Flight from Ein Sof by W. E. Gutman

Author:W. E. Gutman [Gutman, W. E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Inventor, W. E. Gutman, Flight from Ein Sof, A Paler Shade of Red, Satire, Political, Nocturnes, Fantasy
Publisher: CCB Publishing
Published: 2012-07-20T23:18:07+00:00

TEN

I returned to the gloomy depths of Gehenna looking for answers. I’d been perusing Spinoza’s Ethics and Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity. Separated by three centuries, the philosopher and the physicist had both studied relativity, the first to explore the metaphysical realm, the second to postulate immutable cosmic laws. They reached broadly similar conclusions, among them that perception depends on vantage point.

Spinoza buoyed his argument by proposing -- swiftly earning him excommunication and centuries of Jewish and Christian antipathy -- that much of human consciousness is based, not on fact, but on how we are conditioned to interpret the occurrence of being. There are no wrong answers, he proposes, only divergent opinions which are themselves blurred by conformity to an acquired optic. In other words, truth is in the mind’s eye of the beholder.

Einstein also theorized that reality is merely an illusion, “albeit a very persistent one.” He went a step further. He declared that perceptions can actually alter the experience of reality. I had an opportunity to test this strange concept, not in the perfect geometry of space, nor in the sterile labyrinths of Cartesian logic, but in a realm that has grown and spilled over its own boundaries like a gangrenous sore, far from the synthetic harmony of Ein Sof where the well-to-do live in stifling isolation.

It was still dark as I worked my way to the bridge. I came upon sleepy-eyed children pulling heavy loads, sweaty cadaverous men packed like sardines in rickety trucks belching black smoke, half submerged under the garbage they were ferrying from one end of the chasm to the other. Perpetual garbage, I reckoned.

Huddled like newborn pups against the scurfy wall of an abandoned building, young boys slept, their arms crossed against the chill of night, their fingers clasping their shoulders. Others, stirring from a thin, turbulent slumber, were getting ready, in lieu of breakfast, to take the long and excruciating way out of reality by sniffing glue.

Further on, resting on a bed of filthy rags near the gutter, a woman dozed fitfully with an infant at her breast while an older child begged for scraps of food and wiped an ever-runny nose on the sleeve of a threadbare sweater. Ahead, past the bridge, in a huge crater-like depression teeming with vultures, I found toddlers and young teens feeding on garbage. Knee-deep in steaming mountains of waste and competing with the loathsome winged scavengers, another group of youngsters rummaged for a meal, a slipper, perhaps a broken toy to brighten an otherwise joyless childhood.

And when I ventured past the festering hollow, I chanced upon a living ghost. I have no other words to describe her. She has no name. Madness robs people of all identity. Madness, in her case, further sharpens the alienation, the anonymity. She has no name. She has earned the scorn of her own wretched kind and she will pass in this dimension and from this moment in time unnoticed, even by her fellow Dybbuks. Surely, a name, a common moniker would give her substance, if not legitimacy.

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