For ages, I ran from evil. Eyes averted, cheek turned, buttocks and fists clenched tight. And when it stopped chasing me, I started chasing it, hunting down its disguises, daring to dethrone its devilish dominion.
But this morning, slithering through a cut of human pain, she came, and what had been outside was suddenly within. Yes, we said that we are one, so I disarmed the arsenal of the separate self, and now, here is evil, inside-out.
Ah, the rage at the despicable, stupid crowd, and a suicidal cyclone within, that stains outer contempt with shame. Chaos and murder, she screams. Spit in the furnace of senseless lies, where everyone, anyway dies. Dictate, sedate, cremate, and whatever you do – in this most unholy hour – don’t hesitate to hate.
Yet, just as the blood cursing through these veins darkens, so does this soul seem greater and graver even than death.
“What is it you want, dear demon?” asks the soul, wordlessly.
“I want this, and this, and this and all that you are. I want your life, your love, your success. I want to be you, own you, rule you, consume you. I have to be you, and so I must destroy you, but if I destroy you, how long can I be you? Impossible, ravenous twist of fate.
I long, long, long to belong. Oh, how I long to belong. We’re thrusting out of earth toward heaven. Hurry now, god-speed, don’t tarry in human soil. Get out of here. Oh, how I hate, hate, hate you.”
Dear Demon, says the soul, dare to have it all. Take these eyes and see; take these ears and hear; take these hands and feel the miracle of touch.
Will you use this tongue to taste the mystery in the wind? Won’t you take this epithelium harp and sample the subtle incantations of the night?
See little demon, see: the vastness of the ocean echoing distant thunderous clouds with undulating new-born depths of navy gray.
Hear that bird on a pole, master of infinite blue, singing with the majesty of the all-becoming, heedless to audience or judge.
Feel the speed of the wind as it brushes us with foretelling warmth.
Watch houses and homes where inmates nestle in silent comfort.
Hold this small stone and feel the crushing ache of eternity in your grasp.
How is it now, dear Demon, how is it now?
She speaks now with thinner sounds:
“There’s no place for me.
See! Each thing is home to itself. The ocean rests in the ocean, the bird in the bird, the home in the home, the night in the night. But for me, I have no such place.
Forever excluded from the family of things, I have no rest.
If I am an ocean, then I must be the sky, and if I am sky then I must be a bird. If I am home, then I must be the freedom of the wind. No place for me, no place to hide.”
“So, stay, dear demon,” says the soul. “Endeavour here to rest a while as a simple, human paradox, unwittingly alive and shameless as the sun. And later, we’ll breach the horizon to a finer kind of time where distinction dissolves and unearthly cravings born of deficiency may melt into the trumpeting of celestial exultation.”
