Mirror in the Aether

VII

From 1279 to 1213 BC did Ramesses reign. Rising and falling and rising again over one thousand years before the definitive tale of undeath. Military genius second only to architectural vision. To take from the atmos and command existence. To force a presence into being. Crushing space itself. O, city of Pi-Ramesses reign over me and rain down on every endeavour since. All that cower under your looming reality whether they know it or not. 

The Valley of the Kings was left wanting of their greatest. Crush, crush, crushing. Crushing lives and wives and I. Fifty sired and predestined to be forgotten. No matter what. You can't untwist the fated progeny of greatness. I am of their number and I have raged against the storm in vain. Blood made and given would not be enough. As fool I learned neither could blood taken. Ushabti so beleaguered all relieved from duty. I am but a raided tomb and they have left me.

My lower back is tight and my neck is stiffening as this final lecture is concluding. I'm tired. The fallibility of the body is a perpetual concern for me and it steadily intensifies the longer I'm here.  When multinational conglomerates could legally register as individuals they were bodies becoming some perversion of a singular body or vice versa. They could be represented with rights and entitlements like some wretched wheezing corpus. Faceless monoliths deigning to wear a mask. There was a split in the fabric of reality. 

How often have we passively accepted and employed terms which are given meaning through the sense making of our bodies? The arm of the company as part, the leg of the process as stage, the system as a relatable structure. The body of work. The self as a laughable miniaturisation of the impossibly large structures which dwarf it and erase it. A self and a life under the boot of the system which is merely a body. Complete with cells and vessels and arms and legs.

What is a life? What is time? Ramesses passed in his tenth decade. Ten of ten of ten. By some measures life is 25 years. That could sting but I've learned to laugh about it now. In antiquity life from beginning to end was 30 years was it not? Perhaps pederasty is less perverse in that context being as it is truncated and compact. Is the teens too soon? So how then can the 20s be a condition of legend? Is it beauty? 30s and 40s is a tragedy. 50s a health issue. The 60s is a hard-lived life. 70 the same but with luxuries. 80s is bad luck. In your 90s it's a good run. Topping 100 is just a bad sense of humour. Death is only notable when you're not.

Humours are an interesting concept. Four great substances to influence the present. Biles and phlegm and blood - always! Four great defining fluids. Mucus and spittle and blood. W, X, Y, and Z. Money, sex, power, and death. The natural connection of fluid and each and every single primordial preoccupation. Such loft, and it's merely arbitrary and speculative. Like so much knowledge and endeavour, it's a glorious cop out. I think I might be getting restless.

If you're lost and drifting and there's absolutely nothing, then there's nothing for it and then there's either staying here or there or fixing every problem. For that, there's nothing to it. Just make it up. Make it and do so by taking. The frontier of space, the outermost reach, the great void and the ultimate limit. There's no further to go and all this time the inner limit is only infinite once you embrace that nothing, and then you realise that every single answer, system, mindset, discipline, ritual, tradition, approach, mantra...every single answer is made up. Self materialised. 

This is the keystone pinpointed moment where the madman cackles and the onlookers despair because they realise that He knew all along and they're reading from the same page. It's just he's reading it upside down and with that unique perspective he sees that it's a page in a book. The difference is that the madman sussed out what you should write and it's a nonsense. Utter nonsense and absurdities. Some lessons are perpetual and can't be learned no matter how well they're known. Receive the answer before the question but when it's asked everyone fails to speak. The bound man has all the answers, the free man has all the questions.

I wonder if my mind is rotting? Can the mind decay? Why is it that every tormented thinker is either a stubborn ghost, a bitter dreamer, or an arrogant madman? I wanted to be a good man and a good friend. I wanted to do something for somebody. I wanted to know if I could.

I feel like the voice should be calling to me. It should be telling me that I'm drifting and I should re-centre and focus and engage. I think that it knows I am restless and preoccupied and sometimes there are only fumes left. The lectures for this day have concluded and I have learned much that I already knew.

The wonderful screen concludes its display and in an instant the image contracts and disappears and I am facing that black marble flat. I see my silhouette but with some populated characteristics and I think I feel like a person again. 

I think I have to be honest. Still removed and safe from myself when I'm looking down. The limbs are always at a distance and they obey commands like animate tools. It's a simple process to continue because you're safe from having to face it. I see myself as a self. A face and the eyes that are not screen but window, and maybe if I look through them I might see my soul. I think I'm scared that it burned up out here long ago and if I look through I will see naught but ashes.

Such loft. How portentous in thought and how feeble in reality. I'll admit it. I'm lonely and I would seize any opportunity to indulge the primordial. Someone else could ease me. The lectures are not an escape nor a distraction. The energy and aura of another body is the subconscious process. I don't even need the mingling of humours. A good friend for a good man. But I am neither. I am one to embrace practical reality so it would be more fitting for a bad man like me to yearn for a co-dependent companion. We don't have to be friends. We don't have to be together or be like or like each other. We can just be.