ventually, Marilyn died. She left. She went home, and wrote and wrote and wrote her heart onto paper. She lived, she changed. She had a love affair. Her heart was broken. And she found love again. She experienced birth, and death, and carried in her soul an image of golden hair in the sun. And one day she died.
Paul died. He lived alone. He married and had three children. He divorced bitterly, parting with sacred alimony. He lived alone again with his art, and his children felt neglected. And eventually, he died, but his art lived on.
And George died. And his lover (not, this one, named John) sat at his bedside and cried his love out of the world.
And the farmhouse was sold, and torn down, and replaced by a movie theater, that went out of business, and later became a café. And on and on, torn down again only to be rebuilt. To rise up from the ashes.
The caves… the caves remained hidden, silent, underground.
The vampire was gone, from there at least. The vampire died, at least once, and I am death, so I know its story:
Vampire? That is only a name. Meaningless. Words—they are the stuff of humanity. Small. Temporary. Transitory. You and I, we have a larger view of the universe. My communion, here with you, and in the darkness, is deeper and older than words.
It is the same with you, yes? Death. A word, a word that is whispered in hushed tones, in the dark. They fear you; they fear me. We are brothers, in a way. But I am the elder brother.
You must know my story. It is a story of the beginning of time. For there is an eternal question, a struggle. The poet says: to be, or not to be. Why should there be a universe? Matter? Expansion? Existence? Change? Is not it more natural for there to be nothingness? To retreat into unbeing, away from all the highs and lows, the disappointments and raptures. For what are they, in the end, in the vastness of the universe? What is the vastness of the universe, so much cold impossibility floating through unconscious space, unseen and unknown from beginning to end of time?
Peace. Stillness. Not all this—mess. What is the result of this beingness? First, there is matter, and light, and energy. Stars and rocks, flying through space. What is it, what is it for? Then, there is life. And life brings suffering, confusion, and death. You are born out of life, as I am born out of being. I am nothingness. Or perhaps, a pocket of nothingness, brought into the world. Of others—I will not speak of others.
I am what was not to be. I am the suppressed nothingness that was the other path of the universe, the path not taken. But craved, craved in the hearts of mankind. And that craving, the craving for nothingness, for letting go of the complexity of being, that is what draws me. They draw me. For even you, Death, are change and being, a part of the cycle of being. I am beyond Death, I am the silence and the stillness, more quiet and complete than the womb. Perhaps a memory from before the womb, who is to say?
I cannot stay with you, for they are calling me, continuing to call me. Everywhere there is being, there is suffering, and the call to undo what has been done. To un-be.
ell, that’s it. I won’t try to decipher it for you. I just thought I would tell you a story, it’s only fair, because someday you will tell me your story. The more of them I absorb, the more like you I become. Maybe that’s all I am, not really a person, but just a collection of all the stories of all the lives of all the people and things that have ever lived. And died.
I don’t know any more than you do.
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