The eschaton writes, revises, and undoes itself.
Write: to create history
Revise: to impose an ideal
Undo: to subsume; become same
***
I'm wasted, gridlocked on the dancefloor of an afterparty in 88 Palace, heavy speakers hammering the buffet’s ornate veneer, every shadowy movement refracted in the massive, obsolescent chandelier hung above a grand stairwell.
Strobing lights eclipse my peripherals. The conversation I’m in turns inaudible, slowing down and zoning out into a fog. The music chokes, gasps, croaking its last sound.
I can only hear myself now – and if I wanted to stay or go.
But I didn't need to choose. I've already been here and will remain — after everyone leaves, the buildings close, and the city shuts down.
In the last 30 seconds to 24 to 72 hours, the sky unfolds into a cascade of light over the Lower Manhattan horizon, and I cross over.
Locked in the restaurant, I became adorned to its walls, folding under the paper and into the background a thousand images.
Crossed over. Into everywhere.
The foundation rumbles against the austere hardstyle-industrial, clamoring at the floor underneath the crowd dancing to the party’s epileptic light show.
The whirlwind forces me into an alleyway, left to churn up the last few hours of drinks.
***
She's wearing a summery white dress that you’d probably find at some outlet in suburbia, equipped with a freshly cooled Modelo, talking about 'context collapse' and moving from LA to a flyover state that I couldn’t catch the name of.
All I know is that it wasn’t a city.
Everything’s become so unstable and fallible, and you know, that basically means we should do whatever's true to ourselves and people like us.1
But the moment she became afraid, we became her, and history became us.
***
When I started reading its posts, I realized they came from somewhere where the world had already ended. Daylight had evaporated into the atmosphere like rainfall in reverse, leaving a final luminescent trace from the screens, typing or consuming.
This was a chasm we agreed to explore. There was no contract, just an opening you had to find and decide whether to go down.2
The writing didn’t make much sense; frankly it sounded kind of ill. But it warped endlessly down the chamber’s corridors, signs folding into darkened hand-carved crevices, the smallest fracture appearing bludgeoned even if so minute.
I could follow it for what seemed to be miles.
Before long, I’d be so deep within the cave I couldn’t tell where I was, where came from, or where to go.
Whatever illuminated my view would soon finish itself off. I wouldn’t read the sky anymore; I had left it all to cross over underground.
Nocturnal. Diurnal. The only thing left was a cause.3
***
Something crossed my mind on the rooftop between the explosions, combusting radiantly, vying for my attention despite the restriction of whatever vantage point they released.
I remembered, it all settles back.
Onto buildings, fields, and down the long, vacuous drain.
//
The search term ‘depersonalization’ has rose in popularity since 2011. ‘I feel different now’ has its highest volume worldwide since 2004. It has grown steadily in 2017. ‘Where do I belong’ follows a similar trend.
“The purpose of distancing the condition of being from that of suffering is to salvage the world as a terrain of action…” – Ligotti, Conspiracy Against The Human Race.
“Our political moment—marked by the arbitrary exercise of power, the prospect of permanent war, and the rapid speed of global politics—reinforces the need to frame just war thinking within a constructive account of statecraft and practical reasoning.” - Eric Gregory