Adeste Fideles, Laete Triumphantes
Adrift in a crystal ball.
All that is visible in a maelstrom of shadows and specters and colored chaos is a dendritic cloud: a mighty silver oak whose acorns are drops of golden starshine, whose leaves are burnished copper shades of sunset, whose buds are shafts of light, whose fleurs du mal are sandstorms.
It stretches unattainably into the unimaginable distance. I am one with its network of roots, its web gleaming from the soil of shadows. It grows away from me in all directions like a crystal lattice, like a reta mirabile, like tangled silken hair, like great staring eyes mirroring love and fire.
The sinuous twisting of its leaves in a nonexistent breeze tantalizes my blind mind. They twirl themselves into my skull like corkscrews and stir the emptiness of my brain.
The buds, like navels, stark in the sheaths of the growing points, radiate light and a sound which penetrates deep into my bowels. A voice from the dark, into the dark again. A voice from beyond the grave and beyond the stars. A voice from seven hells aflame, a voice which strikes deep into my frozen being, denying, defying the soul which looks on, unafraid and without understanding.
The blooming flowers like the eyes of hell’s gate. The twin pools of blurred heaven that meet in love and kindness, and might almost manage to communicate. The spring of existence. Dead eyes. Mine. No reply. In the dream of deathlessness, they reject everything. Utterly and absolutely. Renounce the whole universe. Forbid even laughter. No understanding.
The seed of the tree, like blind, swimming sperm, singing in the lacework branches, falling slowly so slowly so slowly so . . .
harker, this is jenny.
They turn in flight, head over heels, changing shape like drops of water on a hot plate. And to the soul, they are water — immaterial. And slowly still they fly. Down deep into the heart of heartless mind, a brokenhearted mind, a broken-minded heart. Diving for the cool calm cool calm cool . . .
harker, i know you can hear me. all you have to do is listen, harker. you can hear me. you’re alive. listen to me, harker.
ocean of emotion. And never reaching. Always a little further on, dreaming in the dankness of absolute nothing. The emotions are a cipher, a zero, a nonmeaning. Their stillness is a perfection.
And they land, in the dry dusty dry dusty dry . . .
this is jenny, harker. say something. say anything. just make a noise. show us some way that you know what’s happening, that you know what’s going on. let us know that you’re coming back, harker. this is jenny, harker. answer me, harker. please answer me.
desert of the emptiness, where only the soul lives in a cave, coming out to pick the bones of consciousness at dawn and evening.
Smash. Like a broken crystal ball. Crush an eyeball in a fist. Splash. Tear a heart out in sacrifice.
The soul lives in a cave. It comes out at dawn and evening, to pick the bleached bones of consciousness.
Harker
Harker
Harker
Harker
Harker
Harker
At the end of a journey in aeonic time, hungry and thirsty, with faint heart and fading vision, I am an old man holding a jug, sitting beside myself. The shade of an oak tree protects both of me from the furious sun.
I am tired.
I am tired.
I the old man pours something from my urn into a china cup and offers it to me. I reach for it and find my arm too heavy to lift. All of me is very heavy, especially the old bones and the young head. I press the cup to my (other) eager lips, and I drink as deeply as I am able. As I tilt the cup, liquid runs from the corners of my mouth to stain my shirt and moisten the earth which feeds the oak tree.
“What is it?” I ask, for the draft is very sweet.
“Water,” I say, my voice like an echo from far, far away,
Harker
Harker
Harker
“only water.”
And the cup in the crumbling hand recedes from me into a giant funnel of forgetfulness.
Jenny
Harker
All around me the magnificent dark, empty and infinite. My kingdom and my joy. A curtain of hungry darkness, ready to take me in its fond embrace, to hug me, to cradle me, to love me. A deep, pregnant silence — a silence of waiting — a silence of anticipation. My empire and my pleasure.
I wait with patience, resplendent in the glory of my halo of light. The light is golden. I am a fly suspended in amber. A firefly, all around me the almighty night.
Afar off, the night splits to divulge a second glow. Tiny as a pinprick at first, it grows. Proxima Centauri.
Within its mute red halo is another man — taller than I and stronger. He is assured and arrogant. He wears red and yellow, whereas I wear gray and blue.
He is
Harker
and he hates me.
“
Harker
”he says to me. “You grow older each time we meet. I will win what you have, and one day soon I will drain you of existence.”
“One day!” I say, scathingly. “One day, and a sooner day than yours, I will succeed. I learn, in my between-times. What have you learned since last we met? What have you in real profit? Nothing. You have spent and you have wasted. You have not saved; you have not speculated. Your one day is a distant dream. Mine is numbered among the tomorrows.”
“You are mad,”
Harker
He comes forward, his chest heaving, his tongue between his teeth, his halo growing hot. But he moves so slowly. His eyes are like plates of glass. He is suspended for an eternity. He is afraid, and he is at my mercy.
“One day,” I say, mocking him.
“Tell me,” he says, recovering himself. “What next? What now, little man?”
“Look around you,” I say to him. “All around you is the dark. We alone, you and I, have light. The light defines the reason for our being. We are the light. We exist to scatter the light. And light we shall have, great blazing worlds of fire to flood the dark and force the blackness away. Turbulence. Chaos. Fight.”
“Chaos,” my accused
Harker
whispers, hating even the sound of the word. I can still remember him screaming.
“Your dreams can never come true,” he tells me. “You are mad.”
The bubbles of light pull themselves apart. My son recedes into the darkness.
He smiles at me as he goes, and says, “Good-bye,
Harker
We will meet when your lights go out.”
“My stars will never go out,” I tell him.
I stare defiantly into the lovely, maternal dark. I ignore the small voice which whispers within my skull and says, “You are insane. This whole universe, the dark, you,
Harker
your dimensions, they are your imagination. You created
Harker
in your mind. You make mad worlds, and justify them in defeating
Harker
And even then, who wins? Could you hold and humiliate a real
Harker
? Do you win your arguments only in your twisted mind?”
The dark is waiting yet. Still and placid. Welcoming and loving.
“Why?” I say, and I cover my eyes with my tired hands.
And the sky is full of the dust of distant stars.
Forever?
harker this is jenny
Is there an
answer
answer . . .?
please