‘Bring on amazing’, yaps the promotional literature, ‘bring on amazing because amazing is good’. Amazing is always good – that’s what’s so amazing about it, of course. So – yes – bring on amazing! By all means, bring it on… Roll out amazing because amazing is so great. Bang the drums and blow the trumpets. Shout out loud for the sheer boisterous joy of it. The promotional literature is never wrong, after all.
I am a state-registered precog. I have the gift of precognition – I know what I’m going to think before I think it, in other words! I see it all before it happens and there’s sod all I can do about it. I just have to watch it unfold. This is my gift, you see, but it is also my curse. Mainly it’s my curse – to a very large extent it’s my curse. Pretty much I have to say that it’s my curse. No one knows the tedium of what it is like to be me, I reflect. No one could imagine how hard each day is for me. No one knows just how absolutely dire my existence is. Or perhaps they know alright but perhaps they’re keeping quiet about it. Perhaps it is their choice not to say anything – that could be true too. Anything could be true really. Anything at all. Or nothing. Maybe nothing’s true and reality’s a lie. Or maybe that’s a lie too, like everything else…
It’s a case of chalk and cheese really isn’t it – both so different and yet at the same time not the same. The same, but also different. But nevertheless the same. Only not really. As I sit here in my secret laboratory I can discern numerous murky shapes writhing in the thick white smoke that fills the alchemical flask in front of me. The smoky shapes of strange mythological beasts fight with each other, tearing at each other, each struggling for mastery. Losing body parts and then regaining them again. Getting ahead and then getting behind again. Winning and then promptly losing again – engaging in the Eternal Struggle. Engaging in the Eternal Struggle because that’s what we all have to do. There’s no escape from that, is there? There’s no help for it.
To stare for too long into the smoke inside the alchemical vessel is to risk a major psychological disturbance, and yet I have to know. I have to know what the portents are telling me. ‘What are the portents telling me?’ I ask myself out loud. with the utmost solemnity, but no answer comes. That’s the usual way with portents, of course. Rarely are they of any actual use. Certainly they are rarely what they’re cracked up to be.
Things were different this time, however. The portents were now speaking to me loud and clear. Indeed they were, indeed they were. To be sure they were. ‘Speak to me O portents’, I expostulate in a quavering, tremulous voice, and to my great surprise the portents do. One of the murky mythological creatures pauses briefly in its life-and-death struggle with a serpent made of swirling dark fire and winks cheerily at me. ‘Don’t worry good buddy’, it informs me in a kindly tone. ‘Everything is going to work out just fine, you’ll see…’ It winks at me again after uttering these words of reassurance and promptly resumes fighting with its neighbour. As I stare on in a state of horrified fascination, the two figures commence to rend and tear at each other in a furious burst of energy.
Needless to say, I find myself being far from convinced by the optimism that had been so freely expressed by the magical creature that I had inadvertently conjured up. It struck me as being almost flippant or supercilious in its attitude. It almost felt as if it were mocking me, as if it were poking fun at me for being such an inept and useless practitioner. One way or another it has put me out of sorts, let’s just say that. A jarring note of dissonance has appeared and I have the distinct and highly uncomfortable feeling that things aren’t going to plan…
When I look closer still into the milky contents of the flask in front of me I can see that I am there in it too, fighting for my life amongst various miniature heraldic figures – sphinxes and gryphons and salamanders and centaurs and what have you. I am fighting for my life but failing. As I look yet closer again into the miniature world that is set out in front of me I can see to my dismay that I am not so much ‘fighting’ as trying desperately to escape from the monsters that are attacking me. Trying my very best to escape, but not succeeding. Being beset on all sides. Being torn into shreds of smoke in front of my very eyes. I need hardly point out that I find this vision most disturbing. ‘What am I to do?’ I ask myself dolefully, ‘What can I do to help myself?’
The truth is being revealed to me as I watch and the truth that is being revealed is that I myself am there inside the alchemical vessel, struggling for my life, being torn to shreds by elemental monsters that are made entirely of smoke. The horrific truth is that I am being continually devoured by implacable magical forces that I myself have brought into being. I am the serpent that devours itself, I realize. I am Adech. I am The Protokaryon – the first who is also last. I am the Slayer of Enemies. I am he who is both Everything and Nothing. I am the Self-Eater, the Tormented One, the Mutilated Anthroparian…
Image credit – Urban Street Art Animals, Kante Meister, pinterest.com
