The Painting

A great storm—-not manifest in rolling thunder and flashing lightning, or in frozen, blinding whiteness, nor in the bits and pieces of lives and life swirling in a funnel cloud—an internal psychic storm that shows itself in broken and twisted limbs, faces distorted by pain and terror, screams of agony and despair, pulsating tremors of errant life and violent convulsions, and the smell of death ... eternal.

A man stands before the painting—a living painting of Dante's Inferno—a gruesome mass of groaning, writhing, screaming, spitting, naked humanity in a deep inescapable pit that recedes from view the longer you look at it. Unlike the numberless mass graves of human history, it is different in that it lives and breathes and moves.

"Is this you Europe, again?"

"It is required of you" says a voice.

There is no one else present. The man is alone with himself.

"What ... what is required of me?"

"It is required of you" repeats the voice.

He answers, "No, it is not. I have no obligations here."

"It is required of you."

"No, They chose or were fated. I prefer to think that they chose. Weren't we all endowed with the ability—maybe even the right—to choose? They are pitiful—these ones—but not pitiable. All no doubt had excuses, villains to blame. The victims' crutch. Perhaps they tried to escape, to achieve ... significance, but now, look at them. They're maggots feeding on their own flesh."

"You misunderstand. You have no choice. I repeat: 'It is required of you.'"

"This isn't real. This is the effect of something I ate or a neurological response to an undetermined environmental stimulus. It will be pass."

"Your stubborn certitude is noted, but we've only been at this for a few of your minutes. We will wait. For us time is but one of many dimensions as is space and as are concepts and sensations. Nevertheless, we have to communicate with you through those basic media, as you seem to have difficulty comprehending matters as simple as a point or unity or even existence. Naturally, your gestures, vocabulary and grammar, too, are inadequate, but what you call language is how you communicate with one another, and so it is what we must use to reach you. Although, you think of us as an other existing in your space-time world, you and we are not as dichotomous as you imagine.

"I haven't read Kant in decades, and I never cared much for Heidegger, but what do they have to do with your directing me to walk into this painting?"

"We believe the word that fits the situation is 'paraphrase.' We paraphrase using the language of your reality."

"You're being evasive.... But here's a question for you? If I step through into the painting, then so will you, am I right?

"That's accurate enough for our purposes."

"And will you be eternally destroyed as well?"

"Here, you limit us. Destruction implies space and time, and neither fully captures our essence ... or yours.

Come, walk with us. There is a path beyond, but we can tell you no more for now."