The first time I became aware of an I, I was in a rundown house. I don’t know how I came to be in this house. I have no memory of before. It is safe to say only now exists…now and onwards.
I have no name to call me by, no shape, no purpose. I see the house and the word that comes to me is ramshackle. I am cold and the air around me becomes warmer. It is a cause and effect I did not know but once I have learnt it, it is easy to repeat. Within minutes, the rundown house looks liveable.
Welcome home.
Those are the first words I hear though their meaning is unclear.
We have been without an occupant for so long. We were fading but your presence…it gives us hope. It gives us purpose.
It is the house, I realize, that is speaking to me. But the words feel too big so I ignore them for a time. Since I feel unformed, my next thought is to make myself. I conjure up a mirror and that word, ramshackle, perfectly applies to what I look like. As easy as it was to remake the house, it is impossible to make me. I have to let it be.
Remaking the house is easy because we have memories. We’re remembering now that we’re awake. But for your body, you need a reference.
The words feel too nebulous when looked at individually but together, I understand. The house is supposed to provide for my needs but it needs to learn, just like me, the shape of these needs before it can provide.
My stomach rumbles. I’m hungry. At the house’s urging, I leave it in search of food. As the door closes behind me, I find myself forming a shape. I’m wearing clothes: loose black trousers, a billowy white shirt, a black choker and shoes that point at the toes. I do not know if this is good or bad but since no one reacts, I assume it is fine.
I don’t know how I’m processing everything but now that I have form, it’s easier to think, to find words to describe things. The house is a presence in the back of my head, learning with me.
I’m in a circus and my nose directs me to a tent that contains food and slowly, on my way there, I become aware of other senses. I can feel perspiration under my armpits. My toes are cramped in the shoes. The trousers flap around my ankles awkwardly. I can taste the rain in the air. The breeze on my face feels like a touch.
The tent offers me stew in a bowl and the people sitting there offer me a name: Ramshackle. They say it is the name of my act so it is my name while I’m travelling with them. They laugh and a smile cracks my face. They say I have been asleep for sixteen hours. A nasty flu was doing the rounds and they’re glad I’m awake now.
Awake, what a curious thought.
It takes me a millennium of being among you folks to truly understand how I came here. I was born out of unfulfilled human desire. As much as humans want to achieve things, they equally like to bury their heads in the sand. They desire with their entire being. They desire with so much depth and jealousy that it is breathtaking.
But only a fraction of this desire turns into action. Most is buried so deep into the soul that it leads to despair and death of human potential. My purpose is to consume this potential.
The house informs me there was another before me. It too had been called Ramshackle. When I ask what happened to it, the house goes silent. I don’t ask again.
I have lost track of the time I have spent among people. But Kilney has been the first one who has questioned my existence, my purpose. When you think of the number of contracts I have executed it is astonishing that Kilney is the first.
He is still reeling from the hurt of his beloved’s departure. He is not seeing things clearly. He does not understand he is to take my place. Well, not take it per se but evolve it.
The thing is, I understood only one part of my assignment, consumption. But I missed the second part, the corollary, the other side of the coin. To eliminate the need for consumption. I was so focussed on unleashing the hidden potential of humans that I forgot to teach them how not to bury it. Instead of making my job redundant, I made myself invulnerable.
In that sense, and only that, I think Kilney is right about the people who choose to sign contracts with me being cowards. I do not agree that coming to me is an act of cowardice. It takes courage and a sense of detachment to unmask yourself; not slowly, but deliberately and all at once, in all your stark, delusional glory. But it is a quick fix in the long run because it does not allow you the time to study what a slow unmasking would provide.
Why is slow better? I believe that is a human’s purpose. To look underneath all those layers that they hide behind, and see themselves. It takes a lifetime, as it should, because only when they die, are they fully formed.
For all my skills, I do not know how to communicate all this to Kilney. I know I need his help. But how do I get him here? For it has to be a journey he takes, unlike and yet like all those people who come to me, and all I can do is guide him. I know the pace frustrates him. But how do I help him, so he can help me?
18 of 26 of an ongoing series The Dream Maker. You can read all posts here. Written as part of #BlogchatterA2Z.
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