ORGANIZING LIGHT

Book VII: Folding

An empty room at first. No roaring fire, not a sound because no living thing has made its way inside or out in eons but it’s frozen in the days of its origin. “I’ve been waiting for you for a long time,” said the man with the young voice. So here we are again. To be timeless, a contraption of the void here to suss out the big picture for the otherworldly explorers.

“Good to see you again, I suppose.” We met once, in another version of all this. In that one the lights were on when we met and I signed the contract that had been waiting for me in that moment forever, God knows who wrote it, with Father’s favorite pen. It was exactly half a decade before I’d go on to lose it again and I used to get so upset just thinking about when I’d first lost it and Mother didn’t forgive me during her time. The year was at least when they had figured out electricity on a large scale so that narrows it down a bit. I am responsible for my choices and acknowledge the potential consequences, was the gist of the agreement - having been given a very different experience once I had fallen out of time and all things were at once and though I look this way, I no longer am, I think.

Though it was no longer because there was nothing in a straight line anymore, I knew of my first personally-accessible memory when I wasn’t this. I was little and thrown across a room, my room. It was neither good nor justified and I can see the walls and the bed frame and his expression. That face he made, knowing what I was to him, it was why I didn’t shed a tear during his death throes, nor his wake, nor his funeral despite organizing his last departure so Sister wouldn’t fret too much with the loss and the changes coming she wouldn’t even anticipate. I don’t think many people know what actual hatred feels like. When you have an enemy and it’s clear and won’t be going away. I did. It’s exhausting impending doom. I look at it now, foreign isn’t the right word but the right word doesn’t exist yet, I guess.

What was it that made me one of them before the shift, other than those memories? That almost-Faustian change that stripped away all the things but those thoughts and recollections, they stayed in a way that I know these were his moments, he the walking testament, and they made him whatever he was; it looks like a long game of connect the dots without a destination. They just peak out of the mass of moments I can see all at once of everything.

I still don’t know how I got here. I look at his other imprints but never in order. The Saturdays in the coffee shop with Father before haircuts and the yard work. The strange fellow with the dirty brown jacket, John, that the barista excitedly greeted as if they hadn’t seen each other in years (which was possible given how inconsistently she worked and how he just sort of wandered around) loudly proclaiming his thoughts about the proletariat having been handed a coffee and having not been part of the working class himself for many years. All while Father networked with someone he’d arranged to meet and he’d show up far too early, dragging him along and this was the building of the pieces of resentment as events unfolded dooming any chance of peace. Sunday mass, a meal at a chain restaurant, another opportunity for conflict. This would repeat until it was time to leave the nest.

I can no longer affect much though I am certain I can see it all. There are rules but also consequences everywhere. I live his life over and over and it’s different all around us. Sometimes the trees have pink blossoms. Other times they are barren, “…and it’s not what you’re thinking,” I tell the man with the young voice, it’s changed. And eventually I’ll discover what this all is and how to get out. At first I was certain I was a dead wanderer in Purgatory. But it’s more than that, and I remember when the offer came to him and then I am this across every thing that can ever be. Almost a ghost but everywhere.

This is how I came to see and know creation. How I take account for every berry plucked from the trees. How I can splash around in the Pacific with a dopesick friend he was forced to leave behind but for good this time after a few previous tries.

I can see them both and hear every conversation they’d ever had together and about each other. I know he’d have tears for that but not in his time. Perhaps it was all too painful and that’s how I ended up here. I know the answers but there are so many, you see. “I suppose I’ll see you again to sign the next one,” I tell the man with the young voice. He nods, tells me about all things, and we are both well on our way to nowhere.

So I know I seek The Garden. I see myself learning this for the first time as the inevitability of every time, and it folds again and again. To return to it, and to the fruit that will doom all men. It’s folding. And folding. We’re folding.