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Inevitably there was silence as his
slurred speech came to a halt and he looked upon the chapel standing there
solemnly upon the hill. His mind had lost all clarity within the ticking of
an instant and thus now he found himself lost in a world of symbols both
threatening and familiar. On the bench behind him sat the girl he had been
talking to just a single second ago, a tear rolled down her cheek though she
was not sure why, it was not that she really felt sad, rather there was this
lingering confusion which gave rise to a dizzy fluttering in her heart. So
what was the tension between them? Someone wanted to say something but no
longer was there any time, for already he began his ascend to the top of
that hill, his eyes fixed upon that eroded crucifix around which the ivy had
become entangled. Why was this image so mesmerizing, almost preventing him
from taking a breath of fresh air? His soul, so it seemed, was caught by
some strange infinity, almost as if there was something alive about this
long forgotten and desolated chapel.
With a sudden recollection of events the girl stood up and against the wind
she intoned the letters of his name which alas he could not hear for already
had he disappeared beyond the blanket of sudden fog. Should she be
frightened? Alas! For much too long dear philosophers have pondered this
question as what one ought to do, yet in reality there is only one single
question which needs answers: What ought one to feel?
It was the death of the child being carried by her twin sister, which had
given rise to that immovable question; and now a full three months later she
still did not understand what it meant to feel. In spite of being identical
in many ways, her sister and she had always been opposites in many ways; and
for sure never had they shared that telepathic kind of closeness seemingly
so common among twins. Her sister had married a rather well-to-do gentleman
and fell into a rather glamorous kind of life, whereas she had married an
aspiring painter set to revolutionize the world of art and culture. They
immediately had been blessed by a little girl, yet in stark contrast to
this, her sister was unable to conceive in spite of the comfort of her
lifestyle and fertility treatments. Then finally nine months ago, there was
the greatest of delight as she had gotten pregnant. Overwhelmed with joy it
all seemed to work out for her sister and finally she would have it all;
then six months in the pregnancy there was this unexpected interruption of
tragedy, when for no reason at all she miscarried and thus the greatest of
joys sank in a swamp of bitterest despair.
There had been little to no contact ever since the funeral, both of them had
found communication to suddenly be so utterly void of meaning. When a little
life can just be extinguished like a bug being squashed … what ought one to
feel? Every shade of comfort or belief becomes shattered as there no longer
is the hope of promise. Our minds begin to suffer these violent spasms and
we are reduced to being nocturnal wanderers in some threshold landscape.
Most shocking however, had been to witness her husband’s breakdown, he was
so affected by this all, beyond recognition, as if he had lost his very own
child. What are those thoughts dwelling in his head? Yet before he never had
been fond of her sister or her husband … so why did this death affect him so
much?
Filled with intoxicating emotion she had wished to talk with him yet never
had she been able to break that barrier of ice, always found herself to be
incapacitated in dealing with that anguishing appalling his mind.
Whereto did he disappear? This morning he had said to visit her sister, for
today would have been the day of birth. Along the way they had stooped by
this forest and they had gone for a little stroll, finally stumbling upon
this hill with the chapel. Where was he now? What ought she to too feel? Why
was she here? What was here? What was looming out there in the mist? It was
not much longer now before she would have a breakdown herself!
♠ ♠ ♠
Behind the shadow of doubt, what is there? To be? What? Where? How? There
was a plague of depression stretched behind of him like some endless horizon
of never ending guilt. Three months ago it happened and today the little one
would have seen the light of birth. Why was it, that his passing stabbed him
like some poisoned dagger? All this time of god forsaken passage … he had
tried to fight it, wished for nothing else but to understand what these
feelings meant and where they came from. It almost was as if an unknown
spirit had taken possession of his soul. But why? In silence he had gone to
bed last night and in silence there had come that nightmare blending in with
reality and transmutating all into nebulistic phantoms. Those images … there
was a traveling back into time as he ascended those stairs and entered that
building of ruination. There was a breaching of emotions, a wide open gulf
flooding his barely conscious mind as visions began to flicker like a candle
flame in a drafty room of some thatched cottage. Inexorable guilt fragmented
his mind into a dolorous cathedral filled with a grand pathos of the
never-ending. Pained and humbled he felt beneath the aura of horror, as he
witnessed life and skin being pulled away and that was left, was the raw
meat of deadening existence. Is that who we are? The conclusion of all our
philosophies: that we are in hell!
“My son …” there spoke a man who sat beneath a decaying willow tree standing
there like a memory of former life.
“Can I help you?” politely he asked thinking the other was a beggar.
“No, but I have been waiting for you.”
“You must confuse me then, I …”
“I understand your confusion but there is no mistake, stumble upon the right
question my son.”
“What question? Am I dreaming again? Is this a mirage?”
“Search …”
“But where?”
“How can I help you?”
“But …”
“Your dream …”
“I saw my own daughter …”
“They came …”
“Yes devils, they came stripping her naked of her flesh, then quartering
her; blood was splattered on my face, I wished to help her but could not
even scream in spite of pure horror and disgust. I was immobile, paralyzed
to my very soul and then someone came inside the dungeon while all of this
happening; that person, I could not tell whom it was, he held a clock of
sorts in front of my weary eyes, I could not help but to see, nothing at
first, then suddenly … hands moving in reverse, time ticking backwards to …”
“The source of all horror?”
“Yes … agony alive! I cannot bare this burden; not any longer, my veins are
throbbing like aneurysm. There is danger of explosion …”
“And then guilt lays wide open?”
“Goodbye to the fortress, no more humanity, there is just an echo to which
we cling … without restraints … all of our worlds come tumbling down.”
“To where we are now my son!”
WHERE?
His eyes burdened by the grief of existence, he looked up at the sky as the
clouds moved in and choked the life out of the light, as all became darkness
filled with menacing voices of will-o-the-wisps. Somewhere in the fainting
distance, there was the lingering of an echo, a voice which vaguely he
remembered for he had spoken to it.
WHERE?
In the woods they had been walking, but he had no idea why it was he had
stopped the car, no idea where that urge of exploration had come from. There
had been a calling, a beckoning of fate waiting to be foretold and unfold.
What does the woodland symbolize? The trees … even dead ones still standing
there like unforgettable phantoms. They had continued along the path and
stumbled upon some other place, a different world within this world; and
thus there followed the ascension as he crossed that hazy barrier and found
himself surrounded by unspoken strangeness.
WHERE?
Beyond words he had disappeared and now there was this odd quaking coming to
overwhelm her as she stood there with a trembling body looking at the mist
stretching itself tighter and tighter around Chapel Hill. With uneasy
recollection she came to re-imagine those portraits seen in her dream last
night, there was that hollow pulsation of the funeral bell and the organ
solemnly played a slow Dies Irae as the coffin was brought in, followed her
very own self: the widowed bride now dressed in black. But where was she?
Where was her daughter? Was she too distraught to attend her father’s
funeral? Of course, she was too little to understand that reality of what it
truly means to live. Poor girl, at her age to already be forced in standing
face to face with … but wait … no, that cannot be, there must be an error of
sorts; that second coffin, the small one, not, this could not possibly mean
that … of course it could not! It all had to be some mistake!
My daughter cannot be dead! She is alive!
She can not (not! not! not!) be dead! She is alive!
With a headache of pounding doubt she shook awake, only to be greeted by the
cold forest air as everywhere around her dusk began to settle. Whatever had
happened in the passing of the hourglass, if not a sandstorm of divine rage?
Left to her own bewildering shadows, she was left there in the woodlands and
now that blackness came creeping in, there was but the haunting of her very
own ideas. Her husband, his image suddenly stood before her but it was empty
and void of soul. Where was he? The chapel! He must have entered it, but
where was it? There was nothing to see here, no trace of anything tangible
from which further thoughts may sprout. Like a blind beggar she stumbled
around in the dark hoping to figure out what it was that had occurred, but
nowhere was there any feeling; there was no breeze, no atmospheric movement
whatsoever; no lunar manifestations opening up pathways of hope. There was a
need to cry and as she crouched down begging for the support of precious
mother earth, she reached out and felt that moistness on the ground.
“The soil is a womb even for the dead” she said to no one in particular,
since alone she was in that landscape; yet a reply she nonetheless: “The
living grief forevermore tortured by fate impending their lives.”
“Yet what else can one see with weary eyes?” there came her lament as she
looked up only to find there was no other person present save for her
phantasmagoric projections. Had dream become reality then?
“Is that which is real not always what one gravitates towards the
strongest?” there came the almost anticipated response.
“But the world outside, does it not resound and resolve itself regardless of
our feelings?”
“Yet first must one not resolve to be part of the resounding of the real?”
“I think I no longer do know anything! That which is real and that which is
not; equally they have become blurred in some transfigured cacophony. Is all
not just sheer blasphemy to begin with?” the words left a bitter taste in
her mouth, yet somehow she was proud to have dared the utterance.
But why bitterness? Was a word then in possession of a soul, for how else
could it possibly affect her? The whole long history of mankind has been
determined by the sacred, yet no one knows for sure that anything is there.
In the vague distance up ahead, she could see some of the brickwork making
up that chapel in which her husband presumably had disappeared, for there
was no other explanation. Had he gone there to pray? The surrounding touches
of twilight gave the building a particular foreboding look, as the play of
remaining light and the dark gave the steady impression of a living breath
pulsating through the brickwork. Though she could not place a name on it,
there was a deliberate feeling preventing her from walking to the chapel
herself. It is not that she was paralyzed; for freely she could move about,
yet magically her legs refused her command when ordered to climb that hill.
At a loss, she turned her back to the chapel and sauntered into the absolute
darkest part of the woods, for clearly she could hear that sound of someone
crying. It did not take long before she encountered the sound of the weeping
and it was with quite surprising to see that what sounded \so human was in
truth the whimpering of a young deer whom had a leg stuck in the remains of
a barbed wire fence. Immediately she sensed the agonizing fear running
through the buck’s mind as she approached it with a quiet pace, humming a
sweet melody she use to sing to her daughter as a lullaby. The youngling
snorted as tenderly she placed her hands on his back and comforted him with
a whispering voice that all shall be well. She crouched down by the leg and
almost immediately managed to release the leg from bondage and though it was
hard to tell in the dark, she knew the injuries sustained were minor and
would be healed in a day or two. Under the pale moonlight she could see the
deer stop and look back at her, as still crouched down she was dwelling in a
sphere of certain blissful compassion. For a moment there was this illusion
of the deer turning into a human thanking her with unspoken words traveling
straight between their hearts and as she smiled there was a glow inside the
forest … ♠ ♠ ♠
What lingers behind the shadows of all doubting? In this place where now he
found his own self, was there any certitude to be found here?
Behold! Thus a winged voice emerged from within the twilight of his own mind
as he opened his eyes and looked upon the sanctity of the chapel surrounding
him. Memories flooded him as he walked past those benches and kneeled in
front of the crucifix around which ivy had begun an interesting wrestling
match. There was a past lying stretched out to where he was now, a backwards
traveling extension like a carpet of irregular figures trembling with
irrational tendencies. Certain things had happened which had brought about
uncertainty and thus the thought struck him: that the true living of life is
a symbolism; everywhere in the immediate circumference of one’s own
pettiness, there is a compassionate richness attempting to teach us a wisdom
hidden to those who cannot escape the circle of their own imprisonment.
Lo and behold! Here he witnessed his very own demise! In that great wake
behind, their was the uproar of destiny and cruelty, the smiling dice
suddenly turning another face to some other. Where does that oneself?
Somehow all of this had to with innocence, that much he could sense. In the
beginning … far back he had to force himself to remember; and then it came …
tears of that godforsaken day when from the embers there was the vision of
guilt towards its final journey of unforgiving judgment. An image rose in
those flames … a casket so small … it should not be. No, it should not! God
may take his own, but let us spare the children! And even before the
children … when still in heaven the soul resides! Then with a rumbling
thunder snatched away! Then what ought we to think, to feel? Even when truly
we may believe some greater power affects our own being … yet that power
omnipresent as it may be is not benevolent at all but takes and shatters at
will. The message in the bottle … the glass is broken into shards and your
feet are bare and soon to be bloodied and if you dare dive … your skull,
your mind and soul shall be penetrated by that wind of the unforeseen.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! Yet from what direction did blow
that horrid wind? All these visions! How he wished to say get thee behind
me! But out there … there was only the blanket of despair stretched like a
net that catches all; each one and every other. In the midst of bloodshed
one may find a single grain of purity … from a grain there grows a plant and
hence forward the food of a nation … that little grain could have been the
future … but now it is destroyed and now all that is left behind is a
wasteland. How could any manifestation of a beneficial law slaughter an
innocent soul so fresh and so pure? Was there truly no salvation then? A
breeze drifted through the hollows of the chapel and with it there traveled
that fresh woodland breath. Outside of his mind spoke many voices and with a
strange gathering in which different realities came to blend, he stood up
and reached for the heart of the crucifix. A rose with a burning flame
ignited his soul, as upon trembling feet he stood with a sense of new found
gratitude. A realization, that somewhere a grain of life is hidden in that
mystery of death, the twinkling of truth: that he was alive and had to
endure; the burden of living is to witness the dying, yet cruel as it was
there also is a profound mystification lingering in such despair.
WHERE?
This sphere, this moment … there was something tranquil about this, as
moments of mental life ceased and became still. A bubble of air drifting
upon the meandering river, birds building their nests and flowers beginning
to bloom. Colors permeate the gray and that little bubble catches the light,
reflects it back thus creating new and altogether different colors never
seen before.
WHERE?
She looked around the strange seemingly so familiar, as somewhere in the
distance the buckling had rekindled with his mother and all was well again.
Through the woods she retraced her steps until finally she arrived back at
Chapel Hill. There was an otherworldly shine surrounding the chapel peaking
the hill; and what before seemed such an ominous looking ruin now brought
with it the feeling of inner peace.
What ought we to feel?
She did not know the answer, yet with a revelation of sudden fortitude she
walked up the hill and with dartling butterflies of anticipation crossed
that threshold and found herself to be in the midst of holiness.
What ought one to feel?
Yet perhaps it was not about feeling, there was something about mere being,
to look past devastation and to see that little green sprouting bud in the
midst of ashes.
In the beginning … and then there she saw standing him: her husband, so
serene, touching the heart of that crucifix as if frozen in time.
To live … ♠ ♠ ♠
Finally she had gotten pregnant and today her little one would have seen
that first ray of sunlight had it not been for … What had happened again?
What was that stalking loneliness where once there had been a heart? Three
months ago there was this nightmare in which rivers ran bloodred and then
she woke up and then she realized that …
And eternity passed even though it all seemed like yesterday; perhaps she
still was sleeping and when finally she would open her eyes, all would be
well and she would be laughing at her own silliness.
Agonized by forlorn feelings she opened her eyes as from behind her
estranged husband came and tenderly placed his hands upon her shoulders.
Three months and still he did not know which words to utter, for there was
no comfort, just and only that frosty gale of apathy. There was no life left
in this world, something he realized as he looked upon that knotted willow
standing there like some relic of languor. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima
culpa! It must be that somewhere he had been neglectful, that this was his
punishment for he had failed to provide. That here was still alive: that was
his testimony; and now it was his destiny to endure. How serious he took it
all and how much he blamed his own self …
If only she was able to communicate with him and take away that suffering of
guilt, yet instead she was unable to speak any sensible word. Why was it
that she was such an emotional coward? Why could she not open up to him whom
she had pledged her life to? What was this altogether different burden she
was forced to carry? If only she could open to the light of hope, instead
she found only fear of being shattered all over again. What is the feeling
of life, if not that vision of ruination? The curtain get pulled and the
stage reveals fragments of impending decline, a downhill slope, this nature
of gravity … Something caught her eye, in that faraway flowerbed at the
other side of the garden, there stood a mysterious figure covered with
shadows and speaking and some strange archaic language which somehow she
understood.
“There is hope!” that is what he said, sounding so clear, so mystical.
“Who are you?” she asked mesmerized by intrigue.
“Does that really matter? That I am and you can hear me, that alone is
sufficient!”
“Yes!” a warm shiver ran through as she reached out and felt the air with
her begging hands.
“There is so much to life that goes unnoticed! Reality can be yours if you
are willing to accept it!”
“Yes.”
“If you look past the mirror, you may see eternity; it is frightening at
first and may feel like asphyxiation. Know then this is because over there
the air is pure: so breathe normally. At first you may get dizzy, but that
too will pass and you will find hope, for there is light even in the darkest
places, always remember that!”
He did not know what to think as he saw his wife standing there by that
flowerbed with motionlessness as if her mind had just fled to some other
dimension.
“Honey …” his lips moved but before he could say anything she turned around and to
his surprise carried a smile reaching for infinity.
“We cannot just turn the other cheek to agony’ she spoke with a voice
radiating with innermost determination.
“Where are we?” hesitantly he uttered as he noticed that grey slab of a
marble tombstone unfolding in front of his eyes.
“Holy, holy, holy … the spirit which dwells inside of us.”
“What is happening? I do not understand.”
“Just feel … if we let reality get us down we shall fall only to be
slaughtered, but if we dare open our eyes to the light we may yet find
hope.”
There was something descending, a feeling of warmth and of a new born
emotion. Something took its dwelling in their hearts; and as finally their
eyes opened again, there was the rising sun of tomorrow.
(c) 2008 Steven Van Neste
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