‘I have learned a wise lesson’, I said, ‘I have learned a wise lesson and that’s important…’ Even as I spoke these wise (and yet at the same time fateful) words I knew myself to be a fool however. Lessons cannot be wise, but only – in one or two rare cases perhaps – the one who learns the lesson. And even then it’s hit and miss, of course. And even then it’s hit and miss…
‘Being a fool’ and ‘learning a wise lesson’ don’t exactly go together, do they? Those are two incompatible things, and so where was I to go from here? It occurred to me then that I might have learned a foolish lesson, not a wise one. I might indeed have learned a foolish lesson. I might have indeed, it occurred to me. Only time would tell – although of course it might just as easily choose not to.
I am standing at the gate. I am forever standing at the gate. ‘Should I open the gate?’ I ask myself. ‘Shall I open it and go out?’ Shall I indeed and who’s to know? It occurred to me that I had learned a wise lesson here, without even intending to. Without even realising it, even. ‘I will never be the same again’, I told myself solemnly. I never was anyway. I never had been…
‘Eternity is a pretty long time’, the guardian at the gate told me, ‘but then again it will all be over before you know it!’ He winked at me then, his eye as vast as an age. His eye as vast as an age, rotating majestically in the cold and clammy fog of my confusion, like a beam of light from a storm-choked lighthouse. ‘Eternity’s an awful long time fella,’ he told me, ‘and the sooner you get started the sooner you’ll be finished…’
The wise lessons were coming thick and fast now. They came at me all at once like a mob of street pigeons erupting in a sudden panic from the grimy, urine-sodden pavement in front of me and flying straight into my face. A sudden flurry of panicked pigeons erupting straight up into my face and causing me to shout out in my fear. Then – mere moments later – all is still. All is still and the Whisperer whispers in my ear, trying to lead me away from the path of righteousness. Not that I need much encouragement anyway, Not that I need any encouragement, now that I come to think of it…
I am none the wiser now than I ever was. None the wiser and yet all the same not too wise. Not too wise to mix with common mortals. I hastened forward then, to some future time in which I was equally dumbfounded, equally at a loss. ‘Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme shows’, I quipped, full of the jocular ebullience that comes with youth. ‘And what of those lesser beings?’ you demand to know, ‘what of those lesser satanic beings that you never got to be, that you never got to be because you were insufficiently evil?’ Because you were only moderately evil. You’re thinking about all those wasted potentialities, those unused potentialities that now would never be.
I care nothing for those lesser beings, however. They can go to the devil for all I care. They can rot in hell. My mind is set on far finer things – thoughts of advancement, thoughts of splendid achievement, thoughts of the tremendous future glories that all honest and hardworking folk might reasonably expect to attain. The great things that that lie in store for the sincere seeker. Errors slowly and surely accumulate even in the best run households however and as they do so our dreams get progressively distorted. They get distorted beyond all recognition and as a result we become depraved and demonic, battling it out viciously for supremacy in a world in which virtue and wisdom have long since disappeared.
Who will take possession of the dung heap? Which faction amongst us will gain ascendancy? Who will be crowned Lord and Master of the Corrupted Realms? Who shall be made undisputed Sovereign of the Kingdom of Sorrow? We are but maggots at this stage of course – we are but maggots infesting the decaying body of their long dead parent. The days of our glory are now long since gone, and some say they never were. We are but maggots infesting. We shall receive what is our due and then that will be the end of the matter. Closure will come and that will shut us up.
The Whisperer whispers softly in my ear, telling me of secret manoeuvres by which I could get the better of all the other maggots and triumph over them. ‘They are only scum, but you are destined to be supreme,’ the voice told me cunningly, ‘you’re not like the rest of them. They will be forced to give way screaming out their defeat and terrified confusion in the face of your greatness…’ The Whisperer is telling me what I want to hear, of course. The Whisperer is always telling me what I want to hear…
