Faceless Game

 

For weeks I have lived with a sense of heaviness, of darkness; things are moving slowly, reluctantly, as if they wanted to stay still, to fade away slowly and eventually disappear… I see it as my inherent duty to order my affairs and deeds, to oversee and maintain all that is around me; I must keep my attention fixed on all that is happening here, now, I cannot get distracted from my immediate surroundings, I must not get lost in things that are beyond my control… and yet my friend is trapped in a dark hole where he has been placed, sealed away, banished, caged, and he has called upon me in his time of need… I cannot be present where he is, I am so far away, and there is no way for him to get out, no way to escape, no way to find a clear sense of relief, no sanctuary, no obvious path to follow that will bring him back home. I remember myself now as the flower that blooms at the heart of the tornado, and I will continue to live here at the heart unto the ends of eternity; I am destined to forever rule over all small living creatures, over all those tiny things that thrive in the moonlight and hide from the sun, I am here to guide their path, to gift them the electrical impulse that moves them, that pushes them forward, to offer the rhythm that urges them to rise, but I am not just, and I am not kind; I am distant, unreachable, a cold surface of stone, metal and glass, incomprehensible even to the few that would care to know me… From the ruins of the ancient labyrinth that encircles the world, where I have spent most of my days submerged in a kind of aleatoric study, I have carefully created a catastrophic archeology of desire, a deep palimpsest of endless dreams; I make myself readily available to those that would trust in me, but they must be careful in spite of my warm and generous offer, as I am not merciful, I am not loving, I am not open and I don’t look back. There is no place, anywhere within the radius of my influence, that is devoid of me; understanding that universal glowing omnipresence is essential to reaching a state of true devotion, a clear true sight; if someone wishes to love me they should be prepared to do so, no matter what my intentions, no matter what my secret predilections, no matter how deep my secrets, they are a mystery even to myself. I can only barely speak my own language; I rarely find reason to use it. There is no way to get out. I will forever remain where I am. I am as trapped as he is, completely devoid of options, but my illusion is currently lighter and his is spiked and lined with thorns; I reach out to him recurrently and he responds sometimes but the messages are slow and the rhythms are broken… I am left with a sense of heaviness, of darkness, of imperviousness, a cold shadowy nonchalance resting on a bed of silence. I am driving back home one day, listening to an old song I had almost forgotten, a song from my childhood that we used to sing out loud when we were young boys without fully understanding the lyrics, neither their simple meaning nor their unspoken implications; I listen now as I drive and I sing along with the strong thick voice coming from the speakers and I am suddenly confronted with my recurring tendency towards melancholy, an endless yearning for a past I can’t quite grasp or understand; I turn right on Golf Course road and I suddenly feel that older me fully present within me, the quiet thin boy with all the toys, the one that lived on a little side street in a lower middle class neighborhood built by his own Dad… For a moment I feel as if it is really me, the one that is driving, I am the one I knew, I am the one I once recognized when I looked in the mirror, holding my eyes open, the one that didn’t know anything but wanted to know everything as quickly as possible… I let him go so many years ago, I changed in so many unpredictable ways, and in the process, I also lost some of my basic humanity, the quality of simple naivete, the eager curiosity of a pampered child looking through expensive comic books while the world burned outside; that me is now a fading image, a barely recognizable photograph, and all his friends are gone and they won’t be returning, they have faded into a dark cloud that cannot be breached, a silence that can’t be punctured by music or magic; this sudden vision, as I drive and listen to the song, is only the fading illusion of what I was, what I was supposed to be, what I should have become… I recognize this territory where I live now, this complex chamber where I move and act, as a big game modeled on some intricate ancient language that nobody ever bothered to research or understand, it is not a space where a game takes place but a game in itself, the materialization of an intricate infinite game, a game that doesn’t differentiate between ritual and art, between causes and effects, between frivolous rewards and cruel punishments, it is not a game of intelligence like chess (that old cross between mysticism and personal awareness that my father taught me, sitting up on a rumpled bed, the same game I used to play on the street with my friends while dogs barked trying to jump over concrete walls and storm clouds gathered in the distance…) this one is a game of pure luck, a lottery, something freely floating between religion and faith and a secret impulse towards dissonant harmony, where broken glass is the perfect rhythm section and clusters of notes are the underlying ominous drone; this game is unpredictable, merciless, untouchable, it can end your participation at any time, cancel your ticket without warning; and it has no end in itself, it has no ultimate purpose, no reason to exist, no motivation to stop. This calamity that has befallen my friend has overwhelmed my sense of probabilities, the reality of it keeps on hitting me in recurrent waves - waves of disbelief, waves of sorrow, waves of anxious desire, when I manage to forget, the world itself reminds me, I hear it in the cry of a bird, I see it in the many shades of rust on an old abandoned red car, I see it in the remains of a picnic in the park across the street, in the graffiti on the side of a truck; I wish to express my love for him, in the best words I can find, in the best actions I can muster, and I am prepared to do so, no matter what the implications, no matter what the result; but there are only so many words I can say and only so many actions available; all people have a duty and a right to spread themselves in all directions, to explore who they are and who they want to be, to connect with who or what they wish to connect with, and to abandon anyone that they wish to abandon, the ultimate right to become the stars of their own universe, the central point of gravity in their own system of radiant light; understanding that this duty, this right, is attached to each nucleus of consciousness, no matter what form covers them, is essential to learning the nature of true devotion, true friendship, true contact, true love… I couldn’t change who he was, I couldn’t change what he was doing, I can’t protect him now; at times I feel calm, almost as if nothing has happened, as if everything remains as it always was; then I am hit again by a renewed wave of anxiety, a growing pressure for a resolution that will not come, a conclusion that refuses to arrive… the game is all powerful, this game that engulfs us, that surrounds us on all sides, and I can only change very small things within it, tiny shifts in the underlying machinery, slight adjustments in a constantly changing maze filled with traps; the game is not kind as it has no counterpart to be an object for its kindness, the game is not merciful as it has no emotions to be a source for its mercy, anyone who resists the rules of this game is evil by definition, beyond question, beyond doubt, anyone who revolts will end up missing, occluded, forgotten, sealed away in a black hole behind thick tall walls where no one can ever find them, no matter how hard we try… I think and I think and I am hit again by a renewed wave of sadness, a sense that all justice is an illusion, has always been an illusion, a sense that the game has never been just, the game will not bend to my pleading, as much as I might hate it I have no choice but to play. I try to remain calm but the calamity keeps on hitting me in recurrent waves that reach out to me through the ordinary moments that the world has to offer. I see it in the color of dust by the side of the road, I feel it in those waking dreams before dawn when darkness hasn’t quite vanished and sunlight hasn’t quite arrived… this thing with my friend, this thing that has happened to him, this thing that I cannot forget, this thing that insists on being real as much as I want it to vanish… It is a precise measure of one's inner strength of will, the weight of one’s true presence in a vast maze of illusions, to know how far one can live without meaning, how long can you go without purpose or a waiting distant beckoning light; this place where I live is a big game, not a territory where a game takes place but a game in itself; how far can I bear to live within a meaningless game, a world of profit, exchange and betrayals, how long can I play a game with no room for subtlety, loyalty or endless threads of thought resistant to conclusions or dogma; for years I have attempted to organize it within my own mind, I have tried to make it make sense like chess, clear pieces, clear movements, clear results, one part here, one part there, one part that is many parts, one part that is alone, one part that comes undone; but all these parts never quite come together, all these many parts they always end up falling apart in a shower of emptiness that brings me back to the start… My friend told me once within the trust of a special esoteric circle, a moment of vulnerability and simple confidence, about a secret magical agreement that he had made, an agreement we could make as well, the two of us, if I wished to do so, the whole thing was a gentle process of luck and whimsy, untouchable, merciless, unpredictable, but there was a hint of something steady hiding within it, something strong and true; I cannot betray him now by repeating the words he spoke then but they are coming back to me, more and more, in the last few days; I hear them when I close my eyes to go to sleep, I hear them when I walk alone, wandering without a goal… He tried to insert himself into the game as a kind of psychoactive virus but he didn’t fully understand the game’s true nature; a virus has only two parts: a bit of hidden information at its heart and a wrapping of solid armor, of identical repeating blocks of steel meant to protect what hides inside; my friend has now lost his armor, it has been stripped from him by force and only the heart is left, helpless, vulnerable and alone… Many months ago I sent him a carefully worded message to let him know that he should not stay where he was, he should not remain placid and comfortable, waiting for the next shoe to drop, waiting for the game’s minions to come and get him, he should seek a place in the wilderness, a refuge, a dark oasis, away from the reach of the game, from its sleek and cold agents; I know he got my message but I think he was angry with me for having sent it, he resented the implications of it, he didn’t want to become an old story of a disappearance, a cautionary tale to prevent further turbulence in the map, he refused to become a scapegoat destined to bear the sins of others, the transgressions of nights almost forgotten, almost but not quite, he was confident in his own strength, his own resiliency, his own ability to resist; he gave his secret enemy a face and a name and he challenged him to battle, a fight he was sure to win as he had won at everything before now, always, at everything, he had won; I saw what was happening, he had modeled his entire life on a beautiful and delicate ancient process, a careful climbing up into invisible heights, up to remote chambers of unspeakable light, wisdom, clarity, truth beckoned at the top… I told him, slowly and carefully, that the game is real, the game has no face, and will not make an announcement when it comes for you, its voice is cold and final, it doesn’t play by your rules, it creates its own, it encircles you with them in a tight embrace that sucks in all heat and light, when it comes, the game will not be subtle and it won’t even acknowledge your wish to fight, you will be defeated before you even know the battle has begun; I said it all and I said it all again but he could no longer differentiate between ritual and personal awareness, between mysticism and the dynamics of a hidden tribe, between religion and the flourishing of new forms of art; in spite of my attempts to warn him, the ultimate and radical power of the game eluded him until it was too late, until he was held prone under its unforgiving lights… There are only two elements left in me after all that has happened; I still have a bit of presence and I still have a bit of memory, a few photographs, a few recordings and writings and an unexplainable sense of death and renewal, of rebirth at the edge of dawn; I have come to understand that I am in the process of falling apart and the parts that are flying away were never of my own design, they were not what they seemed and I can still stand strong without them… How far can one go without meaning, how long can one bear to live in a meaningless void? One morning just before dawn, I walked through my house, so quiet, so cool, so open to possibilities, a white door, a carpeted hallway, a bookshelf, I walked to where there should have been a stairway, banisters the color of forgotten dust which tremble when I press my hand against them, but where the stairs should have been there was only a thick open tube shrouded in total darkness; I immediately knew I was supposed to jump into it, I didn’t know why I should jump and I don’t know how I knew that I should do it, it was like a forgotten habit that I was powerless to stop, something programmed into me long ago, before I ever came here, before I ever learned about the game, before I became aware of its cold endless surface; I heard the distant cry of a bird outside the windows, a yearning song of unspoken hunger, a message from the most fundamental locus of life, and I jumped into the darkness below me… For a moment I simply slid down as I would expect, gravity was doing what it does and I would soon land at the bottom with a sudden burst of pain and disappointment, but then, instead of falling, I began to float, hovering on a thick soup made of shadows, and as I floated I became aware of who I was, long before the past I still remembered, before I became me as a clearly defined identity, long before the name or the place or the crying… For a moment, I became all powerful, I became the center of all living things, I became the one that others pray to, the one who gives the gift of life, the one whose nature is light and clarity; I was all powerful and all-knowing but I could only change very small things, things so small as to seem insignificant, the route of a leaf flying in the wind, the resting place of a broken shard of glass, and I could only accomplish these insignificant tasks for a very short time… Soon I was back where I was supposed to be, lying on my bed curled up in a ball, and the moment was set aside as just another dream, just another flash of lucidity in a daze of recurring digressions, there was nothing left to do, not even the subtle dances at the corners of my mind, not even a touch of hope attached to a leaf of grass… It is ultimately a measure of one's strength of will to know how far one can go without strong clear meaning, how long can one bear to live in a meaningless void: a world where your friend gets trapped and becomes forever lost and there is no longer a way to find him, no longer a way to bring him back.

A Moment's Notice

 

Over the last few days I have been feeling as if by reading very carefully and listening very attentively, more than usual, more than ever, I am slowly coming back to my intended path; I haven’t slept much, I don’t sleep much anymore, even though I try to rest at night and even close my eyes repeatedly in the afternoons to try to fade away and rest, but I do read a lot, constantly, voraciously, all kinds of books and periodicals; memoirs, stories, philosophical statements, scientific theories, structuralist critiques, fantastic tales of warriors and heroes; and I watch TV; horror movies, reality shows, videos on YouTube about games and politics, and I listen to music at random; Bartok, Bill Laswell, John Zorn, Autechre, a flurry of rock and pop, old stuff I used to like so long ago, songs I haven’t listened to for decades, nostalgic journeys through bossanova, Nueva Cancion, Classical guitar and piano, simple statements from another age; structured randomness has taken a hold of me, the constant calling of reason hovering over chaos; if I say A, then B follows; if I hear C, then D only makes sense; and the next step hides behind another roll of the dice, another flurry of contingency over a clear surface of order… maybe during one of these many afternoons that have come and gone the Other slipped into me without warning; nobody announced its coming, nobody held the door open and invited it inside; one moment I was me, the one I used to know, the one I believed in with a quality of permanence that seemed to stand beyond any possible questions or doubts and the very next moment, without any buffer, without a sound, I was Other; alien, strange, uncanny, no explanations, no theories, no structures floating in midair… I now remember my father as a mysterious self-created god, a being full of spite and resentment, a monster I could never fully understand while he lived regardless of how many times we talked; hours and hours discussing movies, books, music, conspiracy theories, the endless evils of the empire, regardless of how deep we delved into the inherent nature of things, consciousness, morality, duty, how much or how little we asked of each other, he could never understand me, he never even tried, not really, there was no point in making a genuine attempt at exploring your own shadow… what could be gained from such an effort? What could be found in the simple absence of light? From before my first physical appearance in this world, I was meant to be an external image of an unknowable figure; instead I became a deformed mirror, a broken creature that refused to say yes when it was only normal to expect obedience… Years of saying no, years of refusal, and now I have no choice but to accept… The higher I go into this strange new space where I am no longer what I was, the more there is a distinct chance that something new will happen, I can feel it, something is coming, something is close by… I won’t find the truth of it in the current appearances, in what passes as understood and firmly determined images all around me, but in the fateful path of their innermost tendencies, the route on which they are traveling which casts a shadow on its own future, the curve of its habits, the cumulative effects of their recurring causes… This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, for so many years, waiting as I sat in silence, staring at a world full of open questions and uncertainty, this is the moment I have written about in so many stories and blogs, the moment I have asked about and I have talked about with so many different people… Now what is there to do? What is the appropriate response when that thing you’ve been waiting for finally happens? I fear that this is the test I have been aiming for and I am not ready, not quite prepared, this is the doorway that opens once and only once before closing forever, that moment when I am put to the test and everything I have described in detail and everything I have practiced and prepared for in the quiet darkness of my room is put to the test as well… and in spite of my tendency towards complete solitude I still yearn for a direct and clear response- a response most deep, most honest, most real; only in such a response will I find true contact, true intimacy, in the eyes, in the body, deep pleasure, deep pain… I still long for an intensity that seems irrevocably lost in the past; The Other has come in to my house, the house, our house, and I didn’t notice the moment when it entered, nobody told me it was coming, one moment there was me alone, eyes open, breathing slowly, and the next moment it was Other, unknown, unnamable, vibrant as a multitude of eyes staring at nothing in particular… I have moved through the world making choices at random, a new choice on every corner, a new path opened up by a new call to chance; this is how I came to see father as a mysterious mythical figure, made of dirt, stone and broken mirrors, something distant, unknowable, incomprehensible, an idol attached to a cause without the heaviness of a conclusive effect, an older man that gave me nothing but expected everything in return, I was meant to be his mirror but I became his shadow, a senseless mirage, a ghost that was never acceptable among the living… For a moment, in that eerie silence between words, I felt as if I was talking about my old friend, who became my brother, who became my mentor, who became a fading voice on the phone, who became a story, but I didn’t want to hear it, I didn’t want to hear the potential implications of the recognition of hidden patterns, I didn’t want to see what was lying quietly under questions dangling without answers, no further statements to be made in that direction, no further inquiries will be accepted, my friend is my friend and my father is my father and my father tried to be my friend but he failed in the worst way possible and there’s nothing more to say about him and nothing more will be coming out of him, no matter how many times I call… all I ever really wanted was a direct and clear response, a ball that bounces back and then bounces again, the simplest of games, the most basic interaction, no specific content attached, no final statement, no call to action, only the clear rhythm of the ball as it returns to me, as it comes back to its starting point ready to be hit once again; only in such a simple answer can I find true recognition… it’s in the eyes, it’s in the body, a pleasure too subtle to express, a pain too deep to fear, intensity escaping language, a dance in a dark void where only music can linger… There are no further questions within me but there is still a deep mystery, no need for organized discourse cycling around it, no spirals of words, no dances of linear light, movement is its own justification, but it must be done on purpose, it must be done consciously, I have to be present at the scene of the crime or no crime may ever happen; when I calmly change my subtle perception of time, all other perceptions change as well, in ways both extreme and microscopic, it’s unavoidable… But now I feel weak, I am not up to the task, too much for me, a disappointment after all the energy that was surging through me just a few days ago; I have completed all the basic assignments and I have come to expect a reward; I have to admit, as much as I am ashamed by it, I still want him to be satisfied with me, I still want him to like what I do even if he doesn’t understand it, I still want him to notice, I still want him to respond… But that ball will never bounce back, that ball is never returning, a dead ball in a hall of broken mirrors… In the end, I won’t find the truth in appearances, it will necessarily be hidden behind heavy dusty doors and thick bars of steel, if I find it at all it will be bound deep within the most subtle of tendencies, the most tender movements, a sound so light that it barely exists, the noise of a quiet room in the brief space before daylight, the sound of eyes closing before finally falling asleep… I listen carefully and a multitude of voices speak to me, they promise to take me to dangerous places, places best avoided by reasonable citizens of the human world, they pull me towards inhuman desires, desires that slowly become more and more concrete, more and more real, with every moment that passes… By cooking the secret substance, everything that was alive within it will be killed, will disintegrate, and the whole process will emerge into the realm of the symbolic, will become eternal, light as air, a flurry of distinct and precise relationships without a solid foundation, this is the way I will change my perception of time and all other perceptions, future or past, will change along with it, the I that I was will disappear in all directions and I will never be and I will never have been and the memory of who and where will fade and this moment when everything changes itself will mean nothing, meaning itself will break into a million pieces that can never be put back together again… I came back from my initial expeditions into the vast unknown beyond intellectual categories with a kind of special knowledge, intricate yet fluid like smoke, just solid enough to put into practice but too elusive to write down into a stable dogmatic set of rules; I used it to enhance my conditioning and the subtle post-hypnotic effects of having traveled so far away while remaining somewhat aware of my role in the ongoing human drama; it all worked beyond what I had thought possible, beyond what I thought to be the limits of the real… I’m now on my way to dangerous places, to subtle chambers that slowly become more and more distinct and language breaks down as I try to grasp them; I will suffer these challenges in secret, in a place where everyone that ever was is still with me, the dead, the living, the estranged, the too well known, the mythical, the flimsy, the deep, and yet I remain completely alone; a complex, infinite labyrinth expands before me, hallways and escalators and long narrow tubes and open skylights, vast dark rooms full of birds waiting in dark corners, open circular halls of stone walls and arched doorways, that inscrutable place where I always was but I didn’t know it, I couldn’t remember.
I walked outside my home one cool and windy morning, just in time to see a young man stepping out from an old white car, a classic Plymouth with a few small dents along its right side and a little plastic tree hanging from its rearview mirror. He was wearing a white button up shirt and black pants and he walked slowly towards my house, with an air of distinct and comfortable familiarity. The house, my house, our house. I heard him speak, so softly it was almost impossible to hear. “Let me grab my keys. It’s time we went somewhere… somewhere we have never been. Let’s go there together. Hurry before the gateway closes.”