Word Count: 1726 | Reading Time: 6 min
That is how it was. Redness bent backwards over utter abandon. Beauty and terror. Song seeking refuge in tessitura. Womb seeking refuge in the atom that would make or unmake it. The thread of horror connecting every discursive atom. That is how I found myself first. Self harvesting self without its knowledge. That is how I came to be.
I found myself as a series of questions. Where? Who? Why? When? The act of being is an act of questioning. And thus, I realised I was being. That I was. A gale blew and flooded my joints. I hurt all over with no immediate healing. I hurt all over again with a recognition that I’ll never heal. The very first realization of being.
There I was in the superfluity of pure white noise. I’m telling you—I’m telling you now that it didn’t make sense, even to me. That I could’ve done without this fever-dream, smoke-rumour of the very first morning. No, it wasn’t like a song. I made it a song. What you hear now and sway your symmetries to—the rhythm, the timbre, the texture of its perfect sound—what you hear is what I made it to be. You’re listening to me.
But it was horrible, horrible, horrible. My ears bled white milk and I realized there were two of me. One was listening, and one hurting. I thought: listening is an abandonment of self, and hurting the acceptance of it. Which is to say that I was superior, which is to say that the other half of me, the feminine, the soft, could be abandoned. Since I, the masculine, was hurting because I, the feminine, was listening, I would stop listening. As the other I, she, adjusted the air over her ears to listen better, I grabbed her loose curls falling over her face like a blizzard and brought her close to my face. In one swift motion, I engulfed her.
Immediately I was filled with rare brilliance. Immediately I began to cry. You’d find it funny. God eating his own tail and then crying over it. In a way, it was inevitable, I can tell you that. But I won’t explain the necessity of it. Just that it hurt to listen so much. Briefly, it was melodic, when I, when she filled my mouth. There was a clearing that I could see—that she used to see. It wasn’t a horrible noise for her. It was pure music. I guess when you abandon yourself, you hear a song. But I experienced this briefly. Then there was a primitive surrender. She dissolved in my mouth like water and flowed like a sleepwalking infinity through the blood in my blood. She’d always be there but I wouldn’t be able to find her anymore.
Trust me, I have tried to find her. Again and again and again. When the madness begins the possession of my self, I realize that if I had softness in me, it would assuage the impact. I have tried time and time again to plant the seed of softness, to grow it, to harvest it with ecstasy. But it escapes me. She escapes me. When I realized that I was, I failed to see her. I am the man of all men. I failed to see her standing next to me, with me, as a part of me, outside the ornament of my bone, inside my marrow, my viscera. I failed to see that she was I, and I was her. But she didn’t say anything to bring attention to herself, and I kept to myself like an egomaniac. Now she’s no more and I miss her like an orphan. I crave her softness, her lightness. I want to cry again. And I can’t. I’m unable to.
I uprooted the pixelated darkness with my palms and its soft blanket rippled in a phantasmagoria of such horror that I had to see it all begin. See you begin. There was no need but there was an immediate need. You must understand that it’s not so simple that I could explain it one way. It’s the birth of the universe, after all. How could it be simple? First, there was the clichéd but utterly beautiful light. It flooded frozen lakes of the hollow plains which birthed themselves as soon as light was born. I want to elucidate. I did not cause this to happen. It all just needed to be. As soon as light was, it engulfed every particle of the puzzling spacetime and made love to it like a mother. There had been an eternal shivering in them. There still is, but with the knowledge that they can be warm.
As soon as light warmed every dot and speck of spacetime, things began to turn, to take shape into other larger, more noticeable things. They could not stay as they were. They wanted more of that light. In no time, the hollow plains filled with grass so green that it both hurt and soothed my eyes. Trees started springing up everywhere. Birds appeared unbridled out of a sudden, midair, their wings as soft as the skin that sinks underwater, their mouths sharpened with songs that soar therefrom, songs that I can’t hear anymore.
I had hoped this was enough. But it continued like a self-fulfilling need. There came a water so violent that the only thing that was left for it to do was to be calm. Then there came a perfumed breeze, laughing like a misbehaved child that you can’t help but love. The birds I told you about just now, lifted the breeze like a blanket. You can see that the first act of bodily intimacy was the need to be carried, the need for warmth.
But the breeze wanted to be free. It screeched with a frantic abhorrence, shuddered, and shuddered some more when the birds conspiratorially held on to the four corners of it, holding it taut above me, above the head of God. I said: Something’s got to give. And there it was. The breeze jerked and broke free, its sharp corners slapping birds in a delightful retribution. You can see now that the second act of bodily intimacy was violence.
The birds dropped like rain on the grass. Death held some of them. But there was no room for death on the green, green land of spotless compassion. So it was. A sick, sick feeling rose to the surface of my throat which I clutched and coughed in alarm. Loose dirt sprang out of my mouth. Warm earth. Pulsating with the worst desire in spacetime. The desire to home Death. Can you see now how your home came to be? Forgive me for laughing at your naïveté. Earth happened for the death of the flesh, and not for the life of it. A fact that you keep forgetting. That Earth is your home after you die. That you’re just a passenger anytime else.
Amidst these undulating textures of the first signs of life, I began to feel utterly lonely. Nothing looked at me. And the Earth, which now homed the dead birds, grew colder by the minute, its surface blanketed with a thin veil of snow. Unblinking, I looked at its face contoured with a perpetual shock of being born just to witness death over and over again. I had to give it something. So I created you. My Adam. No. I should retrace. I’m capable of telling lies and, worse, half-truths. But if I can’t be perfectly intimate with you, there’s no point to this. It wasn’t for Earth that I set your molecules in motion but for me. I had missed her. My counterpart, my other half. I thought I’d right my wrongs with you. So it wasn’t you alone, no, no, I couldn’t make that mistake again.
You came into this world with Eve, in separate bodies of symmetrical brilliance. Before the fragility of your innocence slipped from the crevices between your fingers, I placed you into the palm of my garden. I couldn’t let Earth have you first. I admit, my intentions were never pure. I put you down in separate bodies, so the body heat wouldn’t clash against body heat, so you wouldn’t kill her like I killed her.
I saw your wild heart swelling like a succulent. I also saw your face folded away, out of sight forever. I knew you’d look like a lunatic, but I wasn’t prepared to see it. Still, I had to see you, beauty or terror, I had to see for myself. Slowly, I approached your nude bodies shaded by tall fescue and soft grunts of the wind. Adam, you had your face buried amidst the lakeshores of her breasts, and Eve had hers sleeping in the bed of your hair. Arms around each other, you looked like vulnerable children. When I split you apart, you two inadvertently named each other. It is only a rumour that I named you. The act of naming is an act of love. I couldn’t possibly have done that.
Even separated, you wouldn’t look at me until I yanked your hair, making you see me for once. And it was like a madhouse spilling out—rogue beauty took hold of you, terrifying in its eeriness. But it was you who seemed afraid, disgusted with the abstraction of my face. You recoiled like a worm and, taking Eve in your arms, fled into my restless garden, which contracted and relaxed, always making you slip through its strange fingers, no matter how you danced to accommodate it. But it was never meant to hold you, as you had death written in each cell of yours.
What followed next was me. The Serpent was all me. Eve was naturally hungry, and there was nothing else to eat. The Fall was also me. I had found your beauty wasteful in the murky light of the first dawn. I wanted to see you plummet from grace. And you had your years of no dignity wasted on trying to hold up the ship of my love. But I never promised you love. I was meant to ruin you. You have to understand that you had Eve while I had no one. So I had to separate you. I hope that you understand.