©2004
CTM,Sr.
BORN
AGAIN
His greatest contribution to life
was
bestowing death. A
renowned writer
in his own time about
to meet that which he had so zealously created,
and even
before drawing
it he
knew it was his last breath.
He tried to move, to pound the
casket
walls, but
his
body would not respond.
Mystically, he was raised, becoming the
center of a vast
emptiness illuminated
by an aura
he
had
never
before experienced. And
although he was dead,
he was not
blind, still he could
not see
so vast
was the emptiness.
Mysteriously the void lifted
revealing a
figure so immense
that its presence filled the expanses. A resplendent ring
-
a halo, adorned its head.
A flowing
gown, purity beyond virgin white, draped
the figure, giving it dimension. The figure’s hair
was
long,
soft, and black -
black as
ink. Though
it
was not
mortal,
the
face was that of a
human.
Still a
face
unlike any
other, a face
the writer realized,
that could only be
written. Eyes – dark,
piercing, casting an
ambience he never
knew existed,
radiating an emotion he had never before experienced.
From
beyond the giant figure a magnificent portal appeared, ever
expanding the theory
of
infinity.
Colossal golden doors
were inlaid with gems and precious
stones forming the
tools
of the writer’s
craft.
Sapphire
and
ruby studded pencils, diamond points
poised
to postulate.
Platinum encased
typewriters, keys
and
characters each a
different jewel,
waited atop ivory
desks laden
with
bronze
parchment, anticipating an author.
Interspersed among the glittering weapons
of creation were
tributes,
monuments awarded
those scribes before him who had
captured
the greatest number
of
practitioners.
Each coveted award cast
in
Britannia
metal; thousands of proclamations dispensed again
and again
and again,
powered by pulsating vanity.
Atop the grand entryway a crystalline marquee
displayed the deceased’s life endeavors; his
best
sellers,
and
even more. Every plot he had
ever conceived, every tale
concocted,
many nothing more than fleeting intrigues. Yet, there
before
him on the enormous
screen, was every
word he
had ever written.
As his handiwork poured forth,
reality
was violated
time and
again. As
recognizable
plots stalked past,
an unabated fear
invaded
his
awareness. There was no time
for
explanation, only
déjà vu -
indicting his
efforts.
His
fear
turned to
despair.
Mercifully the marquee went empty,
its
brilliance
extinguished, and although
he
was
the voice, the
great giant figure
spoke,
“What did you read?”
“My work,” the dead
responded
incredulously at the sound
of his voice.
“How do you plead?”
“Plead? I don’t understand.”
“Those
are
your words are they not?”
“Yes,”
the dead
agreed,
“I am a
writer.”
“Writer?”
questioned the voice. “Behold!” the great giant
figure gestured with a menacing
motion
and
the colossal
doors opened
exposing a raging inferno. Flames
billowed high
above the
entrance
until the heat
became intolerable even from
a distance.
The scorching atmosphere melted the radiant portal,
its
treasures dripping, now running forming tributaries until the gateway joined
again formning the river Styx.
The great figure motioned to a writer seated at a desk
below them,
“Writers!”
The scene below
came into
focus exposing a sight that was all too
familiar: seated at
the desk, a
writer, head
supported by his
arm, fingers
pulling
and
tearing at his
scalp as
his pencil raced
across paper attempting to keep pace with his
schemes.
Alternating expressions of torment and
ecstasy twisted the authors face as he
fanaticized
about a new
reality.
But just like
that, the
paper vanished,
as an
unexplained force ripped him
from the
desk
plunging him downward
into a mass of
entangled, struggling writers. A mass
of humanity. An earthly
chain, one
million purveyors’ long, eons deep. From every cavity in
every
body
jutted
quills. Each quill digging
letters into
festered flesh attempting to write,
drawing
rivulets of blood
that washed
away scabs
providing for new words.
As words were identified, enactment occurred. The results of their meanings
gave more iniquitous interpretation
for yet
another, which held
meaning
for another,
continuous, the resulting cataclysms never ending.
From the center of the tumbling masses rose nuclear
clouds. Not one, not hundreds, but
thousands. Each explosion, every consequence depicted;
multitudes were
vaporized only to
reappear
with fresh quills
protruding carving
worn words into
old
flesh. The
clouds
of holocaust lifted
high and joined, covering the expanses
with a stygian hue.
The figure gestured
to the occupant now
at the desk.
“Who is she?” asked the dead scribe.
“Mankind,” answered the figure and in a tone baked in
irony finished, “creating reality.”
They passed through the maelstrom now made impotent by cold flames until
they reached the edge of an even larger pit holding slithering, naked
bodies; many toasting from rusting
goblets,
others copulating, still others regurgitating streams
of vile, while still others washed the bile from feces-encrusted bodies with
swollen tongues. All armed with paper and pencil, all attempting to write,
only to be molested by their own words.
Horrified, the wordsmith relinquished, “I’m in Hell”
he surrendered.
“No,” corrected the great figure, “Writer’s
Demise”----and a mammoth abyss appeared filled with incalculable numbers of
cryptographers, pencils protruding from hands where fingers should have
been, conceiving gospels at an unprecedented rate and at an even greater
rate their epistles were consumed by scrutiny so intense that not even ashes
remained. No one spoke; yet, prophecies reverberated colliding with eulogies
from the far expanses. No impious thought was discerned in an atmosphere of
expressionless incantations.
“Writers!” roared the great giant figure,” searching
for the Truth in the hollow of their dogmas.”
Suddenly the scribe began whirling toward the masses
below,
“Your time has come” sentenced the giant figure as the condemned disappeared
into the first pit and the great figure wrapped the universe in an embrace
heralding, “Go, and write the Truth and be free!”
And as its echo faded a pealing bell began
to
mark time. Bong,
Bong, bong.
Above
all
else, beyond penalties
assessed for
the calamities created
through his words, far
more than quills
digging
abhorrent messages
into his flesh; surpassing even his endless
pursuit of
themes offering salvation, more maddening than
his pathetic
existence, was the incessant tolling
of the bell, Bong, bong,
bong.
With each
toll he was
exchanged
through
the human
chain
becoming fresh
parchment
savagely
shredded
by the
multitudes
in
search
of their own
deliverance. Bong...
again, he
became
a new
link
in the same chain,
Bong...now wielding
quills, scratching, clawing, searching,
Bong... now molested, Bong. .
. on into the ages, Bong, bong, bong...
And then
a magnanimous interruption occurred. The bell no longer
toiled and
the content of
the silence was the ambience from before.
He was seated
at the center
of the vast universe
engulfed in an
overwhelming tranquility. Now time was
his to do as he
would, and
as he came together
hope sprang
eternal. Gazing
upon his
body he saw
millions, maybe billions, of letters and
symbols
gouged into his being to the depths that words were
his very existence.
The more he saw, the
more incongruous was the thesaurus
he had become.
Time was unheeded
as he
searched long and hard for clues held within
his being.
Eventually he was reduced
to
searching
larger letters for
smaller words concealing
messages. But none
of it made sense, for every
story had
already
been
told.
Through
exhaustion he closed his
eyes
and
bleak visions
invaded the darkness
of his mind as words
pantomimed autopsies exposing unimaginable
alliances
within traditions producing even greater misery
conflicting even harsher
concessions. New
traditions made
more vulgar with
each
rotation of time.
And he saw what he had to write.
Opening
his eyes he took pencil in
hand and in
an attempt to transform
the hopeless
he began his outline.
In every available
space, between letters, words, above and
below sentences, in
every margin,
he wrote. But
each word, demoralized
by
conflicting faiths, became
lost in rhetoric,
arid time
now
heeded,
his every attempt to pen the
Truth became the pealing bell.
Every
word was frustrated and
lost in the
black
hole of denial. His
fear increased exponentially
as his
words became indistinguishable from all the
others.
Words creating new
meanings to
philosophies
produced more
mysterious
kinships, filling
even more the barren
spaces now
diminished to near
solid lead.
With every word now
frustrated,
he
wrote
faster
drawing him ever father away from
his
hypotheses. Despair displaced his anguish
when his torment was resolved by the commanding voice
of the
great giant figure,
“Write the
Truth.”
He was purged from
the
desk and cast
into the
centrifuge
of
the second
pit as the pealing bell announced his recidivism,
Bong...bong…bong...
Engulfed in words of pain and suffering, sentences
of greed and
hate, paragraphs of despair, destruction and
death, he spiraled downward into
depression
until at the last
moment before capitulation, the
toll
jettisoned him
to the pinnacle of
the despotic athenaeum
where he could begin
anew, Bong... Write that is, until
his effort became
no
more
than synonyms
for
all
past illusions,
Bong... nothing more than
desensitizing synods
rationalizing immortality, justifying
terror, Bong... It
was
when his epic
approached conformity spinning him deeper
and deeper
into the depths of delusion the bell tolled terminating all previous
theorems, rescuing him to write the Truth, Bong... relentless, Bong...endless,
Bong,
bong, bong...
Down through
the eons he
came
to understand that
words of conformity drew him closer to the realization that thoughts were
exempt from
prosecution. Only
the written word
convicted
the
author sentencing him back
into the centrifuge seeking
repentance.
As an apprentice
studying to become a
journeyman,
it came to pass
that
he honed his
craft
to the degree that
his secret
thoughts, long
rejected
and never
written
was
all
that was
left him,
Bong, bong, bong…
He wrote of
humanity and
his time at the pinnacle increased. He wrote of harmony
and
the pealing bell
decreased.
Thoughts no longer
resigned
took
breath and
with
hurricane
force breached the
wails of babble and in that
moment the
centrifuge stilled and his
spirit was lifted to
the center of the universe
once
again.
He closed his
eyes in solemn genuflection
for
the
ambience was greater than
before.
The bell no longer
tolled,
leaving him to search the
inner sanctum
of his mind and
he
took
up a pencil.
Wandering the
shelves selecting
words
of compassion
and
tolerance, sentences
came
so rapidly that the
mounting pages of his manuscript emasculated
the message
until his work became
indefensible,
diluting his argument until it became
unintelligible.
Still he wrote. The Truth
but
a syllable away, the
nub of the last
pencil wore to
nothing, and
he was ripped from
his position and
repelled below, “The
Truth,” calmed the giant figure
as the writer
disappeared
into the
third
pit and the
toll
took up again, Bong,
bong, bong...
Immersed in a
sea
of imminent
creators, pencils protruding from hands
where fingers should
have been, wrote oracles
that were baptized
in the font of
deceit.
So feverishly did
they prophesize that the lead
from their pencils blackened the atmosphere with
toxic
‘1
beliefs in
malevolent gods. A pall
so
dense
that only the razor
like slashes
of broken
promises and shattered dreams
lit the chaos.
Mesmerizing reverberations of expressionless incarnations propagandized the
veil, filling eternity
with the strains of lies,
Bong, bong, bong...
Then through
time thoughts
thought through thoroughly tempering the
tormenting tale
tempting the toll, he wrote. With eight pencils as one he wrote words
of
harmony and humanity,
honor
and
happiness. He wrote
of hope
and
homage
and
his words took chord
reverberating throughout
replacing the
incantations with anthems
of
accord and
the
light made
brighter from bolts of imploding antiquities
penetrated
the doom revealing
the Truth.
In that moment
he
was
taken up in the
arms
of
the great giant figure
and presented to the
universe, “Go!” commanded
the archangel
releasing
the author from
all
bonds, “and
write
the truth.”
And the earth stood still
for just a time as
the Truth descended
upon mankind.
“Oh!” squealed
the
radiant
mother as the
umbilical
cord was severed and
the newborn placed at her breast, “Look” she delighted as the
infant suckled, drumming
mother’s
chest with
eight
tiny
fingers, “our baby is going to be a writer.”
Drawing
the child ever
closer to her bosom
the echo of her joy
infiltrated
the
masses
for nothing is more powerful
than a writer whose time has come.
PEACE…PEACE…PEACE....
-END-
