Breadcrumb #635
JOE BENINCASA
In the dark of night, I entered the church from the back of the nave. A knave in a cave. Brave. A slave.
My strange OCD echoes in my head, the way my voice might in this vast cavern where the religious hopeful, the unswayable zealots, and the lost searchers gather to search. For wisdom, for direction in a directionless life, for a glimmer of hope that all of existence is part of a greater plan. For a literal light at the end of the tunnel. A funnel.
Not I.
I am here for them. The shadows I see...well, feel more than see. Sense, in the world around me. To be honest, I see them everywhere. On street corners, in restaurants, in homes, in the back seats of cars. In offices, at parties, at funerals. Everywhere. Here and there. In the air. Without a prayer.
“To be honest, I see them everywhere. On street corners, in restaurants, in homes, in the back seats of cars.”
For as long as I can remember, they were there. At first, indistinct. In childhood, I thought I was seeing the darkness as a natural part of this world, balancing the light, but as I grew and learned my experience was unique, I saw them for what they are: the manifestations of our evils. Not some bullshit balance for the good I knew. Just a festering multitude. And they were growing in number. Slumber. Numb-er.
They can’t hurt us, at least not physically, and we can’t affect them. But I can see their effect on the world. They are both a result, and a cause, of the deep, profound, yawning darkness pervading the human condition. Contrition.
Like pollution, they are created by humanity, and worsen that human condition, in a feedback loop that threatens us. Adding more darkness, more despair, more chaos. Like pollution, I sense there is a tipping point, beyond which we cannot stop their inexorable, breeding infestation of our world. Whirled. Knurled. Unfurled.
Strangely, I have always found the greatest concentration in places like this. In churches. Is it any wonder? Here gather those often without hope, barely tamping their fear of the final abyss. Led into ignorance and passivity by an increasingly corrupt and opportunistic prelacy, hell-bent. Hell-sent. Well-spent.
I am a lapsed Catholic, the flimsy veneer of religion’s illogic shed years ago. Even these...daemons, let’s call them, to match a metaphor to our surroundings...only reinforce my certainty that there is no god, benevolent or benign, guiding our lives. If anything, my studies in physics, especially in the quantum realm, have led me to see these dark souls as manifestations of the energies we create in our lives, by our decisions, our choices, our minds, our hearts. Energy neither created nor destroyed, but changed form by the improbable impulse of our intelligence and actions. Our free will. Bitter pill. Swill.
So I often return here, late at night, using an old entrance in the basement neglected by the clergy, to commune with them. I say “commune”, as they seem to sense me as much as I sense them, and I imagine we ponder each other’s existences. Though I’m not sure they possess any semblance of intelligence at all. Perhaps our mutual attraction is governed by elementary forces, large and small, with exchanges of energy to provide us both (again, I imagine) a frisson of contact, of...communion. No, the irony is not lost on me. Communion. Reunion.
With no small dose of sarcasm, I whisper, “The body of Christ.” Pay the price. Sacrifice.
And so, over time, they have grown. Not only in spite of them, but because of them, I have spent a lifetime in an effort to bring more joy into the world. But I fight in vain against a rising tide. Humanity’s optimism has turned to despair. Hope has been poisoned, decaying into apathy. Striving for achievement has become a grasping for fleeting fame, and generosity has turned to greed. Need. Bleed.
The tipping point is near. Very near. Fear.
Tonight is different. There is an energy in our dark dance, the shadows and I, and they grow, merging, swelling. An amorphous, roiling, writhing thing, feeding off my despondency, my discouragement, my despair. Our energies merge, and I am filled with their breath.
Death.