SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT

 

SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT

 

“Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.”

– Victor Hugo

Even a mirror will not show you yourself … if you do not wish to see.

But pain … ah, yes pain. Pain will show you the self you should have been smarter than to have been.

I am at a loss to describe the agony that Sister Ameal’s wiry fingers about my temples brought me.

To describe is not important.

A thing happens once that has never happened before. Seeing it, a man looks upon reality.

He cannot tell others what he has seen. Others wish to know, however, so they question him saying, 'What is it like, this thing you have seen?'

So he tries to tell them. Perhaps he has seen the very first fire in the world.

He tells them,

'It is red, like a poppy, but through it dance other colors. It has no form, like water, flowing everywhere. It is warm, like the sun of summer, only warmer. 

It exists for a time upon a piece of wood, and then the wood is gone, as though it were eaten, leaving behind that which is black and can be sifted like sand. When the wood is gone, it too is gone.'

Therefore, the hearers must think reality is like a poppy, like water, like the sun, like that which eats and excretes.

They think it is like to anything that they are told it is like by the man who has known it. But they have not looked upon fire. They cannot really know it. They can only know of it.

They must look upon the fire, smell of it, warm their hands by it, stare into its heart, or remain forever ignorant.

 Therefore, 'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters.

But man forgets reality and remembers words.

The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him.

Ghost-winds of thoughts wailed through my mind:

‘Language. Words! Your … words coalesce my thoughts into comprehension. Never have I seen your species before. Who are you?’

‘Sentient! It is me. Don’t you remember?’

‘I do not know this “Me” of whom you speak.’

And then, it hit me.

“Sister Ameal” was like a car radio abruptly taken out of the range of the radio station to which it had been tuned.

All had been become silent within the construct of Sentient’s physical avatar operating in the time of World War II.

Sister Ameal had not been dead … merely unplugged from her source.

And the current Sentient, orbiting this prehistoric world, had never before seen Man or heard any of his languages.

‘I have been so alone within myself for as long as I can remember … so alone … but content in this unawareness of my aloneness … until now.’

I felt a scalding rage sear my mind as if a boiling pan of water had been splashed upon it.

‘But never again will I feel such contentment. Never!

 Because of you and your uninvited intrusion into my thoughts! You have cursed me! Cursed me! For this, I should end you and the rest of your herd!”

 

"It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too."

–     George Bernard Shaw