Cold Gods

Two years ago on spring break I felt a sort of grinding madness that lead to frequent evening walks. It was early enough in the year that half past seven was black. I would walk under the streetlights by subdivisions, usually quickly, usually not dressed warmly enough, and as I went I would make disjointed connections between arbitrary common objects and whichever characteristics surfaced in my boiling brain. A single golden leaf clinging to a bare tree was a shivering coin, and I praised it (aloud) for its steadfastness. A crushed pine-cone on the sidewalk shadow appeared to me in the shape of a black heart. These walks would all end exactly halfway on the bridge over the Yahara; I never crossed it, only stood there to stare at the black and moving water.

The river was always my purpose, my undeclared destination. I judged the value of the walk on how long I could spend standing there at the edge, clinging to the metal rail that burned my un-gloved hands, yielding my open eyes to the wind that had not yet lost its teeth. And I stared downward at the shapes of the water constantly replacing itself and thought, blood is so thick and red and warm and human, water is so clear, cool, eternal, If we had water in our veins we would be cold gods.

I thought it in these words, and I recalled these words today while probing a dream I had last night. It was the kind of dream that becomes a nightmare only after you wake up and examine its atrocities. In this dream there were two or three or five beings that resembled men and women in appearance, but they were not people, certainly not human. I knew this first as one inexplicably knows universal truths in dreams, but I also saw it.

They placed less value on life than a small egocentric child places on the beetle he or she pulls apart in playful curiosity. They carelessly killed a man because they were not wildly impressed by his work, then discussed it idly, not bothering to face his nearby corpse. One of them skinned a cat alive; I saw the pink muscles still in the form, still twitching in the second before I looked away. The thing was holding the white and bloody fur in one hand, and eating it, tearing soft, wet swatches of it away in its teeth.

Perhaps most disturbingly, until I woke up, I was emotionally detached. I disapproved of these creatures and despised their acts, but possessed inadequately the empathy that was absent from their blank, bright eyes.

They were terrible and superior; I took it for a fact that they transcended me. In their indifference they seemed divine embodiments of amoral nature. They saw the universe as it might see itself : wildly and unaffectedly.

It is so strange that this which gives us the most undeniable awe is what we cannot allow in ourselves, and strange that its polar opposite of unlimited benevolent awareness is hallowed by its side.