Sandcastle

*

The Cathedral in Cologne looks like a spaceship.
Like the hand of God falling from the sky..

A thousand stone carved saints hang like icicles,
but icicles don’t take a thousand years to die…

And everyone who ever worked on this Cathedral
or even spent a moment walking by
are just swept away like breadcrumbs…

What comfort does it bring?

Soaring towers left behind…

*

If there is one thing particularly troubling about utopian visions, and imaginative paradises, beyond the basic fact that mere reality in it’s unwavering centrality can never amount to them, it’s the hidden fact that one’s capacity for imagining such places comes with the terrible price of a reciprocal balance. Visions of places, also rooted in reality, who’s sheer horror and immensity possess the power to consume and crush one’s sanity, are destined to inject themselves into such minds, with as much convincing vividness and unpredictability as their sister utopian visions.

Oddly enough, I have a craving for strawberry pancakes to thank for this latest descent into paralyzing madness. After a day and a night and a morning of sleeplessness I set out, on foot, towards a local breakfast destination to satisfy my craving. Upon arrival I found the place to be uncharacteristically busy, and stood behind a small crowd of hippies who, like the bulk of the patrons, were returning from the weekend’s "Bliss" festival several miles north of town. Resenting the sheep-like feeling standing there with my hands in my pockets generated, I sat down on the waiting bench and rifled through the stack of newspapers looking for comics. The group of hippies were seated, and as I sat patiently I watched a number of other A-typical fatass americans waltz through the door and promptly have their scowling faces seated as well. At last I stood and snagged the attention of a distracted waitress, who like the rest of her employees emitted a strong air of contempt and disdain for all of the customers, and she hurriedly led me into the fray of tables and proceeded to attempt to sit me in the last place I wanted to sit.

Sandwiched between a small pack of Emo boys, all with identical moppy hair, clothed in earth toned T-shirts and women’s jeans, engaging in such stimulating discourse as "huh-huh-huh" and "dude, huh-huh-huh," and another booth with two monstrous piles of american flesh and one screaming infant that the unhappy mother was wagging up and down casually and indifferently, as if she could no longer hear the screams. The waitress began wiping the table for me, and although I meant to say something along the lines of "Actually, ma’am, I’d prefer to sit over there, away from the window," it came out as a harsh and short "I’m not sitting here." And as she reeled a bit and started, my irritation got the better of me and I unnecessarily explained myself. "I just hate kids," as if that was some kind of polite justification for my desire to be seated elsewhere. Unfortunately, the mother heard what I said and found nothing polite about it, and turned towards me with a hate filled look, and the father did the same, only with slightly less tenacity. I was shortly thereafter escorted to another booth at the other end of the circus like dining room, and after sitting down and getting comfortable staring at nothing, my mind wandered and for a moment I entertained a vague concern for the fat woman I had just offended.

This concern melted rapidly into insignificance, and as I sat there amidst the clinks and clangs and meaningless small-town banter, the concept of insignificance festered and grew within my silent exterior. An image violently threw itself into my unexpecting mind like the call of Cthulhu, and all of a sudden I could see, from an angle light years away, the sun’s perpetually leaking rays accelerate their pace and dissipate in the blink of an eye. Across the galaxy other stars followed suit and rapidly winked out. Around it, the expanding universe began to do the same, accelerating yet again, as all matter and energy in an instant pushed outward and diluted the particles of the universe into near nothingness. On it’s heels, as I put my head against the table gripping my ears and mentally screaming for it to stop, the diluted universe accelerated again until each tiny particle existed alone in a infinite patch of emptiness and darkness, with no eye or consciousness to behold it…