Transfigurations ~ Alex Grey
i remember before the advent of shapes and of colours retrieved; before anything other than the memory of pain etched hard as rust in my psyche; and the relief brought on by the physical absence of that pain.
i reclined in my space, and i took time to examine my body.
the body of a middle aged man.
it showed/shows no sign of the ravages caused by my illness.
not a perfect body – there is evidence of age and the minor scars of a life lived – but by no means an offensive body; especially since it is now a body without needs.
no hunger, no digestive process with all its decay, no pain, no sexual desire.
no sense of touch or smell.
hunger is no loss, but the senses are vital elements that drive the mind.
i have worked hard to develop mental substitutes for these functions.
aesthetic needs and visual triggers; needs i have had to construct and develop from the memory of pain in order to allay the darkness that yawns at my core.
as i became familiar with the {interface}, i experimented with methods of clothing this body with elements of thought that more than compensate for the loss of physical self.
it was a small but significant progress; for it allowed me access to the extent of my mind’s power.
but always it is the pain remembered that is the strongest element in my laboratory – the mind’s alchemy requires pain to progress
i reclined in my space, and i took time to examine my body.
the body of a middle aged man.
it showed/shows no sign of the ravages caused by my illness.
not a perfect body – there is evidence of age and the minor scars of a life lived – but by no means an offensive body; especially since it is now a body without needs.
no hunger, no digestive process with all its decay, no pain, no sexual desire.
no sense of touch or smell.
hunger is no loss, but the senses are vital elements that drive the mind.
i have worked hard to develop mental substitutes for these functions.
aesthetic needs and visual triggers; needs i have had to construct and develop from the memory of pain in order to allay the darkness that yawns at my core.
as i became familiar with the {interface}, i experimented with methods of clothing this body with elements of thought that more than compensate for the loss of physical self.
it was a small but significant progress; for it allowed me access to the extent of my mind’s power.
but always it is the pain remembered that is the strongest element in my laboratory – the mind’s alchemy requires pain to progress
8 comments:
Hi Pisces. I'm just now catching up with this. Intriguing, to say the least. Refering to part II; what if there were no time factor? How could one best descibe something? Or is time a variable for description in general? I wonder too much...
The mind and its alchemy is a damnable thing.
This passage is dark and filled with a hopeless hope - in one sense - the need to make sense of something that cannot be made sense of, not in this way.
Quite scary, dark writing, Pisces - powerful and disturbing - as it's meant to be.
It's well known that everything is in the mind(even sex).The body is just a vehicle.Hard to get rid of pain for sure but it needs to concentrate on other things,this can be done with time.
These memories of pain seem to have the same influence on your protagonist as I imagine my genetic memory has on me. The only difference being his are specific enough to cause anguish and my genes only recall very broad architypes to which I apply specifics.
As I endeavor to clarify this genetic message I feel compelled toward a more symbiotic existence, but then there's no cruelty to purposeless nature so I suppose his memories could be the same kind but focused on his own immediate past of existence in civilization's twisted take on life, unmellowed by millions of years of evolution.
Whereas I endeavor to remember more against civilization's antagonistic contradictions distracting and erasing me, in the memories of your hero's variety, civilization in his rebirth may be a blanket of blessed distraction. Way intersting to ponder.
Just noticed the new qearion in your profile and must answer with another question, why call comparing oneself to others an aspiration in the first place? Whether high, mediocre, or low, comparison always seems to be another shucking of responsibility for our own standards with straw mwn.
Subtorp: Time is a variable by which we measure change… while writing this I made no considerations about the nature of time itself other than to give the man an infinite supply of it (I guess that makes him an immortal dead man) The fact that he has no method of measuring time passing serves to abstract his perception of it and also to diminish its significance in his (after)life.
One way of looking at time is provided by the incomparable William S. Burroughs: “Death needs time for what it kills to grow in” ~ from Ah Pook The Destroyer.
Vanilla: “hopeless hope” – a contradiction, but I know what you mean. I guess a lot of this is a result of the middle-aged need to confront death and also to contemplate what it means to feel.
Candie: Yes, all of what we are is contained in the mind, but the mind needs the body to give substance to what it experiences. Refer to Terry Gilliam’s excellent “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” in which the King & Queen of the Moon have detachable heads which, if allowed to remain detached for too long will revert to ridiculous pretentions of intellect (the head) and bestial acts of baseness (the body) – the two work best as a whole
Yodood: Pt.1 - I think I was trying to imagine just how far the mind could go given time and a rudimentary operating system on which to experiment – also (on a more superficial level) analogies may be drawn between the man in the egg and the individual who creates his/her own reality in cyberspace, learning how to exploit the {interface}/software to create a ‘more real’ or more interesting environment. To be honest, I had no conscious intent when creating this story, but if pondering ensues then I have succeeded.
Pt.2 - Why aspire to mediocrity? The question is there as a motivation not only for those who wish to be like others, but also for myself – a reminder to check that what I offer here at least aspires toward something special.
But have you arrived at the extent of your mind's power?
James: you'll have to wait for Phase IV to see ;]
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