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.”
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