You see there is this kid who stared too long into the light and the light blinded him. So, as is so often the case, he developed other ways of seeing. Put like that it seems so simple. No cause for complaint. Straightforward.
Things, as we all know, are very seldom straightforward, though. There is often a blurred edge here, an obscured view there, and fluxion everywhere. Or so it seems when we think about it, which is perhaps why we so seldom do.
What if there was no light? What if there is no kid, and no eyes to stare?
Somewhere, walls are always falling down. Things are sliding out of their proper place; systems are spinning out of control. Somewhere, the balance never measures correctly, the scales are always weighted, and the dice always roll snake eyes. The only simplicity is that nothing is simple.
Though the boy can no longer see, he can dream well enough. Too well, sometimes.
Often, the dreams hold more significance than reality. Not just the obvious things, such as brighter colors and a certain vividness to all the senses, which, so far as he can remember, he had only ever, experienced before during his brief but intense flirtations with d-lysergic acid diethylamide. And once or twice, after much effort and unaccustomed discipline, following feeble teenage forays into the ways of Zen. (Has it been mentioned that he had been, and is still, inclined to be a pretentious little bugger?)
Several things seem to figure with unusual frequency in his dreams. He senses they are connected, but is unsure exactly how. He hopes he will figure it out some day. He certainly hasn't figured it out yet.
He falls asleep.
(What a little expression: to fall asleep. As though it were nothing important.)
There is this boy who finds himself surrounded with light.
There is so much light that he fails to notice it at first. It is as if he is darkness, as if the retinas had become overloaded and the visual cortex had shut down. Perhaps they had, perhaps it had.
Gradually the dark light fades into the bright, and then down a few more lumens to what might easily be daylight, were it not. He is in a classroom as if he belongs there, has been attending this particular course for months, years. The professor wears tweed, and has worn leather patches keeping the material at his elbows from fraying; he has a prominent mustache and thick-rimmed plastic spectacles, the diminishingly brilliant light is heavily refracted, split into component colors, toward the edges of the lenses.
The boy knows the lenses are glass, which sets a time either for the class or maybe just for the professor, at the moment he is not sure.
There are several other students, for the boy knows he is a student just as he knows every detail of the classroom, from sight to smell. The boy knows one of the students is named Alan, but the others remain elusive. At least at first, as always, the details remain elusive. They do not always remain so.
Perhaps that is the point, he is not sure, and anyway this is no place in which to ask such questions.
All six or seven students are sat around a modishly curved wooden table topped with scratched Formica: they seem alert and attentive, though the boy is aware of the folly of appearance. He glances down to the yellow tabletop, notices the imprints of pens through paper, and the cheeky messages and lame jokes scratched with pencil-tips or compasses which cannot be removed, and which evoke forgotten, irrelevant narratives of the past, stories of first love and broken hearts intermingled with fragments of academic discourses, now long-abandoned theories, and the odd idiosyncrasy (why the name "Helen," again and again? And what was "deconstructionism" again?): this seems to the boy to be strangely important, though he has no idea why.
Noticing the boy's distractedness, the professor looks at him sharply, or at least with an expression that the boy suspects the professor imagines appears sharp. The boy coughs and lifts his head with feigned keenness.
- Now it comes down to this, doesn't it?
- Yes, of course it does: the socio-political status quo may only ever be maintained through the stability of apparencies, or the perceived stability of apparencies brought about by subtle manipulation of the world view of the average Joan, without her apprehension, in order that the only true motivators, avarice and what she would call 'care' for the peer group (which falls off exponentially as social contacts become perceived as becoming more distanced), might act for the benefit of the society as a whole, rather than being focused on individual fulfillment alone. The truth of this was objectively proven by Steinbaum over forty years ago, and has remained unchallenged by any but the most deranged of dissidents.- Very good. But haven't you forgotten something? The professor looks quizzically at the boy. Expectant.The boy senses the stares of the other students without seeing them. For a moment he is scared, self-conscious, but the moment passes. He thinks: what could he have missed out? Then it comes to him, all at once, as he'd become accustomed to expect. He clears his throat:
- I'm sorry. What I forgot to mention was that, in order that the systems which are proven to be the best be maintained, there is a necessity for a separate society, what might once have been mistakenly termed an elitist enclave, to exist and to co-exist with the mass of the population, both with their knowledge and at the same time hidden from their group awareness. Is that better?
- Yes. Thank you.
The professor calls him by name, but he doesn't register.
The light grows briefly brighter. A bird starts to sing outside, its clear voice beautifully enmeshed with the rustle of leaves and the quiet sound of flowing water audible through the half opened window. The boy glances out.
The scene resembles a dream: in fact the whole situation is becoming more and more dreamlike. There is a strange vividness about everything which only dreams, and some drugs and diseases, are able to embue. The fields are all perfect curved surfaces, delineated by the most appealing of shaded avenues of trees and hedges. The surfaces are the most emerald of greens.
Bits:
There is a dead fly in the loving cup. Mum and dad's names are embedded in the clay. Grandmother's initials are inscribed on the base.
November 19th 1957. There is much dust. The red and black carapace is all that remains of a ladybird.
The dust is now in the garbage, the cup back on its shelf. Some things are not intended to be neglected.
Life's price seems far too high.
