Notes (XI)

I had not looked at that thread since I saved it and sent it to myself, back at Spelunk 04! I was avoiding it. I was worried that the separation would begin again. And while I can’t say for sure that the separation should not begin again, I was worried that if it were to occur again, I would not be able to finish my report.

But I have been writing the report—or rather, pointedly not writing the report—or, even more precisely, writing not-the-report—for quite a while now. And it’s become fairly obvious that I’m doing this in order to avoid things like that thread. But the Cafe is waiting. I have a duty to do. The separation has not occurred, and that means I think I am safe for now.

I remember, when I was first starting to write, that I kept telling myself I needed to produce something that could stand up to scrutiny not only from within the Cafe but from without. Present self as sane, sensitive. But there is no way to square this circle—presenting myself as sane and sensitive is incompatible with telling the truth, because in truth, I am not sane and sensitive. Or at least I was not, at the time.

If only it had been feasible to get Jenny to write the report, and not me—she might have been able to construct a public face that would not undermine itself, both unflinching and apparently credible. But I’m different—unless I flinch, I won’t seem credible. But if I do flinch, I won’t be credible.

If only Jenny could have. Wonderful blameless Jenny. Or strange but pure Aaron. If only someone else could, if only it wasn’t me, if only.

Present self as sane, sensitive? No. Present self as penitent, wretched. Present self as culpable, loathsome. Present self as responsible for at least three deaths (let’s not kid ourselves here). Present self as Eris at the feast and the snake in the Garden.

Let’s not kid ourselves here. No matter how much I make myself slick with honeyed words, there is no way to slide out of my misdeed. I didn’t pull the trigger, but I provided the ammunition. As it were. I have been blustering about in the hope of building up enough verbiage to somehow overcome the challenge without ever once confronting its core. I thought I could just somehow present a mundane account . . . a sublunary account of what happened, leaving out the poisoned jewel in the middle. No more of that, now. Either the poisoned jewel kills a tyrant or kills an innocent, but I cannot pretend it is not poisoned. Let the light pour in, and fill me up.

Back up. Whence this sudden change of heart?

Well you see, dear reader (and I know, now, that you’ll exist, reading these very words I’m typing now), I woke up this morning with, as you might expect . . . a hangover. Cause and effect. Good old arrangements of matter, doing their thing. There was light streaming in through my window, the bleak homogeneous light of a bright but overcast morning. I kept my eyes half-closed, because anything more would exacerbate my headache.

I tried, half-heartedly, to fall asleep again. Then, at once, after maybe five or ten minutes of that doomed endeavor, I suddenly found my eyes snapping wide open. It was unwilled and happened before I could realize what I was doing. The light hurt my eyes, and my cheeks and sinuses pounded. And yet I immediately found myself completely indifferent to the pain, in a way and with a thoroughness I find difficult to describe to my satisfaction.

I loved the light. I recognized the light. It was that same light that had shone over the holy hill over the plain, back at Spelunk 04! I scrambled out of bed, whisked on a bathrobe, and rushed out the front door, eager to see my old acquaintance in its full splendor.

It was an overcast day like so many others: uniform cloud cover making of the sky an unpainted swath of canvas, a grayish glow suffusing everything terrestrial, fuzzing shadows to the edge of nonexistence. Beads of last night’s rain revealed themselves on rhododendrons rendered in a minimal palette, no leaf in full shadow, just lighter green here and darker there. The neighbors’ red car sported a dully glowing sheen on top, a reflection of the void above.

End of the line. Place where there is no darkness.

In this environment I felt a sudden rearrangement of priorities. I remembered the separation, and the plain, and my stint as the avatar of chaos and abandon, thyrsus in one hand and caduceus in the other. I remembered the Cafe, where I felt at home, and I remembered Spelunk 04!, which showed me how much there is to be done for this world which is—and I have always been right when I have inclined this way—not a home. I looked about at the capriciously arranged material, the precise curve of the red car’s silhouette (why that curve, out of an infinity of possible curves?), at the leaves of the rhododendron, jutting in numerous directions.

I yearned to rearrange them. I heard the call then, stronger than I have in weeks. And I, to all observers a young man standing in an inexplicable daze on his porch, walked over to a rhododendron bush and began to . . . put the leaves in place. I knew where they should go, and there they went, and I saw that it was good. A shiver went down my spine and the hairs all along my arms stood up. I was newly charged.

I broke out laughing. How must I appear? What would my parents, my old hometown friends—now in the military, mostly, executing duties of a very different sort—make of me, here, moved to laughter—to tears—by the positions of rhododendron leaves?

I am not a man. I am a hollow vessel into which the machinery of the world’s base substance—of Mundum—has poured its nectar. I am a piece of glassware (as Jenny accidentally put it in that thread—felicitous typo, fortunate fault!) which, if it is not filled, is nothing. And I have been filled.

There are two stories running in parallel here. One is the story of a strange little man with a cramped little mind, ostentatiously furnished but lacking in basic amenities, who helped lead his strange little friends into a drug-fueled, sleep-deprived riot of bad decisions, a failed party so failed it had a death toll.

Another is the story of an unworthy vessel into whom was poured a spark of something Other. That spark may be divine or devilish, but without it the vessel is nothing, and knowing nothing else, the vessel embraces it without reservation.

I am making a bet. I am going all in, and betting everything on the chance that the second story is worth choosing.

Covered in goosebumps from head to toe, I looked up through misty eyes at the blank sky, which, like Mundum, admitted of no variation. I will not shrink, I said. I am a great sinner or a great saint, but not neither. Present my actions to the world and let the world judge. There are others, Salby hoped—and he was right.

And here is what I saw at that moment this morning, when I looked up at the sky. I saw a man, a very old man, walking through the English countryside on a day much like this one, hand in hand with his disciple. By all sublunary indicators, it is not a happy day: the man has just had a series of grueling final conversations with family members and former friends, who at long last find themselves unable to put up with his increasingly strange ways. He speaks of old harsh withered things; he has outbursts; he is, in every way, at odds with the world. And what is more, it is the appointed day, on which his disciple, the one man left who understands, is to die.

But Leonard Salby is happy. William Chen is happy, too. They press palm to palm, affectionately. They run together across the fields. They skip for sheer joy. They know they have strayed too far from the world to go back. They have built towers upon towers of recondite theory and lore, towers few could scale, were they inclined, which no one is. It has taken many, many years to build their monument. Many sleepless nights, abuzz with passionate conversation, and many dreary days, filled from sunrise on with the contemplation of minutiae—will this next keystone in the grand design bear its appointed load?—and the monotonous clack of the typewriter.

But they have been happy through all of this, and they are happy now. They labor under burdens not quite matched in texture by any endured anywhere else in the burdensome human world, and yet they can sincerely say to each other: “his yoke is easy and his burden light.” It is back-breaking, soul-breaking work, and yet it is the easiest thing in the world.

When you see the monument you must leave behind, truly see it, it is harder not to build it than to build it, however your back may cry out as you lug stone after stone to the construction site.

I am with these men if I am anything. I have nothing to hide. I am a terrible thing, but only because I am a conduit for things above. I offer no sublunary defense for my actions, and indeed I still shudder before them. But the heavens, I think, cry out in their favor. If I am wrong, let me be torn apart. I will submit gladly to the onslaught.

So I’m here, now, and I’m not going to lie or hold back, I’m going to tell the story straight. Before the sky, rhetoric is nothing. No massaging, no sleight of hand, no political framing, none of that. This is the report. And I am going to finish it today. And I will be judged as I will be judged.

torgo has informed me that he is in communication with Lugnut, regarding the possibility of communication by phone or otherwise. Maybe I’m wrong, but maybe, just maybe, the world is waking up.

I am going to start a new thread on the Cafe, and dump all of my notes up to this point. Nothing to hide. If you’re reading this on the Cafe, expect the rest of the story before the day is over.

And now, to write.