DEAL DEATH IT’S CARD
When the past calls, the phone lays static upon the ear. The piercing dust hitting the cornea is like that static hitting the ear drums, depending on one’s sensitivity. It talks in riddles and speaks hidden truths to lonely laymen that cannot grasp them.
Delirium marked allegory as truth, from ashes smouldering with hatred, arctic in temperament. The sleepless veil made a world of its inconsequence. Keeping to itself it grew.
Why does life show the arrogance to dare death to deal a card which it’s more than apt to deal? Does it not realize that it was brought into being by something outside of itself, and just as easily could be taken out of being? That it’s not fated for something greater? That what we call great is nothing but an invention?
Did the end begin a spiral death dance on death’s door step when it saw the blazing idiot running from truth into it’s hand of illusion begging it to take it away into it’s nether world? Wanting with one half of the mind to escape disease and with another to deal itself the final blow?
The spiral death dance moved the lost sheep into a maze of smoke and mirrors, desiring that which extracts it’s blood. The slaughterhouse wanderer walking straight into the asylum, voluntarily, to fix the degeneracy of the blind, like a scarecrow scape goat for the sleepers to feel safe.
When they sleep they wake, but they wake in another commercial dream. From one bind to another, they slip and fall, looking for the comfortable bed, again, calling unconsciously towards dear death to end it all, from one side of their mouth, yet from the other begging for clarity and life from the abyss and the unknown.
The unknown is the abyss, and the lost seek it unconsciously, one way or another – either as suicide, or as illumination. The tortured state becomes when the boredom makes one wander into the absurd. One seems to lose self in emotion, in self flagellation, in self imposed suffering, for no other reason than to avoid the drudgery of work and boredom, the repetitive nature of it all. Programmed to reproduce, yet seeing the programming. Slavery imposed from without at first, but then from within afterwards.
Deaths spiral dance was a diamond that cut against the old forms, shedding light on something more immediate underneath the calloused skin.
“Who do you think you are?” asked one from the abyss.
The question without answer gives rise to another with an answer which supplants it. The thought feeds into itself after that and the original question is gone. There’s no further attempt to understand who “I ” am. I construct the answer as a character in a story, and the question disappears. I am such and such a person. I grew up here, and now I’m going to go over there.
Monotony had its way of lulling one towards that spectral figure. From it’s grip it escaped into its grip – from the robotic monotony that was moving it towards death, it escaped into chaotic excess which once again moved it towards death. No matter where it turned or how it acted, if it followed the fixed logical paths, it was bound to hit up against it. No matter, we all meet it one day, he says. Plus, life’s short. Better live it up while you have it. The world’s coming to an end, he continued to reason, so I may as well go out with a bang myself. Yet, that bang that he wanted to go out with was so senseless that he felt almost obliged to return to that which again became the monotony. So, from one perilous state to another he wandered. Where did he wish to go? Out of the discomfort of feeling? That action of avoiding the uncomfortable, and moving towards the comfortable tended to be an unending movement in circles.
What is insanity? Here’s the circle, can you step out of it? Where is time, can you move out of it ? To know death, is to step out of time? Insanity is not to know death, but simply to step out of the sane. One may not want to know death, yet it will make itself known, one way or another. There’s no avoiding it. The senselessness creates its own suffering.
He stepped out of sanity, and stepped out of time; yet, the two movements are not the same. He could have stepped out of sanity, yet remained time bound in disjoint intervals of lucidity – even the insane must be sane sometimes, i.e. even chaos is order of a different sort.
The end came, in the form of a spiral. Movement through it was turbulent, yet that turbulance was welcomed, because it was a release from the monotony. Had he known the release he’d get from the spiral, he’d have jumped into it sooner. Yet, the spiral was disjointing, and he needed to live here.
Death was a dancer that dazed the starlets, which wished to join it’s ranks of splendor. Speaking in riddles to itself it mezmorized itself. In the mirror it saw riddles. In the puddle too. They were everywhere. They contorted themselves and hid themselves behind the horizon of the reflective object. They changed their forms and said hello anew, either from the reflection of the metallic frame, or from some other surface. Seeing through it was an impossibility, yet it seemed to want me to see through it. It hinted and hinted, and the ape automaton wandered from place to place looking for its tail. Who could it tell its secrets? How many lacerations had it given itself in the dark? It gave itself the lacerations for a crime that it committed to spite itself, like throwing gasoline over something it loves and setting it ablaze from some wound in the heart that it couldn’t locate. It chased the shadows, the reflections, and finally came to the spiral, which looked into it as though the black hole at the center was a knowing eye containing all potentiality.
“Deal death it’s card!”
The young man finally screamed into the abyss, as if to bring death out of it’s hiding place with taunts. Yet what could it do but smile at the ape automaton? It could torture it, but what’s the point?
What is an ape? What is a human? What is a life form? Is it not a pattern of life moving and functioning? Is there a real designation of species in the tree of life or a broader movement of one process which is pruned by the hands of nature? The ape automaton is again an abstraction, then, as more basically it’s not even a human, but something that transcends the human – wait a bit and the human today becomes some other species tomorrow.
What is it to exist? Is it to have recognition of oneself in memory? Or is it the immediate acknowledgement of the fact of sensation? Or is it some more basic fact? Something from nothing. Ex nihilo nihil fit. The first fact came from nothing – an assertion. Is it tenable?
The lords table was full of the food of the peasants, some of their flesh too. Enslaved the barbarous and tortured were captured by the conquerers, yet the conquerers were captured by their past, and so all were unfree. Some have immediate enemies to vanquish to win their promised land, but others have vanquished their supposed enemies and found nothing at the end of it. Lost, they became desperate for something – for love, for company, or finally for a taste of death; and so back we go to the young man’s statement, which he screamed at the abyss in a drunken fit
“Deal death it’s card!”
The young man, full of life and health, playing with death, while the old man, full of cancer, with a damaged brain, pleaded for another breath. The tortured dice throw of the absurd. Suffering as a consequence of it’s own incoherence. Wanting one thing, but not having it, wanting to set it all ablaze. Getting it, being unsatisfied with it and seeing through it, wanting to set the whole thing ablaze.
Could he overcome it? The pattern? Who would walk out of it? What would it see? Who would see it? Could it touch the absurd? Could it finally hear? The static in the phone pierced his oversensitive ears, unaccustomed to its force. The dust particles hit his eyes, and caused them to bleed. Whenever he walked, he felt a brewing storm of emotion just beneath the surface. The young man had every reason to jump.
There was a lake of fire in which there screamed tortured beings. Surely, the young man must have not expected to land there, but if not there then where? Was the act of jumping merely to get out of what was, or was it to follow that smirk in the reflections, which foretold of something deeper and more fundamental? What was his indignation aimed at? He was indignant, with everything. Yet is it because his sense of dignity was tarnished by that which is, which he understood as a creature, in other words that which is was a creature and he blamed his misfortunes on it, and so jumping was a way to show his bravery and to show in a clear and selfless way his devotion?
What was he devoted to? Did he wish to find truth and beauty? The question has been asked ‘why not untruth’? Especially, considering that truth as a formal concept is just logical consistency within a formal system, and untruth relative to that formal system is merely contradicting it. Is there some other notion of Truth? Some base reality, beyond which there is no other? Something describable as one mathematical object, self contained, which allows for all of the observable phenomena which the human mind may cognize, or become aware of? Did the young man wish to go towards that, or what did he want? Did he even know?
It’s safe to say he didn’t know, but that he followed a smell like a dog, following some gut instinct that supravened beyond his life drive, and became this death drive; a drive which begat a bravery that may lead one to overcome the entire material world.
Meaning made a world of itself, and gave it as a cage to the thinker. He was held within it, and without it he was impossible. She was impossible without it. Without it, she was a mere movement of matter, but not the life force that made her want to overcome death and dare it. She wasn’t as idea, but was as a base fact, but that connected her to everything. That connected him to everything. He was connected to her, as were all the others. Yet, they lived in isolation, suffering each other’s existence and getting by at each other’s expense. Love was desire sated, but was it more?
Meaning made the words come together without effort, but did the bind which they placed on the imagination signify anything beyond themselves, or were we always imprisoned by their structure to imagine a fixed content? Could we get beyond it? Life started itself, and the end begat itself. The one begat the second, but the one could not have come out of another, for that one would then be the one which begat it as the second. From nothing, nothing may arise, so there’s some fact which is the first. Language makes us speak of it as a noun, but it’s a verb. The movement is the primordial fact from which arises the fixed forms. The one came out of itself, as process, and fixed the rest as subjects; or is the subject merely an artifact of the way that humanity thinks?
One day, would the secrets be revealed, and having seen them would there be anything beyond them? Would the seer of these secrets sigh a sigh of boredom? Could the build up ever be sated, or is the build up itself part of the cage? To always have desire be built only waiting for it to finally be sated. This game of want into the future. There must be something beyond it.
Diamond dazed darlings dressed for disaster directed their angst at malices hidden hand, reddened by the blood of the lamb. When did days end, and the start have a sensible point of execution? The mind lasted a decade before succombing to it’s folly, but then dressed itself up in fancy clothes to hide the decay. Deadened inside, the pills couldn’t bring to life what was no more. Their eyes glowed sour with hatred and envy. Without love, all they could do is kill. In the mist they saw the truth, but who is it that saw it and why could it not be committed to memory? Days passed before the hour glass emptied, and as that last granule passed through the middle of that contorted shape which housed it, the clock struck doom. The bombs dropped, begetting nuclear armageddon. The snakes coiled their tails and shot out their tongues. The rattle scared the heros from their heroic heights, making them human, once more. Many believed in cosmic tales of old beginnings, but whatever their level of description speculation could not be made immediate. Lost in danger, desiring to overcome, they fought violently. Before long they were out, and decorated as saints. Many murderers having done the same were sent to the guillotine, hung by a rope, had their hands cut off, etc. The ones that did the most damage were the most rewarded because the flags were right. Blue, red, green, in a particular arrangement, caused their eyes to cry tears of devotion to the fatherland.
How many years had he yearned for that orb to be his property? He held it, and suddenly it evaporated into a pile of sand. When that hour glass granule finally erupted, the truth was known to all. Sheathed became unsheathed, and clothed became naked. The one cast off the skin to give off the second, but there was no second to see, for it left this plane with the movement. Death was the beginning, and life was the ending. Night passed and moved into day in one place and the opposite occured on the opposite point of the sphere-like object we call home.
Hither harbored sinners striking salt upon their lips to lie to their gods in cross eyed, tongue speech. Flickering folly from their nostrils in fire on the damsels dress. He wanted her, yet she couldn’t care less. Many days passed into nights again, and he became a robot. A mere semblance of his former self. The once dynamic system became a remembered routine that he executed to perfection, causing his heart to ache and yearn for something more. Reaching ever closer to the grave with the glass of rum he spoke for a time in riddles before succombing to it’s numbing effect. Many meaningless years passed before the final execution, when he tucked his neck into the noose and dropped his body. He winced from it’s weight, and his neck gave way before the final air gasped. She walked in and read his note, began to cry and think about their final conversation together.
“I loved you dearly, it has nothing to do with you, but I can’t live this way any longer. It’s nothing that you did, but everything that has been blocked since before I met you. May my soul find rest. I’ll always love you. Good bye my dear.” it read.
She cried and sobbed before forgetting it’s contents; before long she was forgotten too.
A day passed, a year, night and day interplayed like ouroboros before the dead ate the living and gave rise to a new round of existence. Everyone was lost, but no one would admit it. Each pretended because they were stuffed in a game that they had to win. They couldn’t risk showing their true colors, but that’s exactly what needed to happen if the illusions were to be dispelled and the problems were to be solved.
Reading rather dully, he couldn’t imagine the contents of the code which transpressed itself upon his passing psyche as a symbol, an emblem, a glyph, encoding in it’s contents an unfolding neurological pattern which was to imprint itself on his entire nervous system.
Five diamonds danced at the days end, when meaning meant nothing. The empty shards of time were evaporating, and the tears had dried. The cords once tangled were untangled, and the tension was released. All died in the heat bath, or in the cold expanse. Neither day nor night came any longer. He only knew the emptiness, which when once perforating the skin makes it’s way to the heart, and turns that pump into an inert mass. Bluing skin, dying eyes, deadened glance, were now his. What was the origin of his sorrow, then? It hid behind this as though inhabiting another world. It was as though reality was embedded in another one, where all the vibrancy still lived. Yet to get from one to the other required crossing an ocean of sadness and violence.
Men with hateful glances tossed their knifes his way, and one stuck into his chest. Strangely, it didn’t hurt. He pulled it out and threw it to the ground. Quickly he made for the escape, as there were more of them than there were of him. The many assailants evaporated into the general population which surrounded him, so that he couldn’t be sure who was one of them. Suspiciously, he eyed the population, and this suspicion grew a fear in him that quickly moved into anger. Before long he was primed for violence. One revealed themselves from the group, and he took a knife and sawed his head off, making sure to neutralize him. This act only furthered the antagonism that he felt from the general population, which made his fear, then anger, more pronounced, which only primed him for more violence.
He retracted himself from that hateful outer world into the numb inner world. He didn’t have the energy to see through it, and to finally get to that third most nested reality where neither numbness nor fear reigned. He was imprisoned in a dark chamber of his soul, hearing the screams and tears of the night before, without a way out. Only if he were to embrace the violence, the anger, the fear, the vulnerability, could he see it, and maybe see through it. The numbness was no substitute and he could feel himself withering in his frightful retreat.
To walk amongst the corpses was impossible, as their stench made his stomach churn. To walk amongst the living was impossible, for his soul conceived their death. He was stuck in limbo, between worlds – a corpse. The war went on in his head. Night after night, the cold, piercing emptiness, that void of emotion, was perforated with intense dreams of violence. He didn’t have the energy to reach the furthest layer of reality that comprehended it all. That saw the cause of the violence, of the emptiness, of the fear, and of the anger. He was stuck, partially blind, walking the streets as a corpse decaying through time. The movements were a tax on his energy. He had to continue moving because survival demanded it.
Was he a blood sacrifice towards some moloch of mammon? His vital signs were showing decline. His skin was perforated and his veins were pulled out and attached to tubes which fed a machine. His eyes were white, and his mind was a program running code embedded in his youth through his nose by a machine which could penetrate through the folds of his brain into his frontal cortex. He felt in his heart some impulse of rebellion, but it was snuffed out whenever it was brought up by the programming which the others received.
“What do you think? That you’re special? No, you’re just like us.” they’d say.
He heard it, and quickly realized the truth of their words. He returned to his conditioning. His heart was cold, but the blood pulsing through the tubes attached to the machine was warm. The machine used his blood to power itself. He felt a song playing in his head, and a smile plastered itself over his face, almost involuntarily as though from without. Days passed, and his corpse withered in this state. Before long he died. Advances in technology allowed the machine to continue harvesting his corpse even after his death. The procedure meant that he wouldn’t turn putrid. He’d go directly from alive into that dry, leathery skinned state in a matter of hours. Then, the skin would be removed from his body, and the bones would be thrown into a pile with other’s bones having withstood a similar situation. The bones were all turned into a paste which was used in the production of nano technology. A primary use of this nano technology was as surveillence devices imperceptible to the naked eye. In this way, the man avoided social alienation, and did his duty as a citizen of the federation of multinational corporations.
“Deal death his card!”
The rebellious cry came once more from the abyss. The rounded sound hit her ear causing an effulgence of emotion to overcome her cold skin and brought about water in her eyes. She pulled him forward from his bed, where he slept with a punctured eye, wandering through the street of emotionless and mute assailants. The store fronts bellowed violent music, as the homeless rocked back and forth in front of it going between staring and screaming at the ground, before beginning a heartful plead to God.