Of Aphelion

I am travelling alone, in the darkest corner of the universe. I am a floating piece of mass; it does not matter who I am, what I am. My thoughts are not mine but someone else’s and that someone – he is a stranger. I am not mine. I never was; perhaps a desert-gypsy’s imagination, swirling in the sandstorm. Perhaps nothing.

I am travelling on a meteor, merely the size of a raft; and on my raft I am floating aimlessly, driven by the current the universe is. Enveloped by this dark infinite sea, I am merely a tiny dust particle in a great storm. Where am I to settle in the immense blank? I hear great fires born, unite, part and die. But they are all so far away; their warmth never reaches me. Cold fires, consumed in themselves. The silence between them and me is a vast abyss, unbridgeable. My senses have been my curse. If only I did not hear those distant worlds I would not know solitude. But I just cannot abandon this empty burden. Silence and I have been companions since that someone conceived me, and to forsake that silence is unimaginable. How could I go on if I was devoid of even emptiness? What would I mean if I was stripped of that emptiness too? And so, to exist I need the silence.

The stars are everywhere, above, right, left, below. But there is no need for directions here, for there are none. The only ones that exist are my own conceptions; but what do they mean to the universe? Anyway, I create them, drawing them on this vast blank. I am free to create anything here. And there is no need to follow the rules. Rules mean nothing in emptiness. But I do make some at times. They are games I play; games that never last long. I do not let them or else each game would become life.

When did you make me, my Maker?
Am I made of earth and clay too?
What are they made of?

At times, other meteors pass by; other souls inhabit them. They too are quite lost and without direction. Purposeless. But these occasions are so rare and fleeting, that I am utterly confused when they take place. I look at them and they look at me, with expressions as blank as the dark around us. We know that we are to do something then, immediately, but it is a moment of complete paralysis. We fail to act even though we are burning with inexplicable passions within. If only one of us could decipher what the passions meant. Who are they? Why did we meet? Or are they merely reflections of me; rather am I the reflection? Who then am I?

After such moments, when the meteors move far away to be consumed once again by the dark, remorse lingers, like smoke after a devastating fire. But with time, even that remorse evaporates. Once again, the emptiness.

And so on and on, my journey is endless. I cannot remember if it was yesterday I started or has it been a thousand years already? Or perhaps I always was here; or perhaps never. I cannot remember anything. I do not even remember who I am; I have no name to begin with. I am not even ‘I’. I am completely nameless for I am alone, imprisoned within this black womb of a mother who denies me birth. What lies outside her impenetrable walls? But it is not that I am curious. How can I, who has never known anything, desire knowledge?

I am travelling alone in this anaesthetic dark, in this eternal sleep. I am merely a dream lost amongst a thousand dreams. Or maybe not even that. Perhaps I am only the void in between. But I see I am trying to explain things when I myself am hopelessly ignorant and I have been doing so since the beginning.