Ido almost burned to death last night.
It’d have been an embarrassing death. His trusty old electric heater got covered by a fallen towel and set itself on fire, while he napped a few steps away. Rest in pieces, iridescent old friend. Many a night of warmth and comfort you have brought to him. Fitting that you should end in ashes.
The air was thick with smoke when Ido came to, he managed to toss the whole thing into the shower. Now his clothes are infused with the saccharine kiss of melted plastic. Ah, death… you indignant mistress. You shall not take him this day, and not with fire anyway. Burning and Ido go way back.
When Ido was little mother told him a story about the fire spirit Sir Fury Fuckalot, F for short. F is the rage, F is wrath, F is avarice. F is a glassful of gin emptied, and third and fourth one down. F is torment. F is regret. F burns with jealous green and gleams with the righteous eyes of a duteous beast scorned. F came to Ido when he could still only crawl and now Ido bears his mark, vestigial scars that marked where the skins on his thighs melted. Side-note: birthmarks survive scalding.
Almost being grilled alive brought life sharply into focus and sent Ido on a spiral of self-awareness, which he expects to last for a few days. He is having a quintessentially borderline reaction to all of this.
If flower blooms and no eyes are there to bear witness, has it blossomed at all? If the ocean swells and there are no shores to embrace it, has the tide risen at all? If the sun climbs and there are not hearts to court it, has the day dawned at all? And if one sings and no one is around to hear him. Is it music at all? And if he prevails and no one is there to cheer him. Has he won at all? And should he die with no one to mourn him? Has he even lived at all?
So much time has he wasted. So much time is he wasting still, in chanced encounters, in lives never lived, in stories that never would be, in paths untrodden, in chains unforged, in the struggle for salvation, in the prayers for absolution, in the search for serendipity. Through the embers, he saw nothingness. In silence, he saw their silhouette. Only shadows filled his loneliness. Between these hands, the stars, the moons, the clumps of celestial intent, there is nothing to bring comfort and fill his yearning except what those cold hard hands could grasp.
Grasp he will.
In continuation of the human tradition of divining meaning in chaos, this incidental, senseless ordeal must be a sign from mother Gaia herself to a wayward son. Everything that is must have a point to them.
You could say that his mind isn’t quite right, but the world is pretty mad anyway.
…
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
#00117F 