Mirror in the Aether

VI

More paste and mush in simple bowls lain upon a meal tray and delivered through the utility chute. Lukewarm, unappetising, and tasting vaguely of something I can't quite remember - as if taste itself was a faded memory. Perhaps that's an exaggeration as I detect the slightly tart affectation of apple and the characteristics of some dairy-based dish - and accompanied as ever by my my mid-day tea and quart of water. 

A meagre feast as impassive in the eating as its means of materialisation. An insulting ceremony to mark the coming of the glass: the window beneath the great shutter that promises impending revelation which should be met by a just fanfare of smoke and fire like the arrival of a king or something even greater. Instead it must make do with a quantum of ambience, my quiet awe, and a bundling of both resentment and pathetic dependency. It used to strike cold fear into my heart before I felt a growing curiosity that became an obsession. Now I think I might be in a state of pathological admiration as a source of sustenance. Of course, it makes plain sense to me in its way. Despite the predictability of content, it's my only source of surprise outside of whatever thoughts I might dredge up on a given day.  

And so the arched window bathes me in light and bestows its gifts as I rejoice in both escape and the freedom of ideas. The strange dual purpose of the glass must be by design. A screen to display lectures on the inside that also dissolves to become a window to the outside. Within the cell I'm immersed in information of the past. I'm directed to look back to facilitate the search within. Outside the cell I look beyond into a perversion of the same perspective and I have to wonder which has begotten the other. If I live among this information bestowed from inside and out, do I become the third in line? Ramesses III! Sometimes I wonder if the screen and the window exist merely to engulf me, as if they can drown my senses in everything and nothing and I'll repent or be punished or reformed or destroyed.

Be it back or forth or within or without or past or future or in waking or in sleep, it's all merely information and if that façade is removed and you see beneath it's all just ideas. What is reality? The idea of some great looming presence is unoriginal and uninteresting. The monolith that oversees and commands also destroys and it is absolutely and unutterably under absolute control and duress and that's a great absurdity. Your mind is as vast as the universe. Your mind is infinite. Your mind can be broken down, gathered up and built into a master work. An empire of endless possibility. And yet just as I build and create with this spell-casting tool of wonders, so too it subjects me to inescapable thoughts of primordial function. Dreams of the blood in my loins and the blood on my hands.

As I belch and simultaneously feel shameful gratitude from my sated appetite I can't escape the disgust I feel from submitting to bodily function. From great empires of possibility also comes the wretched preoccupations of the body, albeit controlled and driven by the mind. Whether they work against one another or in tandem, whether one drives or makes or takes the other, it's all in the mind. The body is subservient. Control is a perplexing concept. The power of the will and focus and persistence and cognitive routine being hammered into reflex and instinct, but it pales when I compare it to the fundamental functions of the body. I can't stop my heart by will and no matter how I practice the breathing exercises I can't train my lungs to deflate at my command. I can't subdue my appetites.

The great retracted shutter begins to hum and as the second block of lectures is beginning my thoughts on the infinite and the impending presentation of even more ideas momentarily vanish. I find myself thinking of the woman again. The undulation of her cheeks and the suggestion of a sensual response that I can read from the soft appearances of her skin. The fine neck and those unforgettable lips. The eyes that cut through me and effect low pulsing waves of adrenaline. I wonder if I've really succeeded in banishing the sorrows of youth that beat down on me for so many years. What is waste anyway? What have I really missed? She is coming to me from some place I can only now rationalise and I know it is just my mind telling me about the way her hair unfurls and how the light strikes her skin. It cuts across a golden field and I can detect the faint smell of sweet flowers and I can feel the blood in my veins just as I have before. Just like I used to in singular moments.  

Discipline and chain of command.  The importance of structure and task and completion. To play the role and vacate, take up the next and repeat and all the while one can know that this great dance serves an even greater purpose. Its charge is one of unity. Civilisation and human achievement are defined by the effective deployment of structure. The message of lectures like this is blatant. It could be by design that the wondrous fruits of working in synchronous multitude are insulting to the solitary man. It's either an oversight or a means to torment and every day seems to be a toss or cross between punishment or remaking me in the image of a loyal and obedient soldier. My father the cog, my mother the crank, my fantasy woman the blood. And what is blood but a multitude carrying out the role and the effective deployment of structure?

The voice makes it clear that my concentration is slipping and once more I am absorbing the ideas of the great leaders and conquerors. I know now that the voice should not be ignored. In the early years I would either actively resist its suggestion or fail to notice. As the markedly rote nature of subsequent lectures emerged it wasn't enough for me to realise that I should be conscious of my focus and discipline and routine. After so any nights when I signed off and felt both trepidatious and excited for what my dreams may present, I was thinking of nothing else and had unconsciously taken for granted that the arched window would be a marble shield from from the all-consuming fire.

Then there was the night that the window remained open and I felt great frustration and anger at the failing technology and those that had designed and installed it. As I lay stewing in resentment in the confines of the cell and sleep failed to take me, I realised that what might have once been a sight of great beauty for a distant stargazing self in youth was now in fact an omnipresent torment. A true hell. Light years make the stars seem so peaceful and beautiful but with your face against the glass it's just an unrelenting chaos. Utterly indifferent to its all-consuming blackness. A silent realm of matter and light and fire. Even as a concept, life does not exist in this abject and abstract state. A pure state of supreme horror. Six days were enough for me and I was rocking back and forth - whimpering and proffering incantations to some improbable force and beseeching it to obliterate my form and release me from hell. 

In that lowest ebb was when I finally noticed the voice and I could have kicked myself a hundred times over for having clocked so long in the can without realising that the voice was there and whether or not I was listening it had something to say. It's here to keep me in line or keep me in time, an instructor or a conductor and while I don't think I'll ever know, I won't make that mistake again. I'm listening now and if I drift away I'll hear it. 

Funny thinking on the value of perspective. Or perhaps what I mean is distance or hindsight or... whatever. Space looking real nice from the ground but the thick of it being no fun. This lecture is beating on me the same point and as much as Gaudi or Alexander or Sulevjyk or Ramesses himself left such timeless legacies that appear from up here to hold such promise and potential and possibility, I wonder what the cost was for those that were up against the glass. Looking through it now I can see that the final frame is the last moment of countless labours and pains and sufferings. It seems that some consequences are so terrible that no reason or result can justify them. And some lessons only need to be learned once.