Bridge Keeper

The sun is setting in Paradise. As night comes, he might spend an hour out there, standing on the old cement bridge, without seeing a single pair of headlights cut through the darkness on the distant road.

The Bohemian, with a red tie, he has a tattoo on his right hand, three dark-blue dots in a line near the wrist.

His countenance is reserved and thoughtful, dark hair, dark eyes, a face so finely proportioned that it could almost be feminine.

The equinox has brought with it Northern storms that leave the spangled skies hard, cold, and bright after their passing. Broad leafed and lush, dark ferns grow up the face of the arroyo like a living carpet at his feet.
Behind him, a decaying fortress, packed with dark-clad figures, clings to the edge of a precipice. In the darkness and silence of the night there are hidden forces at work.

Weather-stains scar the old bridge with shadows that seem to spill away from him as I approach. He rolls his lovely full eyes, flashing them at me for a moment.

A certain haggardness is perched upon him. It looks like he might have been up for five days straight.

I try to see the world as he does, participate in his innermost thoughts, ascend a doorless staircase, cross the entrance to his spirit. His mind is free of fearfulness; an aberration grown from mere eccentricity into an immutable attribute.

"I don't see why they should have sent you down,” he says at length, breaking the spell.

"Modestia is a beautiful virtue.” I reply.

His respondent laughter is soft, cool as a shaded pool. I notice the good rich smell of his breath.

"What did you see today?" I ask.

"All I can see, I see at once, and every moment I see," he responds.

There is an edge to his tone. Restrained as he is, to an extraordinary and painful degree, the belief of his heart is in force and in pain.

He calls himself a puppet who can see the strings, but he is much more than that, The Lord and Knight of the Dark Void.

Men gave him this name in view of his claim to honor; for shining in darkness and in the shadow of death, for fighting, slashing, and dealing swift ruin in red combat.

To comfort his heart, I pass him a bottle of rum. Wafting across the improbable reddish purple night sky is an old song from the ancient garden of dreams.

We look to the fortress. The sight of the revelers appears to interest him.

Their faces stand out strangely in the lights and shadows of the tower, black-clad automatons basking in the cigarette glow of their own impossible glamour, conspirators convinced that their plot will succeed.

Frolicking in little notes, the music now quickens into rich tones and swells before bursting and toppling into silence, diminishing as if it never were.

His livid lips do not move, his eyes gaze unblinking, the bottle resting untouched in his hand. Distant stars gleam quietly over the lush oak forest undergrowth, frozen in stillness.

The most important music lessons feature no music at all.

Without a word, he returns the bottle uncorked and resumes his study of the distant road, absent of light.

The Question Of Genesis

Filled to the brim with curiosity, like a bubbling cauldron of hot liquid, I said:
"Sir, teach me about the faculty of these authorities - How did they come into being? By what kind of genesis? Of what material? Who created them and their force?”
The great angel Eleleth, understanding the wells of deep curiosity for he too had pursued the questions without end, gestured for me to sit on the fallen branch of a silver tree. He spoke to me in a voice that rumbled, as though drawn from the depths of the universe and twisted easily into an intelligible form:
"Within limitless realms dwells incorruptibility. Sophia, who is called Pistis, wanted to create something, alone without her consort. Her product was a celestial thing, a thing of white lightness that moves as gracefully as gray smoke. A veil exists between the world above and the realms that are below. Shadow came into being beneath the veil; and that shadow became matter; and that shadow was projected apart. What she had created became a product in the matter, like an aborted fetus. And it assumed a plastic form molded out of shadow and became an arrogant beast resembling a lion. It was androgynous, as I have already said, because it was from matter that it began. Opening his bestial eyes, this strangely begotten offspring saw a vast quantity of matter without limit; and he became arrogant, saying, 'it is I who am God, and there is none other apart from me.' When he said this, he sinned against the entirety. Against the entirety he sinned. A sin so great that it vibrated out and touched all the realms with its stain, leaving no place unmarked with its unholy utterance. And a voice came forth from above the realm of absolute power, saying, ‘you are mistaken, Samael, God of The Blind.’”
And Samael challenged this singular voice from above the realm of absolute power crying:
"If any other thing exists before me, let it become visible to me!"
And immediately Sophia stretched forth her finger and introduced light into matter; and she pursued it down to the region of chaos where dark things grow twisted and abandoned, turning on themselves like lost caterpillars without sunlight. Soon she returned up to her light and once again darkness swallowed matter.
This ruler, Samael, by being androgynous, made himself a vast realm, an extent without limit. And he contemplated creating offspring for himself. This idea pleased him and he created for himself seven offspring, androgynous just like their only parent. And he said to his offspring:
"It is I who am god of the entirety."
And Zoe (Life), the daughter of Pistis Sophia, could not be still. She cried out from her realm and said to him:
"You are mistaken, Sakla!" - for which the alternative name is Yaltabaoth.
She journeyed into chaos and breathed into his face, and her breath became a fiery angel for her; and that angel bound Yaldabaoth and cast him down into Tartaros far below the abyss of lost light.
When Samael’s offspring Sabaoth saw the force of that angel, saw the fire by which it moved and the light by which it shone, he repented and condemned his father and his mother, matter. He loathed her, that shadow that had become matter. He sang songs of praise up to Sophia and her daughter Zoe.
And Sophia and Zoe caught him and gave him charge of the seventh heaven, below the veil between above and below. And he is called 'God of the forces, Sabaoth,’ since he is up above the forces of chaos, for Sophia established him. For Sophia established him above the forces of chaos, so he is called ‘God of the forces, Sabaoth.’
"Within limitless realms dwells incorruptibility,” said Eleleth, the great angel sitting beside me on the cast off branch of silver.