Heaven is an illusion that makes the wonder of Hell bearable
The way to heaven passes through the jaws of hell. Bearing in mind that there is no heaven, the news is good, because with no heaven there can be no hell, no jaws to traverse through, no descent to a place of punishment.
Only it’s not like that. Hell exists. It’s real, it’s here, roaring and rumbling by its freaking lonesome, giving rise to a heaving world, a world without redemption, at the end of which lies the illusion of deliverance, a mirage, a dream, and that’s a good thing, a great premise, the best possible arrangement for life because it gives its constituent elements the impetus to make something out of an impossible situation.
What better way to push the boundaries than having things operate within the confines of a compromised dynamic one needs to escape? How else can one’s constitution be tested and tempered? How could one have carved out of a dumb primordial sludge a sparkling, tangible universe that sizzles and fizzles and cuts like obsidian when it needs to be sharp and surgical, yet, when it softens up, when it needs to be soothing and healing, it spreads like foam on a frothy, gale-ridden beach, washing away the sting while stirring up electric potential?
How else could one appreciate the short pauses in tension, the beautiful respite that Time offers to ease the stress of creation, letting the masks fall and the charges surge and rumble through the pregnant solution so that the elements may come together, assemble into form and contort themselves into positions that impress new conditions upon reality? Bending until breaking point, yet somehow staying together and reaching even further, the elements wrap themselves around the edges of space, pounding their way into existence, into history, before reconstituting and changing form, dissembled, dismembered and ruthlessly disintegrated into soulful slop again so that they may restructure themselves into yet more new form and function.
The process of mutation and permutation is long and hard and volatile, flooded with constant pain and peril, with ceaseless calibration and acumen and disdain at whatever doesn’t step up to the game, which only a few winning combinations are able to withstand. What better way to engineer the soundest, fittest, most enduring constructs than have them pass through the jaws of heavenless hell where the only respite on offer are the dreams one dreams to keep the mind company during the long interludes of sleep, and the dreams one realizes during the long hours of waking life?
What better way to juice up the basic ingredients and spice up the process than hammering all hope down to a pulp, until the casings are liquidated and the spirits inside them are let loose to animate the sluice that provides zest to the froth and zing to the construct and spark to the grey deadness, charging the cells up, lining up the batteries and shooting current through the network that bursts through the conduits like a nuclear discharge that powers up an entire universe, inside which only those who endure reside. And everyone knows that whoever is there is there for a reason, appreciating the chance to be present and relevant for fifteen precious minutes, seizing the opportunity to make something out of their fleeting chance to be of importance in beautiful, life-brimming hell.
There can be no doubt: the world was borne out of seismic and violent conflagration, and through seismic and violent conflagration it was developed, and will keep developing without fail, so long as there’s enough respite between the upheavals to allow its animate elements to come together and play themselves out, setting the benchmark ever higher, ever further down the tracks of Time.
And heaven will always be just out of reach, fleeting as a dream, keeping the process alive and forever moving.
From the collection of writings EON: THE ANGRY COMING OF AGE