Metamorphosis

Death is but to cease to be the same, the mechanical transformation from red to yellow to green, and back to red, the constant acceleration causing life to move forwards: eggs to hatch, flowers to bloom, cocoons to open, stars to explode. To one abode; here one road leads us all. Death is the birth of something which previously did not exist, and the disappearance of another thing whose time is up. Nothing is permanent.

Therefore with adulthood comes death; we are dragonflies undergoing metamorphosis from our nymph form, shedding our transient innocence in return for self-absorption, unrelenting and unfulfilled desire. What was once beautiful becomes tedious; what was novel becomes inadequate. Here is an example.

A three year old baby, in his naked naivety, is old enough to know between right and wrong, but young enough to take it into account. He has not yet experienced enough of the world’s contradictions to try to fight against them, and he has not the capacity to notice the world’s futility. So what is the consequence of his actions as he tumbles haphazardly in the waves of Mexico, causing his parents to run frantically after him, terrified? They rescued him, clearing the salt from his blue infant eyes. But he was not crying fearfully, he was not wailing. His cries were of laughter, of amusement, of the ecstasy of his first dangerous thrill. Cheap, unexpected, his initial glimpse into a world of possibilities, deadly risks which knock the wind out of you and render life worth living.

Twenty years later, this baby’s innocence has washed out with the tide, his involuntary immersion into life’s excitements evaporated into clouds. In this present moment, the ocean holds no more pleasure for him than a cigarette, burning the air around him, filling his body with a warm, plastic replicate of the good old days. A la recherche du temps perdu, he desperately seeks a modern wave to sweep him off his feet, to propel him into unknown depths. Amid the techno beats and voices encircling his head, there is an omnipresent solitude. This unwelcome sentiment is countered only by prescribed remedies, a tidal pull in the form of a pill, injecting colour back into his black and white veins. His sense of self is consequently vaporised, dissolved like medication on the tongue. Girls, unaware of his dark and broken being, flash past his glassy eyes, fleetingly kissing his cheek. They are his forbidden monsters, conspiring against him, falling in briefly to take for granted his vulnerability, then rushing out just as suddenly, leaving him skeletally empty. His disposition suffers, his blue eyes no longer hold contact, his fingers tremble upon electronic keyboards in his lightless home. He is utterly alone, awaiting the apocalypse. Human existence is chaos, a raw and undivided mass, devoid of reason, definition, or pattern. A mind infected by treason, loud music, and hypochondria, he is weary of his shadowy loneliness, and longs for inspiration: spiritual, metaphysical, psychological, whatever.

His desire is finally realised somehow with an abrupt change in character, a sudden tangible confidence, a metamorphic phase of sorts. Silver wings burst out of his back like flowers, and hypotheses spill out of his eyes, philosophical concepts seeming to unlock universal secrets. His focus is no longer averted timidly to the floor; he stares vertically through contrails and stars, discovering scientific theories, overwhelmed by the ideas being concocted in sleep. His dreams contain fantastical pictures, cinematic scenes of nuclear destruction, cosmic fires, planetary order. At last he senses a pattern, a clearly structured design in the way of things. No longer afraid, he is entirely invincible, a God in his own right, one of the few who possesses the knowledge of antiquity, of ancestral shores. He is immersed in the undertow, rolling on the edge of the breaking wave, and laughing hysterically.

Recording his ideas on napkins, post-its, receipts, cigarette cartons, empty spaces of wall, transforming it into a story, creating plot, character, setting, outcome, he falls head over heels in love with it, with this idea. At the same time, he is wary, as he knows of the perils that would face him, should his story leak. The authorities would be curious, men with guns circling his palace would coax him outside through a megaphone, patronisingly talk him down, psychologically manipulate him as though he were a criminal. He would be crucified, they would drown him in their confusion, weigh him down with a thousand questions unanswered and unanswerable. A martyr, maybe, but he still has things to do, things to learn, things to write, before that end. He must save himself.

When it comes down to it, all we can do is save ourselves.

Living for days in secret, in a state of superlative fear, he hears only the metallic sound of helicopters ticking incessantly overhead like armed clocks, hovering as though suspended on string, waiting for it to snap. His phone rings but is disregarded—it could explode, break up into millions of jagged and radioactive pieces which would pierce through him, put holes in his palms. There is no trick they can pull on him, no ploy which he has not thought of beforehand. If they took away his life, at least his knowledge would be immortalised in text.

And there he remains for a lifetime, perched stoically in the shadows beneath his desk, pen in hand. His skin moulting, his black eyes bulging, his wings crumpling like paper. He is fallen from flight. The lights outside his window burn red, buzzing away at him tauntingly. The waves keep on coming on, deafeningly so, but he’s lost the ability to laugh.