The Seventh Seal

I saw a really old foreign film the other day. In it, a knight on his way home from the Crusades strolls into a church confessional and spits some of the hardest lines in cinema. The subtitles read:

"The emptiness is a mirror in which I see my own face. And it fills me with loathing and horror. My indifference to my fellow men has cut me off. I live now in a world of phantoms. A prisoner of my own dreams.

I want to know.

Is it so hard to grasp God with one's own senses? Why must he hide in a mist of vague promises and unseen miracles? How are we to believe the believers when we don't believe ourselves? What will become of us who want to believe but cannot? And what of those who neither will nor can believe? Why can I not kill God within me? Why does he go on living in this painful, humiliating way? I want to tear him out of my heart, but he remains a mocking reality that I cannot shake off.

I want knowledge. Not faith or conjecture, but knowledge. I want God to reach out his hand, show his face, speak to me.

I cry to him in the dark, but no one seems to be there.

Then life is senseless terror. No man can live with death knowing that everything is nothingness.

One day, they will stand on the far edge of life, peering into the darkness.

My life has been nothing but a futile wandering. A great deal of words without meaning. I say that without bitterness or self-reproach because I know it is the same for most men. But I want to use my reprieve for one meaningful deed.

This is my hand. I can move it. Blood pulses through my veins. The sun is high in the sky and I, Antonius Block, am playing chess with Death."

Ingmar Bergman wrote these lines, I think. I am afraid to say them out loud.

The Machine Age

Through cool weather one day I rode with the Orange Ninja into corners that we know fairly well. It was the day after we made slight adjustments to my bike’s suspension, so I was intending the bike perhaps more than usual on the ride. Did the bike just turn faster than before? Should I make another adjustment? Perhaps on a race track I would have an easier time noticing the difference. Still, the machine moved well and there were turns to enjoy.

On a long, straight and boring road headed northward a dog crept up from a ditch where it was previously hidden and strolled directly into my path. Two fingers leapt from the throttle to the brake lever and pulled it back. Fluid traveled from the master cylinder through hoses that don’t flex to the brake calipers. I heard the shush-like scrape of sintered pads on the front rotors as the springs in the front forks compressed a few centimeters. The muscles in my arms came alive and I was properly upon the dog when it finally noticed us and ran to safety. It had a collar.

I avoided an accident through decision, physical action and the response of a network of engineered parts. That is pretty much how things are done these days and for the most part the arrangement works well. So well, in fact, that it contributes to self-deception.

A neighbor of mine came into contact with a canine while riding and died at the scene. He rocked gear, rode sober and didn’t have a particularly fast or unwieldy motorcycle. He also had more years riding experience than I have years. I mourned the loss and resolved to continue the development of my skills. I had to be better. I had to get this shit down to a science, ride like a well-oiled machine or some other modern improvement metaphor. Yeah. A look at my scarred hand reveals that such a style was not to be done.

On a teched out planet, one that the founders of the World’s Fair could not have imagined, our patterns of expectation have made an illogical jump. News wires are rife with breakthroughs of some kind. A gene is isolated. A better fuel cell is created. A new method for whatever the fuck is devised. Slowly the narratives have simmered, until at last we have come to expect that the answer to all problems will come, that it will take only effort and focus.

Kenneth Kaunda called it the Machine Age Heresy. He said that people are quick to apply the patterns of advancement in technology to politics, to the social sphere, and that this is a mistake of the highest order. It causes us to desire and expect that which simply cannot happen. Sometimes there is no X factor waiting to be discovered that will dissolve our personal and social problems. Sometimes there is no team of professionals who will uncover a secret hidden in nature. Sometimes the only thing that can bring an end to our troubles is time. And this, only because death is the point to which everything tapers.

Similarly, there will never be a time where I can become as reliable and precise in my thought and action as my bike is in its function. Nor can I get the world to behave with the regulated harmony of a tuning fork. I may rock safety gear. I may increase my skills every time I ride but I will always, ultimately, be naked before the road. On the bike as it is in life, at the mercy of the forces in the periphery and the fore. Hope I can pull the brake lever in time.

The Garden

The sound of a bamboo thicket is far from the mere rustling of leaves in a winded meadow. Even in a slight breeze, one is subjected to a symphony of creaks and artifacts that that refuse placement. It is as though something is lost in those shoots, maybe something that should stay lost.

I am only near the bamboo for a moment on the path. Soon enough, I encounter kangaroo fern, or a fringe tree, or just an open field in which no children are at play. I also encounter people, mostly white and old. I think, If I am here at my current age, what will I do if I grow as old as them? Will a manicured garden near a singing tower continue to charm the elderly me? In the future, what will there be to look forward to? Amidst the greenery is the occasional statuette of a monk. Probably a saint, someone who watches over and keeps peace. Across the clearing, a sleepy child clings to its mother. I could use a nap as well, but there are miles between me and a place of rest.

The tower is an aberration in this region, where even the orange groves seem less elegant than the local strip malls. The structure is a few stories high, stone and crafted glass. somewhere within, the bells play. I heard them in the distance when I was on the approach. Chimed renderings of songs sung by cowboys long ago and anthems for patriots. But the song had died by the time I got near. The crowd had crept away and the sky grew a shade darker beneath a thick cloud.

As I look at a swan wading in the moat before the tower, a damning phrase subtitles my scene. I get it. This is the eulogy for all experiences that should have been lived through. The disillusioned utterance of an intellect that believes the idea to be more sufficient than orchids, azaleas, roses. I know I have done a wrong thing, but it is too late.

My bike rocks a light luster from a sliver of afternoon sun. When the kickstand is up, the bike goes away, along with the self that I carried into the garden. On my exit, the bells in the tower strike. I don’t know how far their sound travels. Already, I can barely hear them.