Entanglement, Part 2
After morning tea I strolled down to the lagoon. As always, a pang within me knew, even as it tried not to know, that I did this every morning—tried not to see the groove I had worn in the path. I strained to focus and really appreciate the beauty of this place—not an easy task since it was never anything but beautiful, in this same particular way. The air fresh, fragrant, exactly balanced between warm and cool. The colors vivid, the landscape sublime, the people, such as there were, pleasant—encounters with them mild, without challenge.
The challenge—I could sense it—was within.
A whisper.
Outwardly, there was no challenge here. No chance or error. No decay. No pain. No time. These things were absent: that was what the whisper knew.
I sat on my rock at the edge of the water, trying to steer the exquisite scene before me into the lobe that knew it as beautiful, succeeding only in pulses, distracted by the specter of another kind of feeling that came from time to time, as fleeting as déjà vu, and with the same heartache of recognition, when I glimpsed—or remembered?—a different beauty in a different world—a world where things change—they die and decay and nourish new life in an endless cycle that includes everything in that world, and even that world itself.
A world that knows its beauty through pain.
For all my efforts to hide from it, the other part of me.
* * *
The birds were singing outside, but the man dressed plainly in black had no use for singing birds, and couldn’t hear them anyway. The thick walls kept the outside out. He hadn’t lacked for work during the long wait, and was compensated and respected for his craft, but it was the anticipation of returning to this interrupted session that kept the edge of his lust sharp.
He checked on the subject first thing every morning—checked his vital signs, peeled back his eyelids to see his eyes rolled back in his head. He understood this state well, and was prepared to wait as long as it took, and this above all distinguished him: his patience. He could wait forever. But of course knew he wouldn’t have to.
His reward would come, and nothing could prevent him from enjoying it.
On these morning visits he wouldn’t tarry long—only check the numbers then the straps that bound the man to the chair, pausing to touch his gleaming instruments—the ones that cut, the ones that squeezed, the ones that made blue flame or electric shock—and shudder, savoring the delicious taste of that coming morning—coming as sure as the sun rises—when the pulse would be strong, the core body temperature restored, and the peeling back of his eyelids would reveal those very awake and terrified eyes.
It was too exquisite—the sharper and more delicious for the delay.
He didn’t think at all of where the man was. He had no more interest in such dubious places than in singing birds. Or the wasted breath of hope. Or the things that people out of his grasp enjoyed, or congratulated themselves for, or gloried in. They meant nothing. As for the man whose return he awaited, whose debt was not yet paid, his distance from his own self, though measured in light years, universes, was in fact no distance at all.
What looked like two, was one.
“Don’t forget me,” he said, then with a slight bow added, “Until tomorrow.”
And with infinite patience extinguished the light and left the room.
October 21, 2022