as the world continued to get uglier and uglier as new societies were formed around him. What had been celebrated when Pan was at his zenith was a glorious revelry of gaiety, life, and fulfillment. It was the mad dance in the forest as the dew shined fresh on the mossy carpets, and the trees themselves were seen shaking along as the god sung his songs of outpouring merriment in all that life had to offer. But now, the trees that remained sat still in their somber observations, matching the bard god’s songs of solitude and remembrance.

The maidens who’d once so recklessly danced with only their own beauty and its fullness in mind, were now distracted by gain in a world of utility that sought only comfort and forced peace. Where was the mad dancing and movement from before? The kind that only bursts from a soul that is so overflowing with beauty that there is no way of being still and holding it in. Oh, to truly dance again!

And though Pan was never one to admit it, on the clearest of days, when he recognized the fiery sun still high and proud in the heavens like a beacon calling forth those of beauty, he realized that he too was becoming a part of the dying world around him. He’d let the others and their forceful ugliness cloud his own skies, and his joy waned as he failed to live and love so fully as he once had. No longer was he a being begging to burst with his beauty, but instead, that once overflowing cup had been tilted in such a way that it had diminished into a trickle, so slowly and subtly that he had never taken the time to refill it, for he hadn’t recognized that it had gotten so empty.

Our poor and lonely god, Pan! Who would hear his songs now? What purpose did they serve but as epitaphs of some unknowable past that even the great bard no longer could rightly recollect. He was as good as dead, yet he refused to die. There was still some lingering spirit within, for his spilled cup had not yet fully emptied itself out just yet.

On one particularly gray morning, as Pan sat on his hill with not even the slightest longing to sing, a dark beast emerged from the distant, silent trees. Pan squinted his beady eyes and stared as the beast slowly approached from below. It was a hulking hound, rippled with muscles like mountain ridges. The monster had two large dog heads with two pairs of bright red eyes.

“Orthrus,” Pan called out faintly.

Cerberus’s two-headed brother, the oft forgotten hound thought long since slain at the hands of mighty Hercules. The large beast strode up the hill and growled out a strange sort of song.

Today there are many who watch and wait

Listening to nothing but death

Today there are many who ignore fate

Listening to not even breath

Deaf these blind ones are in their unbridled and empty rush

Dead these lifeless ones live, fearing idle fullness of hush

But my dead Pan, I have died just as you

Even still the few live

But my dead Pan, I have come just to you

To show you how to give

And Orthrus finished his roaring song and pounced on Pan, crushing his goat neck between his mighty maws.

***

His parents had named him Pan, for they were historians of Grecian antiquity and thought it would be good fun to name their son after such a mischievous and joyful god. Their son had grown into a somber man, and he never much liked his name for it served only as an ironic mockery of his downcast mood. His somberness was not one that dwelled in quiet darkness; it was more the sort that was a restless fury that hid itself in depression.

Pan, the young and angry man, was tired of his modernity, but he had found no proper release for the rage he held within. His fire was kindled, and the smoke that arose into thoughts darkened blacker and blacker each day. He watched the news to fan these flames, seeing story after story of outrage and disdain at the common man. How the smug faces on the screen mocked the everyman who worked hard but did not care for the progress that had so undone the already frayed bonds of a dying nation.

With this disgust of society clouding his every thought, he went to the gun range and shot and shot until he was proficient enough to shoot the demons he saw on every corner, if it ever came to it. How he hoped it would one day come to it! He trained his body up and sought the outlet of combat sports, again in eager anticipation of the day he would be able to use his skills and strength to avenge the beauty he saw as forever lost. To be on the Steppes, a warlord driven by the desire for power and glory!

His eyes were so stormed with disgust that he was incapable of seeing any beauty in the present. He read book after book about the degeneracy of the masses and the evils of technology. He was so full of disgust that not even a loving look from a good and attractive woman could cleanse him. Even in happy children he only saw the potential decay that would soon come when they were faced with such a wretched education. In whatever ways beauty tried in vain to reveal herself to him, he shook his head at her potential destruction… not even potential, for in his mind if she weren’t already marred by being in the state of modernity, she would be destroyed soon enough by the ugliness that was now so celebrated.

He often thought back on his upbringing, in which he’d been forced to live in a mode of acceptance and tolerance of the worst of evils that he now understood as wrong, but at the time he’d merely mistrusted. But whenever he had spoken innocently as a child on what seemed so wrong, he was forcefully corrected and led back to the doctrine of relativeness, and how as long as what others did was their own choice, it was good and right to them, regardless of the effects. He felt the effects now, only in his early twenties and dropped out of college, unable to stomach another course on the evils of men and a certain pale race that was only capable of harm, even when what they did was great by any other objective standard.

But how often had he been told that objectivity was just another form of hatred! So be it, then he would become this hatred, and it was all that held him upright, this rage-filled will of disgust. It was they who had destroyed the good, and he would destroy those who celebrated and encouraged this destruction! The end had already begun, the decline so low that there was nothing worth saving in the world. No… the technology, the society, and all its evils must be brought crumbling to the ground. Beauty would emerge from the flames of the desolation of ugliness. Though he found himself less and less concerned with that abstract beauty after, and more with how he might bring about such a sudden and glorious end. Let the later ones deal with the ashes!

He found himself more and more excited at the recent news of protests and riots through many of the cities of his so-called peaceful and tolerant nation. Let them burn it down, for those fools who wrecked the civilization that already coddled them were only hastening their own downfall. He’d joined in on the fray in his own city a few times, shouting along with those who he longed to see wiped out. Whatever hastened it was enough for him. Sure, he felt bad for the same everyman he’d once been so defensive and protective of, but those same everymen had also fallen to the decay of modernity and were not so different from the protestors—if anything they were weaker for hiding in the hope of security in a world that was not worth keeping secure.

Pan of course found himself tiring of pretending to be just another protestor, and he was ready to try something a bit more sudden and, in his mind, pure. His plan was to hit the power plant in the largest block of his city, to cripple its energy and ignite riots hitherto unseen in the modern day. Not mere destruction of property, but an ignition that he hoped would spark destruction of life that he thought was long since dead. Before we join him in his dangerous plan, I think it important to note another aspect of Pan’s rageful psyche.

In recent news, there had been those who had defended themselves amidst the riots going on, and in doing so, had unavoidably taken some of the (what Pan called) ugly ones down with them. Yet he was unsatisfied with mere defense. For in all the cases he’d so closely followed, the everyman wielding his rightfully owned gun was merely defending his own safety. None of them had been the aggressors, and this was not the kind of accelerated end of ugliness that Pan longed for nor thought sustainable. For all these defenders were maligned, mocked, called evil and all sorts of slander, and he saw in this the futility of resisting as a sort of ceaseless if not momentarily effective retreat. Only losers defended. The winners were those who acted first.

He would act the next night, and he would stand alone decked out in a heavy flak jacket and armed to the teeth. He had no plans to wear a mask, for he no longer cared about his safety or security. As he’d thought many times before, what was the point in keeping up appearances and sameness when that sameness was so ugly and devolving into a backsliding avalanche of mediocrity. If there was one thing that made him angrier than all else, it was that of the mediocre. Let them call him that now! But tomorrow night, he would strike like the fiercest of tigers. Call him Pan! He would live up to his name and make the world dance in a mad revelry of destruction. One could not kill a god!

He went to his bed in a strangely sublime manner with power coaxing him to rest on the night that he imagined would be his last alive. His eyes closed and bright colors and images flashed, pressing upon his eyelids as he fell headlong into a sudden and violent sleep, as if pulled under by some demon. When he opened them, he found himself in a dream too real for comfort. He was fully lucid and awake in this strange state, aware he was dreaming yet feeling as if where he was was realer than reality itself.

He sat atop a soft green hill, fresh and alive with a heavenly dew that rested within each blade of grass. And the grass, why, he could look at it and see each individual blade amidst the multitude like his vision was that of a god. The earthly perfume that arose was so pure and clean that he felt lighter, like the scent would carry him upward into the heavens. The heavens! They were gold and made of a light unpolluted by the putrid breath of modernity. The sun burned an orange red, high and in the middle, and he could look at it without its warmth burning his eyes. Fire rippled across its blazing face like veins, and its effulgence bled out and colored the sky like an ocean of bronze. Its furnace of power was one of welcoming warmth, and Pan smiled up at it. For once, he felt like his namesake.

His ears perked up at a gentle stirring of the wind, which carried the faint hiss of a flute. It lapped up his body like a gentle stream and carried a coolness, and he wasn’t startled to find that his bottom half was made up of brown furred goat legs. He smiled wider. Arcadia. He was in Arcadia. This dream meant he was heading down the right path. He knew it. The wind, still tickling his curly fur, suddenly grew colder, and seemed to intentionally whip at him. Words surged forth from the wind in a strong and ancient voice, a combination of beastly gutturals and angelic choirs.

Everything mundane to a soul profane. Nothing mundane to a soul aflame.

The words meant little to him as he looked at the tree line and saw them sway, not from wind but a coming thunder. The trees were shivering as if in fear and scrambling to get out of the way of whatever was coming. The behemoth that emerged, felling trees as it lurched forward, was a sight to behold. It had two heads with both necks as thick and sturdy as buildings, and its mottled black fur was matted down in a sheen of slick sweat and oils, bristling in bunches and looking almost like scales with furry weeds sprouting out between the cracks. An armor of decay. The red eyes of Orthrus looked at Pan and narrowed, and with a mighty bark the old hound raced forward.

Pan stood up on his strong goat legs and lowered his head, only now noticing the ivory horns that proudly curled out in a golden oak spiral and into deadly points. He recalled his disgust of the defensive and charged forward with a leap off his soft hill. He flew into the cold air as the awakened wind carried his lofty flight higher. Spinning, he turned and aimed down from above, his horns leading him to earth to meet the hound who had stopped in a skid and snapped his jaws upward. He plunged into the beast’s open mouth, his horns tearing through the soft innards and out through the monster’s neck. Covered in red-black blood, he rolled onto the ground and leapt up from his hooves, avoiding the tearing claws of Orthrus.

The grass was torn up with bits of red soil churning as if Arcadia bled. A wicked tail—a living serpent of purple-black onyx writhed from behind Orthrus and snapped its poison fangs at Pan as he leapt backwards again. But he refused to defend and followed his retreat with an even swifter jump forward to land right on the hound’s back. He pounded his fists uselessly on hard fur, forgetting himself in a blaze of rage. The serpent tail hissed, and the two heads of the hound swung round, the blood from the open throat on the dangling left head spraying Pan with pulpy gore. As the serpent bit his heel and a blaze of fire shot out from the hound’s head, Pan dug his horns into Orthrus’s back and brought the beast to its knees. Then Pan awoke.

The day had come to attack the power plant. As Pan he would charge. As himself. The dream was nothing to him as the fire of rage and reality struck his face from the unforgiving, choked sun of the city as it prodded at him in his bed through a dirty window.

***

Everything was going according to plan. He’d slipped into the shadows through one of the many holes in the chain link fence that half-heartedly guarded the plant. There was an old man, a janitor who had the misfortune of cleaning the halls at this fateful hour. Pan checked his rage, for he heard a familiar tune being sung in a throaty, unabashed voice.

Everything mundane to a soul profane. Nothing mundane to a soul aflame.

The wind had sung the words in the same way just last night in his dream. Only now, the humble manner in which the words tumbled out made them all the sweeter. No wind threatened now. Was the janitor this wind? Pan froze in his shadows and watched the old janitor repeat the refrain again and again as he happily mopped the corridor. The old man in his stooped posture suddenly grew tense, like a cornered cat, and turned to the shadows Pan had hidden himself in.

“Who is there?” he said, his voice strong but unsure.

“I am,” Pan said, stepping out.

The old man took one look at Pan’s outfit and guns and gripped his mop as if he meant to use it as a sword. But now face to face under the offensive and weak fluorescent light, Pan was startled by the man’s eyes—crystal strength like that of an ancient sea swirling forever in endless increase.

“Come for a fight, yet you watch me, waiting… what for?” The man’s grip loosened, but his eyes intensified as he stared at Pan’s squared face and black eyes which were fearsomely dark against the expanse of pink-white skin.

“Your song… what you sang… I heard it in a dream last night.”

The old man looked closer at Pan and nodded. “A mantra of my grandfather and his before. It keeps me afloat the mire not only of this work here,” he waved the mop around his feet and threw up his other arm in disgust, “but also the work of living in such a world.”

“I know this,” Pan stepped closer and his voice and body shook with an urge he couldn’t explain. Like a child first made aware that someone else too understood its unique, spiritual pain. “I am here to end this filth!”

“But did you hear the words? I can tell you son that their reaching you before is no joke, but a symbol of the utmost high. Your soul is aflame, but it is choked in smoke and soot that if not cleared, will snuff you out before you ever truly burn bright.” He cleared his throat, and moved closer, nodding and looking like a kind grandfather, kinder than any Pan had ever known. “Forgive me for being poetic or trite. For much of my existence I wandered through life with not even enough willpower to muster up a sense of being profane. I thought I couldn’t be profane when there was nothing sacred left, if there ever really had been.”

“Your words are just that, words! Inaction. I am here to act. This powerplant is unguarded; are you the only man I must kill?” Pan snarled, and pushed the man back, surprised to meet a force so strong in a body so old, as the janitor stood tall and held his ground.

“You must listen and not ignore the god’s voice in your wind, in your dream. I sing it often. Nobody else knows it but my grandfather who is long since dead. Listen!”

“No! The stupid song implies that there’s something more beyond our slow descent into the nothingness we crawled out from. The only difference between birth and death was beginning and end. In the beginning we came from the end. And in the end, we go back to that beginning.” Pan paced in circles, yelling like a madman, not caring who heard, if there even was another soul in this so-important power plant left unattended except for this lowly old man. “But the beginning is a final end, and so it is a sad paradox that is mercifully finished with no more puffed-up fools to pontificate on what that might mean.”

“Yet you pontificate now your unmeaning. And your actions are only words, because if you do achieve whatever destruction you seek, people like me… people who see and know of our own fires and inhale the same smoke from those before, we too fall in this hellscape you’ve created.”

“We talk and talk! Speak fast old man, your words are weary.”

The old man sighed and shook his head. “I can tell you in my life that no matter the struggle or pleasure I managed to momentarily conjure up, there was always the sinking reality of that final beginning of the end you spoke of. I know it well, the nothingness that laughs at us all. I couldn’t see beauty once before when anything that looked to possess such an ephemeral quality, would only wither and fall into that same nothing that we all would end in one day. The politicking, the religious fervor, the hedonism, all of it was the desperate death throes of a fearful being terrified of the nothingness that would consume all.” The janitor laughed at his memory and shook his head.

Pan grit his teeth but listened. His rage was inward for the moment. What was a few more moments before his end? He figured he’d let the old man live these last moments for just a while longer. The everyman indeed!

The janitor was nodding, his eyes calm and cloudy as he looked back at his past. “I thought that the truth of nature was perhaps best found in a small Australian mammal called an antechinus. The males mate to the point of disintegration, with so much testosterone pumping and so many constant orgasms that when the bliss and fervor diffuses, so too do their short-lived lives. Perhaps they were the true holders of the meaning of existence. A ray of pleasure so bright that it burns itself up before it can do little else. No darkness of despair there! The meaning of life: ceaseless, zealous, fucking to death.” Now the old man cackled, dropping his mop with a clatter and wiping his eyes as he recalled such thoughts.

“And how did you escape this?” Pan’s brow furrowed and he clutched at his vest as if he subconsciously wanted to shed it.

“I myself am by no means a morbid man. People who know me called me jolly and a pleasure to be around then, and of course they still do. Those that still live, mind you.” He grinned and shook his head. “That only makes it all the funnier to me. So many ask Why? while I responded with a haughty Why not? In my blasphemy against my grandfather’s mantra, I thought I might find something that makes the nothingness mundane. But even that word was a mockery of it all! The second part of my grandfather’s aphorism was of no interest to me. It was deceit! The antechinus need not tell itself such lies to die in its own orgasmic fury. But the antechinus is small and weak. And we, son, we are strong. I opened my eyes.”

“To what? Mopping up filth!”

“I met a woman. Had a child. Held beauty I helped create in my arms. I met others who were good. And though there were very few worth knowing, our relations forced me to reconsider my grandfather’s words. My soul had been profane before because I myself was not strong. Until I saw my love, and she relied on me and we created something so beautiful, I began to seek to find the soul within me and if there was a flame beneath my own selfish mire. It burned through. I went overseas. I fought. I risked much. And I’ve seen enough beauty to know this is true. I know it. Whether or not I die now, tomorrow, or in that inevitable end, it does not change this reality. Beauty is.”

“And your work? And the state of the world? Your child no doubt participates in that very filth!”

“My work is hardly mundane. For it has led me to you. And it has led me to others. The job itself is lowly, but in its depths, I have seen merely another circular pattern of existence that spirals up and higher. It’s all there to take in. It changes my flame by making it withstand the coldest of places. I am brighter for it. And my son is dead. Drugs, if you must know. But I am still me. Each man can only know himself. The relation of the self must be to the absolute, the higher, the source of the flame.”

“A philosophizing janitor. My dream, this strange mysticism… I only know that I must burn it all down. Your words will not save you.” Pan pointed his gun at the old man and shot him in the head.

The old man died with a smile and Pan raged ahead, only to be shot down by the guards that had at last come. The final blot of life on his face was one of unfulfilled rage… and fear.