Touched by a Dark Angel

I see Her sometimes out of the corner of my eye, a flitting dark shadow far away, right there in front of me, going about her work, and I always try to watch the expression on her face. She's sometimes absorbed, serious, curious... sometimes wistful, even compassionate... and sometimes there's a cool, unimaginably alien indifference as She shatters lives and breaks hearts, a remote blankness the ant sees on the oncoming car's wheel... 

We've never spoken, but I could swear She knows what I'm planning, exactly why I'm trying to stay just far away enough so She can't reach for me, but keeping Her close enough to watch, make sure She can't sneak up on me on one dark night, around a blind corner. So far She's mostly amused, not insulted... and why wouldn't She be? She's seen this before. So many billions of times before. The ways and means have varied, but in the end it's all come down to that moment, when the light fades on all the pleading, the tears, the fights, the pain. 
The moment when the light fades away into the silence. 

A baby and a middle-aged man, one a stranger, one the remotest acquaintance, yet...
One is dead, the other is dying, and behind each unknown face I see a familiar one looking out, through that tangle of hair, and is that a wink?

We've all been there, she whispers, done that. Give it your best shot. You're interesting. Maybe I'll give you a little chance. Just to see how far you get. I got the razor to your throat, the bead on your head, but... let's run, anyway. It's fun. 
And who knows?

She's looking directly at me now, like the few times before, and wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, I can feel that glance, sliding in like an abstract icicle shard, a diamond-edged scalpel slicing through hopes, dreams, fears, desires, wants, plans, every resource I've saved and every defense I've built. Straight to the heart it goes, and stops, with the faintest single crystalline-cold tingle of a touch that reverberates through my life, then goes back, a little reminder of how close she can get, and how ephemeral the world and all I held close in it was, to begin with. 
A little reminder of how it can all end. Anytime. 
Anytime She wants. 

That's fine, I whisper back, I know you're there, but let's run anyway. It'll be fun. 

And her razor grin widens as her whipcord body relaxes, and - yet again - that tiniest nod. 
Go.

And we run. 

We run through traffic, through blaring horns, skidding rubber, and hurtling metal; we run through the billion, trillion little killer lives hanging in the air waiting to take root; we hurdle open manholes, dodge fizzing, spitting power lines, skate under crumbling, creaking edifices, and past dark alleys glinting with watching eyes and waiting steel. We run past claws, teeth, stings, and talons, we run through deserts, skate over thin ice, jump dark chasms, through freezing cold, open flame, and a witches' brew of poison, we run through night and dark as thunder growls in the building clouds... 

We parkour through that dazzling, dizzying obstacle course called Life and and I can still see Her, still here in the corner of my eye, effortlessly pacing me in the distance, and She's laughing in delight. 

And She's laughing because, no matter how tired, how damaged, how heartsick, I'm laughing too, and I will keep laughing till all the laughter runs out, into the silence at the end. 
But for now, this is the most awesome thing ever. 

And we run. 

Looking at the other side

Note - this post is likely to depress you

A few days back, a friend of mine posted a (probably by now a much-shared) link to a series of photos a Chinese tourist took in Varanasi, of corpses abandoned in the river and washed up on the shore. His tone was one of (in my opinion, slightly gleeful) horror at what looks like the rejected props from a Walking Dead episode coexisting with daily life, which goes on like it's nothing out of the ordinary. 

Other than the tone taken, I don't really disagree. Yes, these are corpses, the decaying remains of what was once human beings, abandoned and left to rot like refuse in a public river, with nobody to lay them properly to rest, to clean up, to even bat an eyelid. 

Nobody's disturbed because this is daily life. This is how things are. The only people who get disturbed and upset are the people coming from places where their society has the time, the resources, and the inclination to handle corpse disposal properly. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, but in a similar way, we get shocked when we go to a first-world country and find we can drink the water coming directly from the taps, no filter, no UV, no boiling. 

The truth is, there is no regard for human life here. nobody cares when you're alive, why would they care about your corpse? 

Think about poor Varanasi's history. For centuries, the city has lived under the plague-ridden burden of perception that it is somehow spiritually elevated, that a death here is different, more meaningful in some way for the one dying. Freedom from reincarnation? Spiritual upliftment and enlightenment? Privations in this life rewarded in the next? 

It's meant a flood of people with nothing left but death, a flood of people hungry for soul-cleansing, a flood of people trying to understand something of what's happening. The tourist money keeps the economy running briskly, but the concept of a just reward in an afterlife has left little motivation to improve this one. 

There is no enlightenment here, no spiritual reward. It's something we make up, desperately, to somehow justify the appalling conditions we see, the misery, poverty, deprivation. People don't choose to be poor for a spiritual reward, they are poor because they had no choice, and every waking moment they fight it. There is no alternative. 

Be, or die. 

That's why the tourists flock here, too. They cannot imagine a life that is so bad, yet continues to be lived. They're convinced there's some great secret behind it all, something that we know and they don't, something that justifies this horror. Some mysterious philosophy of rebirth, reincarnation cycles, karma, an understanding of the nature of reality that they haven't got yet. Some knowledge that lets us continue to live in this place, walk these streets, where corpses wash up on the banks and lie putrefying in the sun. 

Chill, guys, there's no great secret. Step back and look at the big picture. We live because the alternative is to die. We live here because there are a thousand million little threads that tie us here, because there is nowhere else to go. 

The native will keep the farce going. The yogis and godmen will speak about this great secret in hints and allusions, translated into the guides' commentaries, the documentaries, the book and the stories. 

We live, and we die. There is nothing after, but as long as people believe there is, the money keeps coming, the stories keep perpetuating, the society keeps functioning. 

We make the tools we need to survive, and faith and hope are just some of those tools. 

heaven would be...

...the ability to go back to that one place, that one time, and do it all over again. correct the mistakes, relive the glory. it'll be the best of times and you can wipe out the worst of times. no mistakes. no missed opportunities. 


if you could... would you?

Truth... is a rock.

Sometimes, I get the feeling that I'm very close to understanding something. Something all around us, everywhere, yet maddeningly out of sight, out of reach. Every time I reach out, I can feel it there, yet there's so many things that come in the way, stop me. 

Truth is... not pretty. It's not smooth, polished, sharp, it's not a made thing. It just is. It's old, shattered, rough-edged. Hold it too tight, it hurts you, makes your hands bleed. Throw it out at someone, it knocks them senseless, kills them. Embrace it too hard, and share the same fate. 

Truth can't be held too long if you're not strong enough; it's heavy. Your hands will start shaking, and you will start dropping everything else just to hold on. You'll sweat, tremble. One by one, all the other things in your life - all the dross, the unnecessary things, the extras, will fall away. Still you hold on, and more precious things will fall, too. Friends.Family. Beliefs. Soon the Truth will be all you have left, and now you're tired, and yet still, you hold on. It will kill you. Slowly. Painfully. 

Lies... are not like this. They're smooth, polished, beautifully engineered artifices. They can slide gently, imperceptibly into the narrowest crack, are light as air, look good on you and are easy to carry. They're soft and comforting. They grow, too. Slowly, gently, imperceptibly, they spread out in all directions, gently intermingling with one another until it's impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. They cover everything, saturate everything, except the rock of Truth. 

Lies are soft and fragile. You can easily cut through them, with hardly any effort; keep cutting, cutting, slashing away, until they lie in tatters, yet there are more, all around, seeping back. You can slash through a soft, enveloping jungle with a sword, keep at it, until you fall in exhaustion and the roots and vines gently grow back over your corpse until it's as if you never existed. 

Shape a truth, and it stays forever. Shatter one, and it never heals. 

You can cut through Lies, but only go around Truth. It can't be obliterated, just hidden, enveloped in a soft, swaddling cocoon of Lies. And there it remains, until the time comes for it to emerge again. 

That's why the Truth makes us all so uncomfortable. Humanity is not flawed; we're artifices ourselves, soft flesh and liquid blood, thoughts and feelings, wetware, vaporware. We can't handle something so rigid, so rough, so alien. It hurts us. We seek refuge in the Lie, because it's like us, soft, understanding, comforting, fragile, impermanent. Truth lies all around us, but we ignore it, shield our dazzled eyes from it's brilliance, slip on our Raybans and our chamois-skin gloves, cap the sharp points with rubber pellets and rough surfaces with Teflon, raise it up upon a pedestal and out of the way so we can get on with our lives. Yet pedestals crumble, and there it comes down, shattering it's encumbrances, smashing back into our world and shocking us into a stone's silence. Then our chatter begins again, slowly, hushed, tentatively, gathering courage, until we can hide it away again. 

That is what it is, and this is what we are. We cannot be Truth, even our ancient calcified bones crumble to powder. All we can do is look upon it, try to understand it, what it is, what it says. 

Even a small shard of Truth is a potent weapon, a powerful instrument. It can change your life. Greater truths require greater men to wield them; lesser ones stumble under the weight, flail about blindly, smashing all around them, laying waste the land in their struggle for control until they fall - either crushed beneath their ambition or stumbling up shamefacedly beside, quickly walking away, covering their tracks. 

Look at the world around you, and you will know this is true. This is reality, this is fact. You will know this briefly, not now, not when you read this, but once in your lifetime. Once in your lifetime you will experience that moment of clarity, of blinding light that sweeps away everything else, shows all for what it is, has been and will be. 

The only question that remains unanswered then is - what will you do, reader, when you experience that? Will you walk away filled with that light, that clarity of thought and purpose, your life become that immovable, unbreakable rock, at the cost of all the softness, the style, the artificiality, the Lies? Or will you forget, wake up the next morning with a hangover and a vague, faint sense of loss, vanishing in the first coffee, the first phone call, the first step into the world outside, yet never completely gone, emerging as a bittersweet, nostalgic discomfort on the lonely dawns the rest of your life? 

Nobody can say. Not me, not them, not you. 

We'll just have to wait and see. 

Or remember. 

Playing God

This was a completely random post, inspired by a friend's status update.

Why did God place the Tree of Knowledge in such an easily accessible place? Why does He make it so easy for humanity to face temptation? Why does He, to put it bluntly, screw around with our heads with the whole issue of 'Does God Exist?'
The whole concept of Faith - believing in something greater than ourselves, moral codes, denying our natural instincts - raises some pretty deep questions. Foremost among which is that if He really existed, wouldn't it have been all too easy for him to completely and unequivocally answer all these issues once and for all? Why does He screw around with our heads?

I think there are 2 answers.

• The sociological answer: God does not exist. We created an anthromorphic personification of the needs of society, some rules to make sure society can survive, with guilt and fear as the stick and life beyond death and paradise as the carrot.
  
• The gaming answer: God does exist. He created the universe as a gaming map, laws of nature as game rules, and intelligence as a collective AI. He then created scenarios that unfold according to those rules, just to see what happens.
  Think about it. Ever played Red Alert? Or any RTS war game? Scenarios, rules, behaviors, certain responses to certain stimuli. Get too close to an enemy soldier, and he will shoot at you. Built-in speeds and firepower. Objectives and goals. But the fun comes from the randomness created when large numbers of these rules interact with each other. When you do a tank rush, are you really controlling each unit? No. You've just unleashed them. You can send a spy into an enemy base, but even though you have the power to make him invulnerable, and the enemy deaf, blind, dumb, and weak as kittens, would you do it? It takes all the fun out of the game.
  When a game protagonist plays with cheatcodes, he knows that God exists. God is stopping the bullets, letting him fly, achieving superhuman feats, untouched by fire, falls, teeth and claws. But is the gamer having fun? No. Fun comes with the unexpected. With setbacks. With risk. When you have something to lose, you feel that you have everything to gain. Winning is a rush. When nothing can kill you, you're just a rat wandering through an empty maze.
  

Maybe there were super-civilizations, masters of the Earth and all creation, intelligent, aware, kind, caring, responsible, in harmony with nature and with each other. Enlightened, perfect, and utterly, butterly boring. What more is left to achieve? A perfect civilization will never go beyond it's city, it's kingdom, it's planet at the most. Even planet is unlikely; they will be smart enough to control birthrate, eradicate threats, handle all contingencies. A civilization under constant threat of destruction fights, struggles, spreads, creates backup plans, fallbacks, contingency bases. DNA spreads. Launches generation starships, sets up lunar bases and buried bunkers with hibernating colonists. Reaches for the stars because the planet is on the edge, reaches across galaxies in the face of all-destroying interstellar war, slips into parallel dimensions when the fabric of this reality is likely to be torn.
Perfection is stable. Imperfection, combined with intelligence, explodes like a bomb across creation.
Sweden, with social security, order, sufficiency, and all amenities and comforts has a negative birthrate, because people have all they need. India, with it's near-billion starving and barely able to feed itself, has a population explosion.
A perfect, harmonious civilization, at it's pinnacle with no possibility of a fall, looks like a giant bulls-eye from space, with cosmic arrows all around pointing to it marked Asteroid Strike Here.
Innate imperfection. A flawed human being is unhappy, greedy, fearful... and drives ambition. Knows that life is unstable. Knows he is surrounded by other flawed creatures, by frightening randomness and intransigence. Knows he must amass resources far greater than his immediate need to prepare for this randomness. Establish his escape routes.

And for a gaming God, this is entertainment. Not perfection. Not stability. With an entire universe to explore, why would he tolerate a game protagonist who does not go beyond his own self? Wouldn't it be so much more fun to watch how the randomness manifests in extraordinary leaps of intellect, art, beauty, strength, achievement, skill, discovery... beyond even what He may have originally conceived?
When we do leave the planet, we will meet Others. They will be like us. They will be flawed. Galaxies will sparkle with a million wars, extinctions and escapes, dominions and insurrections, and everything else that is this infinitely varied, kaleidoscopic, random, churning, intoxication explosion called Life.

After all, anything else is so boring, isn't it?