CHAPTER 3 – THE GIRL
WE
We can say — quite confidently — that I could have been made aware, say… of an imminent asteroidal trajectory surging toward & decisively rendering earth (and consequently the fate of humanity) perished within a period of 24 hours; and still, such a revelation would not have startled him to the degree that he was startled in this moment. And so, we will observe this initial engagement from outside (above), hopefully alleviating ourselves from the stray accusations and rabid rationalizations liable from a mind like the one just prior inhabited. At least for now.
And so, here we are, in a moment I had not considered in his wildest dreams… in his deepest paracosms. Before him now was a girl — a girl whose image he could clearly see, despite her darkness-veiled appearance. A beautiful girl, he knew somehow immediately, a sort of beauty felt as though preceding his visual perception her. She could not have been more than a few years younger than I, and now presented herself in communion with the desolate park at this unprecedented, ungodly hour of the night.
“Hey.”
Just a word, a simple greeting; but for I, this “hey” was now that strike of lightning he lay in perpetual fear of.
A strike of lighting, yet a simple echo. And that echo carried a soft, delicate, graceful air to it. To I, this “greeting” may as well have been the outwrought hand of an angel; or perhaps a demon, he could not tell for certain which. However, he knew, as a matter of every fact and innate sensation inside of him leading up to this point, as well as all that was revealed within that moment, that he was now stepping into something he did not quite understand. He did not know how he knew this to be the case, but he knew it all the same. And so, a convulsion of ecstatic fright ultimately forced out what could only be carelessly described as a thoughtful, well measured:
“…What are you?”
“What do you mean, what?”
“I mean – What are you doing in this place, alone? And at a time like this?
“Well–“
“Not even a vagrant like myself has a justified interest to come here after dark! Obviously excepting the fact I’m here now — which is surely an odd coincidence — but all the same, you shouldn’t come out here, these parts carry an extra measure of darkness in the night. No, it’s very dangerous, too dangerous for a girl like you. This is the sort of behavior one tempts before falling into the river of victimhood. And especially you… listen to me, you really shouldn’t be here.”
“The way you speak is so strange.”
Silence.
Her again, “What do you mean, a girl like me?”
Ah, this happened to be the exact question I subconsciously held he would not want her to ask, only realizing what he had betrayed in the very moment that she spoke; and then, it was as though she saw right through him.
“I’m sorry. One spends so much time philosophizing with himself, he (essentially) develops his own language. But when I say these things out loud I realize they’re what others mean when they refer to delusion.”
“Pretty… but a girl like me?”
“I didn’t mean anything, no intention to offend. I don’t know who you are, obviously. But you did surprise me in a significant way… I’ve never seen someone else here before.”
“Odd. I should be the one surprised, if either of us. If you’ve never seen me it’s because you don’t come, I’m here every night.”
“Every night?? What reason could a girl like you possibly have–”
“Me?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t help not knowing what to say, I’m still so surprised…”
“Okay, maybe I don’t come every night. But the truth is, I’ll wake up, often prodded by this weird feeling… almost like a sense of dread. Malice, maybe. It does not leave me. It pushes me to this place as though it were the only solace from those feelings. This place… when I come here, I feel I may truly be silent.”
“Inclined to agree, that’s pretty weird. Why here?”
“Exactly why is not important, just know this place is good to me. I come at night, and night alone; for whatever reason, my mind pursues this clarity in hours of darkness only. It feels as though the daytime, though it is bright… carries a fog that prevents me from seeing things clearly. I know, I know… it sounds so silly, how can I appreciate the sights and range of beauty found within a garden when there is no light to shine on it? But I promise, I know this park well, I do not need to see its colors.”
His apparent perplexed-ness implored her to continue.
“I’ll admit, when I come here, one might call it escape. It has this quality… as though I step into a different person, and for some time I can forget the absurd constraints life has placed on me. Yes… there’s something about the air here which dissolves the past and future, and for some time, I simply am.”
He looked at her as though attempting to transcribe a hieroglyph. This was a strange language, a strange solace to seek, as far as I was concerned. There was a flash of (perceived) (envy)… no, not envy, it was some combination of intrigue and tense uncertainty. There was an energy now rising within him that could not be identified. Like a wave, a rising stream of burning anticipation. Observing this, she proceeded:
“What were you thinking about just now?”
“Just now?”
“When you saw me.”
“Oh, probably nothing important, I’m not sure. Never anything important, honestly.”
“Hmm.. I think you’re flattering yourself with an odd humility. Okay then, tell me, what would you think about at any moment, other than the thing that presents itself as most important?”
Seeing how she read him this way struck Isaiah like a bullet, a bullet with a glint of irony. Isaiah loved irony, after all; one might venture to call it his “love language” (This, for reasons he could not quite articulate). Yet instinctively, on the strike of this bullet he tried to calculate a rebuttal, an auto-neural defense to protect his now exposed egoic projection. This girl is rather sharp, your amorous rhetorical ploys may not have their effect on her.
“You’re clever, but I’m only using labels. Of true importance there is no such thing. Importance is a layer over causality, an abstraction, like everything. If you look closely, it will dissolve. I promise.”
“So… you don’t believe in anything as truly important?”
“As you suggest? Probably not. I would concede importance to subjective ascription. But fine, here; maybe there are things we can deem as ‘objectively’ more relevant to the practical application of man. These things could be considered ‘important’, I suppose.”
“…I suppose.”
Now I was feeling a nostalgic buzz, reminiscent of his past amorous musings.
“This is just adorable. Do you really want to play the semantic game with me?”
“Yes. And I’ll win.”
“No, you won’t. But like I said, you’re clever; and I’ll admit, it’s kind of refreshing.”
“You flatter yourself still.”
“…Is that what you think is going on?”
“I think you’re assuming, and I think you have a complex. Is your expectation that every new person you meet will carelessly fall for some philosophical mirage?”
Isaiah was not expecting to hear those words.
“No, no, I’m not trying to insult you. Like I said before, I have my own language in perspective of these things. And I’m not used to speaking it aloud. Iteration is my worst habit, you should know.”
“It’s a patronizing language. You speak as if you know, not as though you’re truly aware.”
“…Perhaps I do know some things. You shouldn’t mistake verbosity for idealism.”
“No, you’re playing a game — with yourself, maybe? I think so. Tell me; what is it that you know?”
“Stop. I’m sorry… maybe I do play games, but I know already that I have no interest in that with you. Let me be straight out of a curious respect for your edge: there’s something I like about you, and your words. I have met you, questioned you, and formed this conclusion in not the few short minutes we’ve been standing here together.”
To note: at this point, neither the girl nor I had ventured nor even considered to ask the other for their name.
I
She looked at me more closely.
“…Thank you. I think you’re the curious one. So tell me, what were you thinking about? Say the thought just as it was appearing to you then.”
“You’re certain? Very well, I try not to speak in the tongue of my mind, nothing good has ever come of that endeavor, as has already been demonstrated. I will even warn you of certain-natured women in my past, who I had entirely believed to be fanatics of the ‘truth’, of the sciences, philosophy and math, all the way up and to the very moment in which that same pursuit of ‘truth’ was revealed to them as to undermine the possession of their self-perceived ‘beauty.’ But I could entertain this, you intrigue me. And you’re asking – just to be clear?”
She nodded.
“Well, it seems I’ve already started. What is it you wanted to know — the thought I was having just now? That’s perfectly fine, perhaps you might understand it. But it’s all so funny, because there is nothing in the end to understand. It’s truly ironic you talk of a solace in this park… For just there, at the very moment you made your presence known to me, I was savoring the only thing there is which one can truly take solace in. You see, you could never know my woes in the matter of a single breath of expression here and now, to make such a suggestion would simply be laughable. Rather I can tell you, with more precision and import, that I am afflicted beyond your wildest imagination.
She laughed.
Fatally adorable.
“Listen to me, I promise you. There are thresholds of awareness over which nothing can ever be considered ‘good’ nor ‘important,’ and this is a cursed truth, as far as a true curse may exist; and I would undoubtedly consider this a true curse — it is transient, entrenched in something beyond or beneath me; I cannot reject it, it haunts me to no avail. What I’m trying to tell you is… I am a storm. And this in a way that you could never understand, as suspiciously intelligent as you may be.”
“If you say so. So, what is there to take solace in?”
“You’re a smart girl, think about it. What is the only thing a person of awareness can truly take solace in? The primal (eyes), the hedonistic? No. Well, yes — but I think you know rather imminently that such things are too fleeting, they only leave one emptier and more brutally aware in the end. So, then what, do we look to things like ‘love’, or ‘faith’? I argue to you now that both of these are even more fleeting than the others; for most people would never acknowledge this, but it’s only because they do not look at them closely. For those people, ignorance is the true thing abstracted into any idea that is parallel to hope or goodness. Abstraction, clawing at the non-existent, nothing more than bundles of partially observed truths, perpetuated with illusory coherence in order to mobilize and drive man toward their own exploitation…”
“…You think?”
“Clearly so. What will you cling to with this ‘’love,’ as soon as it reveals its true nature? It’s so alluring at first, you can’t help but lean into the fantasy intoxicated by that raw surge of evolutionary electricity. When under this spell, one does not consider the faculties of their prior constructed safeguards. They do not matter, they offer not a remotely close feeling as to the one awaiting the consequential progression of their natural impulses, and so ultimately (predictably) Darwin wins again. But over time, that monogamous spell will certainly break, they will be subject once again to that same biological drive dressed in a new, enticing air of novelty, of all forms and from all directions. And so inevitably, these forces will pull those two lovers away, or up & down, or in any opposing direction, but apart from each other nonetheless; for that is the entropic accord of nature.”
…
“At least, you might say, that I would possess such foresight, that I could entirely prevent myself from this sort of fate. But that’s the thing… at times, there is nothing more I would like than to make myself near-sighted, in order that I may experience this thing — or even just some twisted version of this thing — which others so casually call “love.” This ignorance I speak of, it’d be wrong to think I’m ascribing it as being wholly negative. No… I am aware enough to know that that which is technically short-sightedness is also that which brings the most traditional “fulfillment” to man.”
“Wait… you’ve never been in love?”
“I used to think I knew this ‘love‘… there were several occasions with several perfectly fine people. At times, I might have thought to’ve been successful; for years, I could construct the necessary frames of illusion, and the tethers of false assurance needed to maintain them. There were many sparks, many sweet, wonderful girls; But… the longer I had managed to sustain each illusion, the greater the house of cards that would inevitably crash in consequence of my (projected) web of lies.”
“Oh… I’m sorry–“
“No matter. So now, going back to those proposed axioms of love and faith. After having been made victim to the unraveling of the former, any one of those poor girls whose spirit I thieved prior might then have predictably asked me of faith, but again my answer to them was simple: we have the same problem! First you must explain to me what sort of faith you suggest. Is it obvious we should know what exactly to have faith in? They will speak to me of God, of the church, ‘mother nature’, even; and so I would explain to them quite simply that these things are nothing but spells of abstraction, a methodical leveraging of the absurd cosmic quarrel within man; and it is done, I’ll admit, with fascinating efficiency, sustained in far-reaching and (religiously) enduring form, though these efforts will only grow more and more elusive as the truth becomes more relevant to, and more understood by the apathetic many. All one has to do is keep asking questions, to force the abstraction downward, and the untruth of all forms of ‘faith’ will soon expose their “true” nature.”
“Oh, fascinating.”
“Oh, you’re smart too, I see. Here, smart girl — I’ll tell you one more thing of such illusions; of faith, and love. There was another girl, the last girl… the largest house of glass to break, a triadic dance and a death, built entirely on that recursive illusion which I desperately tried holding together by the threads of the thing I called ‘faith.’ A dance not as long as some, I know, but for me, those years changed my reality completely.”
…
“It was so intriguing, at first, I’ll admit. But I knew from the beginning, all the same. There were early foreshadows, flashes of reckless intuition, but I had repressed them. I thought I saw her, I thought I knew her, but in the end I had only known the image I had projected onto this girl.”
“That’s pretty classic, actually.”
…
…
“I managed many things, in those years, including no shortage of my own failings. Still, I left just any many things unsaid in pursuit of this thing we both thought was ‘love’. But then, over time, the subtle asymmetries of our awareness slowly crept up to the surface; in the end, they were not to be suppressed. They had woven between us many threads of misperception, judicial expectation, and paranoia-driven projection. We made enemies of each other, her and I. This helplessness was acute; hopelessness. I could not stop the fracture, and I certainly couldn’t stop the pain. There was a logic beyond us playing out as it already had… I understand it. And so, what else could she do but slip away? See, this is why I call such awareness inescapable. This inevitability is why I now know to always falls back on the ultimate foresight, negating this would-be blasphemous chaos altogether.”
“So…”
“She was gone; so, what could one do but dissolve? To feel that sort of cold, the cry of dissolution is the last plea, the most desperate reassurance of the soul. I no longer knew her, and so I was no longer. I remember clinging to that ‘faith’… looking into her eyes… in denial of what she had forgotten… it was all I had left, the only thing I could do. And what I met with that prayer were two knives of malice that sliced me eternally. Lies, dismissal, venom. I thought I had known enough physical pain, to know the extent of its effect on the mind. But I had no knowledge such a feeling like that existed.”
“Crying is kind of like a chisel. Don’t you think?”
“What… are you some sort of manic pixie?”
“What?”
“Nevermind. When I felt that “pain”, you could say I felt the death of my warmest, most closely held and gracious perception, the incineration of my most valuable possession: that hope… I couldn’t… seeking explanation was futile, there was nothing to pursue in it; there is nothing at all, other than the pain itself, and the stab of absurd revelation. Why did I do it, all those years? I knew exactly what I was doing, and what was being done to me. But in the end, it was only a want, an endeavor of ‘faith’, a leap as to make myself human enough that I might find an awareness, someone who can finally offer me a taste of this phantom that is ‘love.’ And so you see, such efforts will become recursive, every time.”
“Can you stick to English, please?”
“They are not real, at least in essence; they are but fractal illusions inevitably to be unveiled as a necessary order of time. The real thing is yet to be distilled; in fact, this very knowledge happens to be the solace I spoke of earlier. But I will get to that in a moment. First let me reiterate, and hear me when I tell you that endeavors based on these illusions will always slip away. Faith, hope, whatever label one wants to ascribe… they slip away.”
…
“And what’s more, it becomes increasingly insulting for us to suggest such things given the tools of analysis and foresight increasingly available to man. To suggest faith is worse than to suggest love, I think. But I understand completely why people do it. And I can not blame them, truly. Delusion is a powerful drug.”
There was a momentary fracture of mind, and although the following words were not spoken, the dialogue had been made unmistakably known to me, as though in the form of a memory, but only for that very sliver of a moment:
Here I will share an insight as made evident in such states of pain: No, there is no hope for you. This is your hope now. I hear such things, still. I will hear them in her voice, in the final moment before falling asleep and the first upon refreshing my eyes. When one hears it that loudly, stalked so ruthlessly, it becomes an axiom. It permeates; it is now inescapable. Everything else, everything I know, dissolves around this new reality. The swirl of those years… it all fed into the twisted, recursive, hell, and that is now my reality. That is now my truth.
She looked down, and understandably took a moment to absorb the cascade of despair she had just been made victim to.
“I’m moved by your mural of pain, though it burns me, honestly.”
…
“Alright. Say that I were her, and she were here right now. What would you say to me?”
“…I’m sorry.”
“’I’m sorry.’ That’s it?”
“My coldness is not her weight to bear. There is no blame to cast, there are no games to be played. Most of us could not know this flayed awareness, if it materialized in form. And so she always thought such things to be dramatic, or attention-seeking. Maybe they were dramatic, and maybe I was attention seeking; I’ll admit, that’s exactly what I wanted, I wanted for her to understand. Because after all, to love someone is to understand them, truly. And I failed in showing her, she might have seen all the love that resided in places she was not looking.”
“…I kinda like that.”
“Still, in the end I truly hope she should be free from that pain. No matter the malice I felt from her. But the torturous thing is, there is no more ‘true’ malice in her heart, than than the ‘malice’ I would have felt just as well under the exact same conditions as she. And so, this word ‘malicious’, for all that we rely on its potency, is just an abstraction, it dissipates like the rest. She can never be truly malicious… such is just an arbitrary perception, my observation at her wringing of my heart. She cannot be reduced now to anything as to evoke a notion of some hurtful force, of a villain, or someone to be seen as evil. And unfortunately so, as this would make it far easier. Yet, in the end it cannot be but the undulating flow of that material, elusive equation. No claim to a better nature, no claim to proper resolve. What happened, happened because it had already been so. What more resolve must one seek?”
“…So who was deluded? You or her?”
“See? It’s almost (poetic), the cycle completes again. Delusion… look harder, mystery girl; you’re smarter than this. What do you think I’ll say to you next?”
“Yes, the recursion. I know. You’re blinded by it. You cannot see outside of it.”
“Merely description. It blinds us all. The only difference is the cutoff point from which some of us abstract the recursion.”
“Um… I feel like this is a pretty dangerous game you’re playing.”
“Tell me more?”
“You’re the deep one, supposedly. What is to happen, following your logic to its end? Forget delusion. Let’s say I were to inflict true malice on you, right here in this park — you’re to suggest it is of no consequence, simply the chanced unfolding of your ‘math?’”
“Now you’re understanding. And so at last, we have our solace. I will put it simply for you; actually, I will prove it to you, right here and now. Look inward, into yourself and tell me, then, exactly where your agency resides. Most cannot do this, they will never try to do it or will shudder and claim victory after the slightest hint of insight. But I can tell you what will happen, if you understand me and do this correctly; the moment you look for this agency, it will not be there, it dissolves on sufficient examination. Any ridge you cling to in gauging where to find this sense of ‘will,’ will… well, dissolve as well. Please forgive the prose, I can only speak from inside. But the point remains, our determination can be induced, and with this induction comes a liberation that whatever is, has always been, and could not nor ever have been otherwise. Yes; It is all but math, very simply.”
…
I studied her face, it eluded me completely. I’d like to think she was drawn to this web of misery I had now projected on to her. But by this point I knew she was not as vacuous as to be moved by the ramblings of the despaired. The expressions my thoughts were attempting to decode hinted, if only barely at all, at a kind of (wise?) empathy. At this point I was expecting some sort of clever remark in rebuttal to my digression.
Nothing. So, I continued:
“I do hope you forgive me (___), but I fear I may steal the ultimate gift of ignorance from you. Once I’ve started to express myself in this way I cannot help at all to stop. But truthfully… there is something I deeply like in you… a grace, something I would much rather preserve, than to keep pressing on with my ruthless despondence. A crush, maybe; at risk of overt honesty. But I’m sorry, really, I didn’t mean to project this storm into your place of solace… and I surely do not expect you to understand…”
…
“I understand,” she said.
Words which I did not think were possible, words I never considered I might hear before. In this vein, anyway.
Then, swiftly and without warning, she reduced the space between us from 4 steps to 1, grabbed me quite tastefully by the hair, and perfectly chased her lips to mine; (I think, I could’ve become instantly aware of an unstoppably destructive asteroid reeling toward earth along a trajectory that would render us extinct within 48 hours, and such knowledge would have surprised me less than this moment now).
In sequence with that moment came a draft, a slight wind, as though deciding to join in harmony with our brief union of mysterious, ecstatic primacy. I do not use this word lightly; I have even participated in the more contemporary forms of ‘ecstasy’ as well, if merely on but a humble few occasions. Sure, I observed effects which some may consider “ecstatic.” But this was not that. That was more of a structured, rolling tide of serotonergic release, pleasurable yet innately known deep down to be an ultimate product of the chemical manufacturing of man. This feeling, well… this was more like an electricity, all-encompassing and bursting out from the depths of a source I had not perceived inside of me until now. This girl, this moment – it was bizarrely surreal.
Then there was a rapid flash, and within an even smaller fraction of that already fleeting embrace I could now see clearly, if but as a glimpse, and no matter that my eyes were closed. I instinctively knew, for just a moment, that I was no longer in that garden but somewhere else, somewhere beyond the world I was perceiving just seconds before. A landscape of storm. Yet, surprisingly, I did not stop to observe this place. In an instance I otherwise would have considered an impossibility, there was a draw of something urgent, something deeply innate, pulling me away from the temptation of analysis. I pressed in to the material, into the satyric, glowing embers of rapturous intrigue.
All this in seconds.
She pulled away,
Then, in an equally unexpected fashion, she took my hand, quicky clasping inside of it a tiny ampoule (vial), but not before my glimpsing that it was filled with an unidentified transparent liquid. It could have been water, ethanol, or liquid ketamine – each or all of them, I could not tell any difference.
“What did you just give me, drugs?”
Then held a final glance.
“Just a breeze.”
She solidified her grasp on my arm and drew closer yet still. Her grip tightened for a moment, conveying a silent urgency which I understood with immediacy. She looked at me with those eyes, those strange, piercing eyes. Snake eyes, black holes (quasars), momentarily drowning the inertia of every other perception. The arrow struck, and time slipped away.
∞
“Tonight.”
…came the reverbing echoes of a foreboding thunder which then proceeded in abrupt & accelerated fashion to strike me out of my cosmic suspension with what felt like a genuine bolt of lightning. I was wrenched back into the present, back into the perception of that face behind those eyes.
And then, with insulting charm and in one impossibly elegant motion, she pulled away, releasing her grasp on my arm, twirling back and falling into a light skip… a skip that possessed such a serenity, a grace, that I felt would be in sin for merely attempting to interrupt.
She skipped away, around the corner of the grove, and out of sight entirely; a flower. Even though my mind was screaming for clarity, I could not help but wither in awe.
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These Notes are what I would consider to be the echoes — no, the screams, of my sub-totem.
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WE
We’ll take possession of these Notes for now, if only to add some brief context to the incident having just unfolded.
We dare not try to interpret the contents of Isaiah’s mind immediately following such an occurrence. For who witnesses an explosion and promptly attempts to explain it through the lens of logic and reason? A fool’s errand, we’ll pass.
All that would be important to know, is that I continued to sit there, in the park for another half-hour, thinking about, we can only imagine, something akin to what one might rationalize after being made victim to such an explosion. A hyperbolic metaphor, we admit. But it’s clear what’s being conveyed. An explosion, a rupturing, a shattering, within one’s web of a priori assumption.
that’s dramatic, if we know anything of the future.
Still, our protagonist now felt almost delusional, violently swept up in this flurry of ecstatic (manic) confusion. He was used to questioning himself, but never to this degree, and certainly not while under the type of spell having apparently just been cast by this mysterious girl of the night. All of these feelings, these strange, novel sensations, had only intensified since setting foot out the door earlier that evening.
I was an open-minded person, he had been this way for a long time, and this is ultimately the trait having contributed to and compounded his neurotic condition. After a time, thankfully, one can overcome these iterations in order to narrow the scope of knowable potential, or at least that was Isaiah’s belief… But we might say, in considering the grand schematic view, that tonight was the priming, the lever setting into action, the preliminary axiomatic erosion of that swampy, impenetrable fortress I had accepted in his mind as ‘truth’ for so many years.
But that is all the omniscient liberty we will take for now.
Oh, and one last thing.
This night, I would have contended that he had met this girl’s gaze for what could be described as a sliver of infinity. Still, her eyes were elusive, and I could not, if prompted, recall their color with certainty. So strange, on the one hand he would claim the moment to be burned into his conscious awareness for the rest of time. Yet he can not even say the color…
Though, if he did not know any better, he might have suggested seeing not one, but every color.
NOTES FROM THE BREEZE: PART 1
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Part 2: Chapter 4 – The “I” ->
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