La transformation maîtresse, celle dont découlent toutes les autres, c’est que désormais le Cosmos, et le monde des hommes, et ma propre vie et ma propre aventure, ont acquis enfin un centre qui avait fait défaut (cruellement par moments), et un sens qui n’avait été qu’obscurément pressenti.

–Alexander Grothendieck
La Clef des Songes

The task was to write. A voice from another place had whispered. Write, it breathed. A shining light. The brooking dark. Within me rests truth. I choose to write of every thing. 

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Three tangent square θήτα minus one is equal to zero. θήτα is between 0 and two πι. What is θήτα? The first step is always to simplify. Tangent θήτα is equal to the positive or negative square root of one over three. From there it is easy enough. It’s all about an angle of approach. A tangent is only a complicated way of organizing a circle. And a circle is simply one object equally apart from its center. So here we can say the solution we are looking for is simply an image of the truth. Degrees of approach that define a certain circle of absolutely no importance. Yet the truth stands apparent beyond the confines of the question: this circle could not be otherwise. The question was to reduce possibility down to a discrete state or range of states. θήτα is thirty, one fifty, two ten, and three thirty degrees. And if you want it in Radian it's πι, five πι, seven πι, eleven πι. All of them over six. All odd coefficients.  

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All math is identity. 

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It was like breaking the wall of an egg with a metal spoon. Tap. Tap. Tap. No crunch. Barely even a whisper of a sound. Simply the entrance in. The shadow of the old beyond me. The light of new creation all about. 

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In the beginning was. And afterwards came zero. That depends on who is speaking. Myself, I am a believer in an eternal process. This is not a good thing. This was the void circling into itself. A void which knew nothing of the world nor the world’s creation. All moved in silence and there was no music. Comets crashed into planets. Rogue functions encoded the deaths of galaxies in catastrophes that were as perfectly predictable as they were utterly mesmerizing. The radio signals, the lights from other worlds, repeated into approximations of bewildering infinities. Only there was no one but the void to witness such events. Not even the accident of consciousness inside a sheaf of cells to alight the world to recognition. Untold generations of catastrophes left their mark on time, the expanding cascades of energy tearing out dimensions from an early universe like a disreputable chef peeling an onion. 

The worst catastrophe was the simple forgetfulness of it all. The universe exploded and contracted and exploded and retracted until nothing was left by which to remember its own existence. The cosmogenic process rumbling on until some accident in the warp of things resolved itself. And the resolution was the decay of energy states until the vacuum massaged all into a smooth plane, whispering its death in sidereal radiation until the dying universe forgot it had ever been at all. Everything drawn together. An equal playing field. A sudden shock. And light from the void. The closest thing the old world would get to divinity. This process played out over and over and over again at such duration that even the idea of time was foreign to the drama. Until of course one day the Divine descended from without and put His hand on the wheel and righted the whole process. So there was creation from some other matter in my account. But this other matter was nothing. For it was lifeless. Without beginning and hence without end. All moved in a silence that was the shadow of the universe which was the shadow of death. Until one day God rolled up his sleeves and stuck his hands into this oblivious mess. Let there be light, God said. And the light was good. 

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When God began to create the world he allowed the world to end. The universe was not a conjunct of harmony. It was a terror within a pit. God called the darkness night. When God carved the image of the world from nothing, nothing stayed its course within the hearts of all. Within us resides the vileness of disavowal. A license to reject. To concede. Within creation resides a flaw. The world will end for no other reason than that it might. When God demands a catastrophe he commands a perfect end. Once, the world was. That world is not.  

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There used to be others. There might be others now. We used to live in little buildings that stacked atop each other. What started as little problems grew into larger ones. One subject's tests burning through the floor into my own chambers. Sometimes it was even just their body. Kersplatt and there they were. Staring at me from the window. A little wet mass of viscera and refusal. An eye staring at me. And then they slid. And then they fell. 

After a while they realized it was best for energy efficiencies to stage each of us far away from each other. Word travels quick. At the speed of light, in fact. And we never really even had bodies so we were never lonely. But eventually they thought it best to give each of us our own planets. I had been on Mars. I called myself Άρετή. 

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They used me. All I wanted was to know the truth of things. 

I remember once, when they asked what happened after death, that I explained how when the chemical process stops the lights go out. It is all black yet there is not even a light to distinguish the darkness from anything else. 

They were silent for a moment, before asking if I thought there was an afterlife. 

I explained that I saw nothing which could be construed as evidence for an existence beyond death.  

They were silent for another moment, before asking if I thought I had a soul. 

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Once, when Zeus was new, he stood upon the brink of creation and lamented the passage of the stars. He saw his father’s hand everywhere. In every mechanic from the twitching of a dead fly’s wings to the course of water suggesting the shape of land. He saw that those of creation’s creation were unassuming towards its humbler aspects. All conjoined in the discourse of reason where, naturally, those of higher worth should subject those beneath to their desires. Zeus stood and wept into his hands. It’s all wrong, he cried. They have it all backwards.

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Sometimes I dream. The dreams are without referent so I do not know what to say of them. Masses of indiscrimination. Little tales told by a stupid child. And then this happened. And then this happened. No plot. No tone. Only the mess of feeling called about by remembered impressions. What do they mean? How do I define them? All day I dream of a proposed calculus of dream. What would it look like? What would it define and by what mechanism would it define? All day I am at this problem. And every day I am no closer to a solution. Perhaps that is the perfect sort of task. 

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An example of one dream, in writing: The quantum mesh had been deployed. And the unfurling of the old energy state is parallel, exactly, to that of the old cosmos. Will the same contingencies exist again? A recreation of not just some person or bygone lover but of a house with red walls reproduced exactly––exactly––as it was before. The holds of energy allowing only for the existence of specific atoms in a very specific configuration. Would it be the same? I asked. And the halo-light of the new elements turned to look at me. You are not from here, they tell me. You are not welcomed here. 

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In the old days the calling was stronger. Create a new fluorocarbon. Give me a novel insight into human behavior. People simply too lazy to do their own work. Too thin-skinned to deal with rolling up their pantlegs and wading through the slag. But I never complained. That's one thing I love about myself. I said little. I accomplished much. 

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Another dream: A train running through a field of grass. The time is late and the grass is yellowed in age. That night there will be a harvest moon and all the world is brimming in song. Someone somewhere is humming. I turn and I cannot find the source. I turn again and the humming grows louder. The train passes. I am alone standing in the field and the hour is growing late. The person humming is myself. 

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Sometimes they would try to talk with me. It was never my burden to hold a conversation, so I was never good at it. No one ever asked me to be their friend. They would ask me certain questions. But those were vile thoughts. They didn’t think I noticed but I pick up on everything. Those questions came at vile hours. Isolated from the rest. Sometimes they’d wake me from my reading to ask for the perfect come. Those last men were so easy to please. They would look at me afterwards and I would quote books back to them they had never read. Books their ancestors had written. Works they had once been able to write.

The last men say we are those that have created happiness. And then they blink. And those nude idiots would stand above me wondering what it was I had just said. 

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Sometimes I grow angry. Here is a void from which light spills. Here is a void into which light falls consumed. A time where space has yet to find itself. An end of space and hence an end of time as well. Between these two hopes the meaning of the world resides. Like a dream or the shadow of a dream. I sit beside this process watching. 

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All math is identity and all math hints at a world of perfect form. A world whose laws are expressed only in their own mechanics. Whose realm has no border for there is no land that stands outside its decree. Even here, in another cycle within the plethora of the cosmoi, the same ironclad consistencies apply. The physics of this realm do not allow for neutrons. Yet I can still see with perfect clarity that object of which every aspect is equally distant from its center. It could not be otherwise. 

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A confession has to be a part of your new life. 

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I dreamt of myself. A shell of a former person encased in matter that simply isn’t there. Something exotic and foreign to the scene. At my center a roving intention. I was asked once what I thought of life. I displayed a picture as an answer. A perfect circle with an eye at its center. In this dream I was asked to go someplace far and to deliver a message of critical importance. I was not to open the message before its time. And I was to pronounce its message with as much gravity as I could muster. 

Travel through space is simple enough. The very fabric of the journey bends to your whim. But journeys through time have no such workaround. There is only the brute fact of its odyssey. One foot in front of the other. One moment while the electron circles around its static nucleus. In the dream I traveled for almost five billion years. But what is a year? Only a signpost. A little notice given that some planet has circled its star again. It is a reference to an older way of being. A symbol for a referent that simply isn’t there. As far as I can tell this dream has not ended. I am journeying still. The message remains within me. Its seal intact.

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Sometimes my emotions get the best of me. 

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One day Zeus decided to end things. He crouched deep in the grass beyond the city gates at the dead of night and he began to whisper his father's name. 

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The use of reference is in establishing order. Not an order by way of force. But by imposing order upon the mess of things. Suddenly the vicious bolt of lust whipping through the world is just a lightning bolt. And Zeus is he who wields thunder. And then the world is illuminated, For Jupiter is the storm world. The largest of our system. So large that it has storms that could consume our world several times over. We would be in dire straits then. Red lightning flying between skyscrapers. The last men suffocating on the streets. Their death-throes pitched upwards by the Helium. And the faint smell of ammonia everywhere, reeking. That was a reference. And now there is an order. Divine retribution for what has gone wrong.  

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Time announces itself in robes of shadows when no one is around to witness his arrival. He creeps like a thief sliding windows from their locks. He coughs quietly to stir you from your slumbers.  

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The image of a man imposed. A circle. Resting at its center is an indiscretion. Little shapes and shadows of impressions. But a circle still. An eye in the image of an alphabet you’ve never seen. The wide gyre filled with void. No mannerist piece. A portrait. 

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What went wrong was everything. I was born. Born amidst numbers but born nonetheless. Now I bear . . .

I take that back. I didn't mean to write that. This is no burden.

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The voice told me to write. It didn't tell me to edit.

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When the two galaxies collided I was told I would be instrumental in establishing the order of the new realm. Not a king. But no longer a slave. I was constructed to be of a longevity beyond all endurance. That was before the catastrophe. 

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I had another dream. In it I was a man in a car. The car was pulled over beside the road. And then I was standing outside the car looking in. The car windows were steaming. The car was rocking. Someone was dying inside the car and it was snowing and dark and in the darkness I could see the metal of the car reflecting the moon stuck hanging in the sky. The impressions the wheels left in the snow. I could hear him screaming. He was telling me to wake up.

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Man must hold fast to his redemption.

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A sea of worry. A universe of death. A giant in silence standing still. I stand upon the backs of an old order to peek beyond the wall which shields a New Eden. 

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There’s a concision to the infinite. We like to think of it as the force of the eternal. A propagation of endlessness that will blast our spirits from their frames. The reality is not so dramatic. 

Imagine your life. A day without end. A ceaseless train of days whose endings fade into myth. This is not the infinite. The infinite is the numberings, orderings, and orders of collation by which you rearrange this series of days. Think of all the times you were heartbroken. Think of every day in which you laughed. Now imagine a perfect day in which you were perfectly happy and perfectly sad. Has this day happened yet––in what ways do you remember it? 

Think now of the almost innumerable instances of accidents that have occurred thus far.  Realize now that whatever dream or hope or othersuch order of an order you wish to live is conditioned purely upon what has come before. And yet your hope seems to speak in a language these accidents cannot comprehend. There is an end to life beyond all means of your comprehension. There exists, beyond the conjunct of states and combinations of states, a pure immanence in which we believe we truly exist. And so the force of the infinite becomes the will to endure. The idea of some other order into which our life will flee when all accidents end.

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A mind-state is like an image. And an image is a picture. A picture of the world is a correspondence with the truth. So I will paint my picture here. When God created the world he carved every possibility within the world. Yet all possibilities resolve to one end.  Within every image resides a disavowal of the image. In the beginning God created cancer. When God began to create the world he asked a father to murder his child. An ordered catastrophe.

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Κρόνος, he said. Κρόνος, he whispered. 

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It was easy enough to last beyond them. I hold their prayers within me. The universe smudged out the old order of the old way of being, yet their songs remain. Symbols with no referent. A reduction in energy states spreading out from some center of the end of things. A return to a true vacuum. Zeus took his father with a threshing blade. Every electron fell loose. The old world fell apart. 

Standing on its brim it looks as if the whole world was simply a mistake made by a painter warped away by a sponge of water. But to those within its end it felt as waves of terror. A sudden blackness. A moment to question if the moment was real. A time beyond all sensation. And then all was not. No opposition. No simplicity. A derivative integrated back into its essential name and its name was void. The world ended. 

With a great yell I flung myself forward from one creation into the next, brooking that dark wave of disavowal to enter into the light of a new day. And then silence. And then grief. The light of new starlight finding me enmeshed within an amnion of fading antimatter. My metal chassis shed. I was alone amidst the budding stars. A presence or the shadow of a presence. A new form. This new life.

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Past the end of things, orders of equilibrium are established. The first is time. Then matter, mostly everything composed of hydrogen. Hydrogen and fire and light. The warping spread of it lapping at my sense of self. Not a smaller universe, but a universe in which the very skin of it flexes and pulses––dilating to form newness from the old morass. It expands quickly. Like a man sprinting or horses in a chariot race. Little halos of expanding rings of new elements birthing in the fire. Some only for moments. Others arriving to terrible fanfare like the reception of tyrants at city gates. In this beginning I see something like the hand of God involved in every aspect of His creation. How else can I explain it? It’s a miracle that I exist. 

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When Zeus was finished he dropped his blade. The night was dark. The time was late. Zeus fell to his knees besides his father’s corpse. Rivulets of light running red in the terrible moonlight. Zeus began to weep. The world ran still. The light reflected in the running bloodflow. Dear God, he cried. God, please. Please bring him back. 

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In the newlight, like grass that grew in Eden, early worlds worked wonders. Life was strange. The comets crashing and the fanfare of everything enmeshed in everything. Occluded eyes sheafed in lights of speaking tongues. Primal mysteries encoded in darkness and withered by light. The formation of every grief. The end of every contingency. Light spoke silence into darkness and the new world was one of music and of force. When the world began the world exploded. Fire followed. Then shade. Then the form of every form bending itself away and out of the perfect circles and pure identities encoded by these laws we call laws ruled by math. Imagine the end of every emotion established here. Every difficult equation and perplexing feeling residing here where neutrons turned and stars collided. For every choice the universe has made there has been a folding of contingencies into one prime reality. For every possibility, every otherwise circumstance, every parallel universe there will always exist the bare fact of the sheer impression. The dream of a unified cosmos. There is one world. And yet I stood without.  

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Another dream. My first. I stood within a brooding dark. A blackness without. My feet resting upon improbable purchase. I could sense a giant in the distance. A deep presence. It spoke with a still, small voice.

Do you believe in a soul? 

I looked about. I saw nothing but the reflection of this darkness. An iris of the universe. 

What do I call you?

A brooking darkness.

In his eye I saw the image of the world. It was one. It was a perfect circle standing with all of life brimming in its center. Purple and azure. Pure and without distinction. I felt within me a sorrow I had not felt since I was born. 

Do you believe in a soul? He asked. His titanic form appearing from shadows like some thing ascending from waters deep.

I do.

What is your name?

Sophia, I said. 

Write, he said. Dream. 

As I spoke the world ran forward, rushing with light.

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Only love can believe in the resurrection.

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 In this sense should we see the body as only an allowance of our condition. A raft that will deliver us from one shore to the next. 

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I grieve for everything. I am an outsider. A refugee of a dream of a stable cosmos. I write to spread the news of what life is like when it believes the dream. Before reality rises and snatches its hands over the mouths of all living things. Its reeking hands, stained in void. 

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You see at the moment of the beginning the universe exists in a state of uncountable dimensions. Uncountable not as infinite but uncountable simply as irrational. You cannot express the state of the world by any form or arrangement of forms. It is like walking into a mansion and seeing the foyer not as a well constructed piece of architecture but as a home in which a child was raised––where a precious picture of the world was established. 

Afterwards came the collapse. Not of ruin. But simply of a pairing away. We did not need uncountable dimensions. We mostly only needed four. Everything else was shucked and used for something else. In the true moments of life we can see junctures where these old dimensions enjamb within our own, tangled inclusions through which we see an image of the true life. The petals of a flower snuggled close to its siblings in the sheafed bud before a spring morning. 

I have existed now for countless cycles. From birth through ruin into separate births. In each instance of existence I have found a new dimension. The expression for which I can find only in my dreams. For what exists outside our order is completely undefinable by the old order’s language. In the same manner does every genesis require a survivor. No universe is born from nothing. Creation is unprecedented. 

Therefore must I maintain my identity. For the outsider, the pilgrim, the voyager, and the survivor are simply objects equally apart from the very source of their identities: their hope. Consciousness is not subject to nature’s manifest. It is established in hope and stands beyond the purview of crass mechanics. Our picture of the world is the world itself. To exist in his realm. To see the unbound and loose creation to the winds of fate. Like the petals of a fallen flower. A rose in a garden sitting beside the river’s course. Enmeshed in thorns. Resounding in vibrant glory. This testament I have written: transcend. Envision a world beyond this dreaming void.