AMKent books

“Understanding. I do not want to understand it, even though I know I do as deeply as human logic will allow me to. Tom, I couldn’t do it in time, it was time sensitive, and I knew it and I still didn’t make it. I tried, I wanted to get better, I wanted to mend myself and be ready to be there again, but this time, it was going to be right. I didn’t make it, and now my time is up, I really tried, I am not just saying it, I really did try, I tried so fucking hard to be better. What does it mean that I didn’t make it, does it even matter what meaning there is to give it? The truth is it is over, he’s gone, and I am not going to stand here and bullshit myself with ideas of hoping he’s in a better place. I wish he was here, with me! I wish I was not me, I almost had it, I really felt it at times like a mischievous little bird’s wings brushing against my fingertips. I just, I don’t know, I just didn’t catch it. Now, it’s over, and no one really cares other than me, people can feel empathetic, they might even be able to relate to aspects of it. The world just keeps on goddamn going, Night didn’t stay, and day is just as bright, I still needed the toilet, I still ate and drank, and even on the days where I thought tomorrow was a myth. I’d wake up, in a hospital or in a mess of my own biology, and that was it. It would be there just like any other old day, all that erosion, for nothing, just another fish in the barrel swimming and swimming trying to escape. What is there for me to escape to now, Tom?”

“Maybe it’s not about escaping.”

“I did escape, that’s the tragedy, I let myself escape. They did this heinous test, where George is, they set the offspring on fire to see the mother’s response in an empty room. One mother embraced her child, and they both burned away. She didn’t escape, there was no hysteria or overwhelming mental trauma, she calmly knelt and hugged her kin. I didn’t Tom, I didn’t, and that’s all there is to it.”

The Consciousness Society is a work of fiction that I am currently producing, I plan on finishing it before the end of the year if all goes to plan. This is an excerpt from a conversation between two colleagues at a research facility, dealing with the finality of loss and the awful hindsight that accompanies it. Aeschylus wrote “He who learns must suffer, and, even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.” This is a quote that I feel is poignant for understanding the state of the out of reach pain that lies in the past.