What ever happened to discovery?
Excerpts from a longish story
Moon Lake
I miss the phosphorescent glow we would dash with our scooping hands in the placid lake as we floated past in canoes uncovered from the forest. Our hands cut the water like rudders—cold, pruny fingers dipping into the translucent tops of tiny waves.
And when I combed my fingers through her hair—was that not so much more than Moon Lake's mellow acceptance of my intervention in natural history? There was always more to discover about mystery while gliding atop that moon shining mirror. Laughter was always more than a babbling brook, more than the crass interruption of placid silence of empty, dead, space.
But only those of us who sound our hearts’ depths deepen our faith in a meaningful life.
Three Lights
I remember the last day of history vividly:
The front door to my apartment creaks open and I open my eyes again to hear my wife approach with muffled thumping across our parquet floor.
Today is September 14, 2062 and I am seventy-six years old.
—Sorry to wake. Were you sleeping?
—No, I’m alright. It’s ok.
—See anything new?
—Nothing.
We both sigh.
—It’ll come to you.
I want to tear at the cellophane wrap sensation squeezing my brain. The Vision is always more felt, believed in, and heard than it is seen. But when you see, in the way that you see it, your eyes feel like they’re on fire and your brain feels like it’s being shrunken by the heat of the flame.
—I’m going to call the doctor. I can’t take this.
I slumped into my recliner and called out a number to dial.
Sorry, Diego Garcia, MD is not available at this time. Should I tell him you called?
—Hang up.
My wife, Juliette, is standing over me in judgment, one hand on her hip.
—We grew up together, I remind her.
—I know. Everybody doesn’t react the same way.
—But I told you. It’s not the Vis I’m worried about…
—Please.
—…it’s the fact that I only ever see the same thing. I close my eyes, and I start to talk, and instead of projecting my words like they’re supposed to, the stupid things take me to our old house and it’s that same dream Anna told me about.
—Your sister is ill.
Your sister is…it’s always your sister and it’s never our sister at the very least; or better yet, the world’s sister. Anna is the flame that burns through the freezing fog of the Vis.
—Shh!
I hear ciphers.
I shut the blinds, jamb the door, take her hands in mine and we say it together, from our hearts:
« You will shine when nobody else will shine. »
Footsteps.
« You will be our warmth when it’s cold. »
Panicking she whispers hoarsely,
—They’re close!
I squeeze her hands.
« And you will be the End, eternal fire, that burns and burns… »
The footsteps stop at our door.
Mooncussin’
Moon cussing is the art of misdirection. It catches the unguarded wanderers exploring the shallows, unaware or fearful of the deeper waters they were made to sail.
I stumbled and felt my way aimlessly until someone, or something, charmed me.
We were all like this: charmed like Narcissus, real beauty rarely noticed because we stopped only for the familiar, recognizable at the very moment we knew we’d fallen in love with it.
—Why are you up here?
—Because I’m Faro
—Why, Faro, must you be here if the light shines without your help?
—I follow the light beam through the misty shoreline and onto the water, scanning for something important.
—What are you looking for?
—I don’t remember now, but sometimes it comes to me, and in those moments I write a note to myself here in my journals to keep looking.
—Climb down from there and walk.
The voice told me to follow, and I thought I would—but before I even thought to take a step I was carried.
III. The Old Home
Most of us would lie awake at night, terrified that when we woke up, everyone and everything would be forgotten, our mental lives reduced to Visible fleshiness and primal urges. We saw history prefigured by the abyss in our meaningless lives, and in the face of this some chose to surrender to oblivion, letting the sea rise around them until it overtook them. Others lived like stars bound for black holes where everything beautiful on the earth flamed-out in one beautiful flash of everything and everyone they knew—all of it a brief and arbitrary arrangement of disparate narratives into the mere illusion of a whole. They put on a solemn face and called it stoic courage in the face of the Visible Vision, their most terrifying invention.
I still faintly sense the approach of that False Apocalypse—a bitter exchange of blindness for Visibility. I see fathers and mothers like flickering lantern lights across the water and desperate swimmers who chase them across an infinite gap, who swallow the shallows and are swallowed by the deep. Agonal, violent and lustful convulsions give way to disintegrating chaos.
The Old Home is more than an image to take with you on your journey. This little book will be something like a guide to lead you to the Old Home, by the road that once led me there. You’ll walk the paths hidden beneath; you’ll find bright clearings through the tall grass beaten-down by generations all traveling their pilgrim way to the edge of the deep blue sea to look across it—across to where we are now, shining like a promise.