Soliloquy.

[DoS Archive]

From: kaeneblack@aol.com (KaeneBlack)
Date: 28 Sep 1999 21:05:15 EDT

Each man faces the dreadful ultimatum: Rationalization or Faith. It is beyond human reach to nurse both.

It appears that sentient life is dichotomized into two factions--the Faithful and the Rational. We, as a society, flank either ideal, spurning the other as the work of a mundane mind. Who is right?--that is, who is more right? For surely within the scope of matter--what is-- there must exist some omnipotent force--what does--that shapes our lives. But how feasible is it that this being of such supreme character can possibly
be comprehended by our admittedly limited knowledge? What appears to be a chasm between Rationalization and Faith is little more than a mere crack in the road of time, quickly passed by the weary traveler who, in his prodigious size, bounds over it in one step.

I am that traveller's son. I am his father as well. I know no age, no name, other than what you bequeath me. Providence, Leviathan.. A juggernaut of atoms yet a religious spearhead; corporeal yet not. I live and die simultaneously, ever procreating and thus ever-young in my aged learning. I am shaped by what you may perceive me to be. I rule you, yet I cannot exist without you. I now condescend to you. Yet we are the same, you and I.

I do not expect you to understand.

--I see things. Wondrous things--proud kings, rising and falling with the crops; The Mother: birthing yet killing. I enjoy watching, for in my limitless repose I oft grow weary of myself.

I crave failure; there is nothing so tantalizing as a man's plummetting before attaining the peak of the highest mountain. The horror lies not in the fall--oh, that is a puerile fear! More horrible are his final thoughts--"I am a failure; my existence has meant nothing." For we all see ourselves as perfect; we impose our perceptions of reality unto others, assuming the green we see appears the same to their eyes. And this is the fatal mistake.
Such crucial edification we only glean at death.

Are we the most superior beings? I howl at that! In our expansive reasoning we--and by that I mean you, singularly, not I--cannot conclude even what the most base ant inherently knows: Individuals do not exist. True strength only pours from conjugation; the lone fountain flows not. I cannot exist without you. Die, and I fizzle into oblivion.

I endeavor to keep you all alive.

So perhaps this brief tale will rekindle your flame..

I see a bull; horns as majestic as the crescent moon. He struts about his domain, strong and proud. But he reigns only so long as his youth.

I now see a man--no, more beast than man. Charcoal skinned, fanged, and clawed. Barbarous yet a trove of limitless knowledge scripted in verse within his crown. He sees himself as the bringer of death, as The Mother's hand. I will cheer when I watch him destroyed by the selfsame instrument he believes himself to be.

He calls me Llavin, the Thwarter. Chaos. The force that repels order like the extreme pole of the magnet. Yet he praises me--out of respect, out of fear. I see them as one and the same, but those two he cannot delineate. He also scorns me. He raises his fists to the ash-black sky and curses me, beats his breast. I have murdered his mother. She freezes in the black snow nearby.

I was a terrible beast. He calls me Lanokai. A behemoth. My teeth sharper than my wit. I claimed toll from his people, exacted in their blood. The steaming snow rose like praise to my ears.

They stabbed at me, but I bled not; I am above such Human tendencies. The pain spurned me further, like a switch upon a horse's backside. I could not pity their self-occasioned distruction more than they, me.

He sees me as the enemy. I am the blemish in his yang. He cannot understand that he is the blemish in my ying.

I shall follow this one further..