Decoherence

He didn’t know why he was here; all he knew was that he was. He had never stepped foot in a religious establishment before, but for some mysterious compulsion he had ended up here.

The cathedral walls were lined with vessels across its high dome as if it were somehow sentient and aware that he was here for no reason imaginable. It was watching him and judging his every action. Jacob looked up at the high dome, the glass windows that let in an unearthly light, casting shadows flickering in the dim light, and knew why people found solace in such places. Except for the droning sound of the High Priest of the temple, it was calm and serene. It was making his mind complacent.

“…” uttered the High Priest. “…” he continued unperturbed. “…” was the answer to the question posed by Existence itself. “?..?...!” exclaimed the unabated breath of the consoling voice. “…” droned the sound of silence and peace.

Fred had committed suicide only six months ago, and from the depths of Los Angeles his voice called to him. Deprived of one of his greatest friends, he had journeyed far away from the source of pain. Jacob had a little pain whose eyes were black as coal…

Grace Cathedral had called to him as he was on the 38 going down Geary Street on his way to the Embarcadero. John had always talked so passionately about Berkeley, the culture of counter culture, and the deprivations of the left wingers. Jacob wanted to experience the feeling that one of his dearest friends had cherished so much. But instead of continuing to the Embarcadero, he had found Grace Cathedral.

Frantically he had pulled on the cord that would halt the moving monstrosity of a bus, with its accordion like middle that swayed back and forth like some slithering creature of modernity. And the modernity of this cathedral called to him as if Gabriel himself had descended and whacked Jacob over the head with his trumpet.

The congregation had ignored him; let this heretic enter its wide hall with open arms, unaware that he may not appear what he was. And wherever Jacob went, this pain was sure to go. He sat in the back, as far away as he could go, without having to stand at the door, from the pulpit of calmness and serenity that called its flock to itself. With numbing words and slicing solace, the words of the High Priest of the temple incanted some foreign words that Jacob had only read in textbooks: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.

And the greatest of these was Family.

Jacob’s attention, though, was withdrawn from the enchantment and was fixed upon the corpuscle like veins of flowing vessels through the high dome. It’s alive! He said inwardly. This is all a machination of our human imagination that has fed our minds like fire through the ages. But outwardly his visage revealed nothing but emptiness, no life present, no passion transparent.

The thought of his friend, now gone to join the Universe in harmony, still haunted him through sleepless nights. The void was something that the beings in this temple were afraid of, but the Void did not exist. It was only a figment of human fallibility—of Human frailty.

There was only matter, and that was the only thing that mattered to Jacob. Transformation was the Law, and Chaos tore it all apart without mercy. It was a paradoxical thing, this Existence, but to deny the paradox was to dwell in complicity with complacency, and that was not acceptable. The Ethos knew no Morality: It only cared about consistency; and consistency was a paradoxical thesis in this protean Universe of divergence and convergence.

His eyes were drawn to the unearthly light, conflagrant with paradisiacal hues hinting of another world, another dimension. But Jacob knew the truth: There were eleven of them. And their erotic touches caused destruction and construction in time only measurable by division of millions of seconds. The power of construction were also measurable but in exponents of millions. In his Universe, there was no room for minute mites.

The High Priest of the temple, it seemed to him, was almost finished with the enchantment, and the incantation of a spell of complacency almost complete. “…” continued the Shaman of the Word. “…” of the verbiage there was no doubt. “…” in the truth of light there can only be Faith unbound by reason and logic. “…” the world was the staging ground between day and night.

Jacob stared down the pew to see a face watching him askance, as if it were a spy for the enchanting spellbinder. It stared at him unblinkingly as if he had committed a crime, a trespass against something mighty and holy. Jacob stared back in dire opposition against the accusation. It relented and let him free. He relaxed and let his eyes wander around the gloomy dome.

He wondered how the dome was kept so clean. Did they hire cherubim and seraphim to fly to those nauseating heights with sponge and bucket? He chuckled and another face turned to him with more accusations. This time, Jacob didn’t stare back because he was afraid that it wouldn’t stop staring back at him. He closed his eyes in mock prayer and imagined baby cherubim and seraphim cleaning the dome of this cathedral with sponges.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, out of the blue yonder, he felt despondent in all this half-silence. Though he was surrounded by other sentient beings, the Law of Silence made it seemed as if they did not exist. Like membranes afraid to touch for fear of explosion and creation, no one spoke, no one smiled, and no one tried to communicate with each other.  It was as if one was allowed to exist, but not live.

“…” the drone continued. “…” communication was only one way. “…” the mirror was dark, so only He can see you. “…” but you can’t see Him.

Waves of nausea and feelings of asphyxiation concentrated themselves in his lungs, and heart. His mind was aflame with explosions of matter, of light un-transcendent, of existence waiting to be born. He wished John was here to spew forth his philosophy of nihilistic despair, of existence without persistence, and the death of the individual in favor of the hive. If your atoms scattered all over the Universe, would you still be yourself?

Gulping down the stale air, exhaling stagnant breath, he was about to stand when everyone else stood. All bowed their heads, and suddenly there was one voice in unison crying out to the Unknown one—the one behind the dark mirror. Then it was over and Jacob rejoiced and saw that it was good. Someone shook his hand as he turned and slowly fled toward the double doors of salvation. When the gates opened with a silent cringing of the hinges, the bright light of day almost blinded him. Pulses of invisible and visible spectrums of inviolate light shot through his being. As he walked half-blinded toward the street, he still questioned why he was here. That question, though, he thought to himself, he would never be able to answer.

Standing on the sidewalk on Geary Street, he looked toward his left down the slanting slope. He looked toward his right toward his previous destination. Letting out a howl of freedom and mock despair, he charged down the hill with a fast gait; not running, not walking. His finger pointed at people and in his mind he said: you, toiling in the dirt, don’t you understand you need to rise from that dankness and be a greater self? You, pushing that cart along this expansive highway, what will you do with all that you save? You… you… you… all you stop and express your inner vitality and let go of this humiliating self-execration of your integrity and rise to meet the new dawn of Humanity!

“Damn Nietzschean freak!”

But he didn’t care, let everyone think he was crazy, let everyone think he was psychotic, because only in the end will truth be let itself known.

He chanted to himself: believe not in things you cannot disprove; believe not in things you cannot avoid; believe not in things you cannot wrong; believe not in things you cannot destroy. Then he stopped and raised his hands to the sky: believe only in things you can comprehend, believe in doubt, and only believe that when you come to terms with yourself.

“Are you all right?” a young woman asked him. “Do you need something?”

Jacob’s eyes gazed at her and he smiled. “No,” he told her. “I only need my integrity and the ability to love that which I can comprehend.” Misunderstanding him, she pulled out a flower from her pouch and gave it to him.

“Peace,” she said and walked away.

Gaining his equilibrium, his mind coherent under the bright afternoon Sun, he sniffed the flower that brought a smile to his face. He was once again cogent, and the cohesive force of the electromagnetic forces of the Universe called to him once again. Answering the call, he ascended the bridge spanning Geary Street, and crossed over to the other side.