I am the Macroanthropus

peter-lucier-mountain-giant2

I am the Macroanthropus. I am the man who is everything. I am he whose nose is a proud mountain peak and whose eyebrows are the rugged cliff tops. I am he whose follicles are the great pine forests that spread as far as the eye can see. The howling North wind is my breath, the small brown furry creatures that scurry here and there are my thoughts.

 

They scurry so fast, these small brown furry creatures. So very fast. Theirs is the art of scurrying. Theirs is the art of darting quickly from rock to rock across the craggy mountainside. Theirs is the art of flitting here and there under the cover of the sparse mountain vegetation. Flitting so very fast that you’d hardly know if you had really seen them or not. Perhaps your imagination is playing tricks on you, your senses deceiving you. Who can say? I for one cannot say…

 

It seems fitting that these small brown fast-scurrying creatures are my thoughts. I can quite easily imagine that this is the case. It seems probable that it is. If they aren’t my thoughts then what are? Answer me that. I see nothing else that could be. It seems fitting that this is how my mental processes work themselves out. It seems fitting to me that my mental computations should be carried out via the endlessly intricate and barely perceptible interweaving paths of the small brown furry fast-moving creatures. The question comes to me: “I wonder what it is that I’m thinking about?” This question presents itself with mysterious complexity, like an impenetrable bank of fog sweeping down the mountainside. It engulfs me with its icy embrace, cutting off all my perceptions, leaving me suddenly and unexpectedly blind.

 

Then I realize, this is what I’m thinking. These are my thoughts, this is what I am thinking about. I am thinking these very words, these very thoughts that I am now coming out with. I am trying to catch up with my own thoughts and yet it is my own thoughts that are trying to do the catching up. I am trying to catch my thoughts with a net made of these same thoughts and this – I suddenly realize – is a grave computational error. It is an error that I never should have allowed to happen. It’s the eater paradox – it’s the bringer of pain. It’s the eater that eats itself.

 

The icy chill of the fog was settling into my bones. The terrible chill of the fog. I started shivering uncontrollably – shaking so much I felt that I was going to shake myself to pieces. I was shaking myself to pieces! I was breaking up. I slowly came to realize  – after an unfathomably long time had passed – that I wasn’t the Macroanthropus at all. I had been mistaken. That had been my error. That had been some type of delusion that I had fallen into. Some kind of strange dream or hallucination. The truth was that I am not an immortal at all – I am actually old and tired. I  am like a worm or insect that crawls pointless upon the surface of the earth for the briefest of times and then dies inconsequentially.

 

 

 

Art: Mountain Giant by Peter Lucier on artstation.com

 

 

 

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