The Final Supper

It was just a few hours ago at one of those faux cafes on the corner of Atlantic and Fifth that I began to have a premonition which had such weight that its conception sent my head deep into the dark recesses of the earth. George Berkeley tells us that perception is nothing but essence; it is in this sense that I knew the world must have ceased in its existence of ‘being’ sometime between then and when I must have fallen away. Premonitions like these are too powerful to tell us anything other than that which already happened. With all this in mind – and with the knowledge that God’s inscrutability forces distorted remarks – I will now try to recall for you the things which I may still be able to recover.

All the disciples were there: Mephistopheles, Judas, Satan (his often mistaken twin, Lucifer, had chosen to go his separate way), The Head of Education, and Zeus (who had recently redubbed himself with his ancestral title: Lord of Flies). Joining hands into what can only be described as a singular shadow cast about by unconfused movement, they had cracked my just prepared unleavened bread. From my description it may be hard to understand why up until that moment my mind was so at ease; it may be hard to understand that before that moment, the pictures, the movements, the sounds, the smells, the love I had felt, the stories, the beauty, the world, and the five people that sat around my table had all been normal; they had abused that which gives life splendor and mystery, and they had hidden behind that wonder; until that moment I was still just Harold, son of Harold, grandson of Harold, and great grandson of Harold (it is suspected the names trace back further, but at some point the idea of repetition had become sufficient knowledge); I was still just the man who made bread with his friends on weekends. In an instant (though this is not quite right to say because sometime during this event everything became completed in its totality) the bread crackled and ruptured into a body whose pores drowned every minutia of reality in its blood.

It could be said that this was my final supper, but it is equally as true that it was my first, second, and fourteenth. The absolute has now over taken reality. I see it, all of it, and it stands upright in front of me. It towers over everything but refuses in its hubris to cast a shadow.

No one understands anymore how the world was once blurred. No one understands that words should not just sit there on a page and be read with comprehension. The words, they no longer blend into one another; they no longer hide in between the blankness of the pages; they no longer do anything besides suffocate in restricting chains. No one remembers how to fly or even dance, and those fools mistake their trivialities of thinking of how they might dance as ‘probably good enough.’

They think behind this towering abomination is God, so they scratch and inspect it at every predefined angle. They talk about it, analyze it, move it here or there, they hold up a mirror to it, and perhaps worst of all, they tell their children about it. Sometimes someone discovers another room or wall that hadn’t been opened by their friends, then the press gets a hold of it and a new professor is born. It’s growing larger and larger, or, rather, it’s already grown and will have grown beyond all comprehension before I had started writing the first draft of this recollection.

There is no use going on. I’m not even sure why I’ve recalled this story for you. It was from a time when such things were still permitted to exist.

—

I have returned again, and I can’t know how long I’ve been out. There is terribly troubling news(?), and it occurs to me that you already know it, but my mind hopes to find safe harbor here despite your objections. At the very least – if this upheaval is not a revolution but an obliteration – there will be some remnants of a once unrealizable place.

Bodies are flung daily out of the tower. They are scattered about and no one cares for graves anymore; the best one might get is covered by more bodies. They’ve started to evacuate and run, but they still do nothing but stare. A child has begun to place bricks down near his mother’s corpse. He’s managed to attract some attention, and now more and more have come to join him. This would be cause for celebration, but this tower suffers from the same difficulties of its prototype– as it must. More and more pour into this thing. As it builds into the clouds, I can only hope the two meet each other one day as they crash into the ground. I’m perhaps the last man that knows how to speak. Everyone now just spews formulas carved into the walls of their choice tower. There are four now. It was too much to hope for. Hope is now too much to hope for. Perhaps even in writing this down I have contributed, against my intention, to another one of these abominations. That’s the problem with them. They crumble intention. How can one breath when air can only exchange mouths inside these places. Outside must all be desert. The walls have trapped me too. On the ceiling I see the word Borges, but I’m not sure I can do anything but recall that name; recognition has now become impossible because its antecedent has been slaughtered for heresy. Two children are chained here with me, and I keep telling myself that my name begins with I, but this slowly seems to make less and less sense. Vestiges of something that I feel I must know form on my skin in ephemeral bouncing waves whose amplitude does nothing but decrease until a final prick is shot off into the sky forever. The Conversation (which we now capitalize to signify its consistency) between two people, or three (or four?), is all written on the walls. I can see what they say, and they can see what they say, and I’m not sure if it’s me or they anymore who is typing this. Without these walls... I’m not sure where I was going with that. There isn’t too much time left kids, the first day of class is starting tomorrow, and you wouldn’t want to miss the bus.