Sunday, January 18, 2009

And sometimes...

[And sometimes, perhaps, desires can be trusted. Or, miraculously and all the more mysteriously, they can shape.]

I wonder then, were perfection nearly within grasp, how terrifying might that be? And too, how exhilarating, giddying! For Tantalus's hand to brush the grapes, his lips to graze the waters.

Imagine the moment following this unprecedented anomaly: his pulse races, a hitherto dulled and pessimistic mind comes alight, afire! Certainty (and its incumbent predictability) had blunted and wearied his existence. For surely Tantalus had realized – real-ized! – the despotic futility that ruled and overruled his every action, that denied him possibility of relief. Surely, he at last reached a point where unrelenting failure wore away the last of his persistence, leaving him stupefied, resigned, and stultified.

Imagine the moment prior: the cusp of despair, his head bows, and he begs penitently to the gods, as he has done countless times before. He knows well the gesture's uselessness: they will not heed him--and is it that they do not hear or do not care? Or is there anyone to hear? So long has been his imprisonment, that who can say which beings existed, or did fancy alone conjure up his divine imprisoners? Did he really host that profane and awful banquet? Or did he imagine his feat of hubris merely as to justify his own torment? But watch now, as his head bows, his parched and broken lips touch for one instant the inconceivable--the impossible, the unreal--and shatter his dreadful certainty.

How this moisture? How this incomprehensible moisture, there long enough to shock yet gone before it can be tasted? What does it mean, what can it mean? That the gods have heard, relented? Or their powers wane and may now be circumvented?

Imagine his reckless rejuvenation as thoughts careen throughout his jolted mind. An intoxicating force invigorates his ailing hopes and catapults him beyond Reason; and with that same resurgence comes a creeping, dawning horror: he is poised now at the brink of lunatic conclusions, and if he stretches just a little further, will his lips find long-sought respite? Or will the conscious act of striving revoke his supposed progress and rebuke him all the more?

Be this redemption, or a god's mocking laughter?

Is it chance that furnishes him with hope, or insidious design?

Is this opportunity, or is it a desire's wishful mirage? Is there any action he can possibly take to sway the outcome either way? If he chooses wrongly, will he ever get this chance again? And so horrible, if not, to live on knowing that he'd once come so near perfection, but failed and damned himself.

No comments:

Post a Comment