Chapter 1: A Meditation on Pain

Once thoroughly broken down, who is he that can repair the damage?

          -Frederick Douglas, My Bondage and My Freedom

Why is there laughter, why merriment, when the world is on fire?

When you are living in darkness, why don’t you look for light?

          -The Buddha, The Dhammapada, chapter 11

Some guys they just give up living

And start dying, little by little, piece by piece

          -Bruce Springsteen, “Racing in the Streets”

Chapter 1: A Meditation on Pain

     There are no diamonds in the deep places of the Earth. We have all been told that if we search the primordial darkness we will find our precious light. The diamond deep in the earth awaits discovery by the weary traveler. Such a cherished and foolish fantasy. I have learned there is only the darkness of the pit. Yet, I still crawl through the muck. Do I, somehow, cling to the fable of the light? I am more fool than prophet, crawling because I am too stupid to stop. I chew dirt, one mouth full upon another. My teeth shatter on stone. My nails peel from my fingers, a sacrifice to the unforgiving rock. Fool am I as I continue to search for diamonds, having been told by men I call wise that they are hidden in this darkness. Gems are not mine to have. Maggots and lice are the reward of my faith. The holes I dig open not to treasure, but to the abyss. The treacherous precipice calls me, a sweet release from my labors. My death would not matter. Clumsily I resist the Sirens call.

     I do not plummet, but still I fall. Sliding along the jagged stone my skin is ripped and shredded. I am flayed by my efforts to rebuke the abyss. Tumbling uncontrolled I crash onto a slab of rock, dirty and unforgiving. Blood mixes with the dirt. I know, instantly, that my life’s fluid will not regenerate this place. This is no blood rite, it is a bloodletting. Nothing else. These wounds will not heal. Scars run along my body as fault lines in the Earth. As those mighty fissures shake the planet to its core, so my scars rend my very soul. I wonder, do I even have one? Was it lost long ago in the subterranean dark? Did I ever possess such a thing? Could it have been shattered by a mighty quake leaving me a husk, an incomplete man? I would pray for answers, but I have lost that right.

Still I rise. Why? What stubbornness is this? Too stupid to realize hope is dead I stand again on wobbly legs. I do not know why I choose to stumble forward, ever deeper, into the darkness. Into the pit. Yet, it is not impenetrable. As I stagger my eyes develop unnatural nocturnal vision. I am gifted, quite unexpectedly, with the ability to see an arm’s length ahead. Is this some form of mockery? Am I not encountering darkness that cannot be dispelled? Why am I taunted with this…gift…of limited sight?

Is he here? Hunting. Searching. I do not feel his presence, his horror, in this dark place. Why is he in my thoughts? Time for that later. I am not safe here but I am alone. So I wander. Groping. Lurching. Graceless. I have reached it. Not the dragon’s treasure or the rare gem in the cavernous deep. I have not found a blossom in the muck or reached some distant and beautiful shore. No, I have found the Door.

Why am I before you again? Has this not been settled? Did Pandora not teach us well enough? Some portals, like the Box of Set, should remain unopened. Yet the Door taunts me. Calls me, after all this time, to find it here in the darkness. Still here. Always here. Daring me to enter. I run my hands along your rough wooden engravings. I feel images that make little sense to me. The gibberish of lunatics engraved in wood. Confusion reigns where understanding is sought. I feel your arch, carved and ornate. My fingers, bleeding and gnarled, find a doorplate with no name. Lastly my hands come upon your door knocker. I must pull for nothing will grant me entrance save my own courage. Would that I was Arthur before Excalibur or Thor with his magic gloves, ready to hoist Mjolnir and strike down my foes. I am not such a man. There is no mythic strength coursing in my veins. No gods are with me. I am small. I have been called, again, to a place of defeat and humiliation. Why have I been called back? Why do I answer? All I have is the strength to not weep before you. On my knees struggling not to drown in another torrent of meaningless tears. Enough tears have been shed here. I should not have come back.