Having read, I closed the book. Reading, I close the book. Reading on, I will close the book and return no more.
I can feel it working now. I can feel the great Undoing. So many stories unwinding like balls of
thread. So many lives unraveling. I am a spider at the center of their
web. They do not know that I have struck
them from the beginning. You also, you
do not feel the beginning of the end.
But as I now return this book to its
jeweled case, this case wherein it will reside evermore, I feel a sense of
great and unparalleled satisfaction. The
world makes mistakes sometimes, and I was the greatest mistake of all. Having now read the words that undo all other
words, having ripped out my pages from the book of all pages, I can sit
quietly, and await oblivion. The world
does indeed make mistakes, but it also admits correction.
You might wonder as you sit there,
seconds before the End of the World, how this has come to be. You might wonder why we all have to
disappear, to die. I will tell you why. No man or woman sits apart in this world, and
even the loneliest of souls are never truly alone. We are all a part of one another’s stories,
and this is why you must all join me in nothingness. Yes, every man, woman, and child –conjoined
in our Absence.
And you don’t need to cry over
this. You don’t need to bemoan your
fate. It will be as if you have never
been. Why then cry over a future you
never had, or a past you never will have?
There is a freedom in Negation.
It is a freedom from possibilities.
My eyes fill with tears to think of
it. No more me. No more her.
No more death. No more life. For all of us, freedom, and most of you will
be gone before you have even finished this sentence.
I return the Words of Trismegistus to
the floorboards. There to await some
other days, when some other things that call themselves thinking will discover
this spot, and discover that in their own tales, which they bite with rage,
lies the remedy.
Not the end of the universe, I
think. We are not that far gone into our
interdependence. Just the death of a
species, and perhaps those stunted animals we call familiar. Nevertheless an end to this world, and an end
to this story. Not bit by bit, but life
by life, and without remembering. The
monuments we leave behind will be interpreted incorrectly. Our tombstones will weather.
And later on, not even the relics of our
lordship will persist. Only a false
impression.
Oh wife, why did you set me on this
path? Now that it is too late to turn
from it? If only you had been
faithful. If only I had never been
born. If only my father hadn’t been so
fond of telling stories that he gave life to one more. If only, if only. If only we hadn’t crawled out of the
sea. If only we hadn’t been doomed to
rush on, purposelessly, into other stories.
If only my hand could have been restrained from this.
I wonder
No comments:
Post a Comment