Notes.

Objectively, there's not much I'm really proud of in my life, but of this, this thing you're going to get to know during the last arc, oh, believe me, I'm proud.

And with that, I'm heading back to my cave for my month-long break.

INTERLUDE. THE OTHER PLACE (The Eyes).

" Up from the dirty black water

A shadow void of form

Raised itself out of the river

And it climbed upon the shore"

(The Midnight, "Shadows")

They think they see us. All of them. Always. This is not true. They never see us. They smell us, they sense us, they spot us in the dark, scared like mice, like tiny insects we could crush under our feet if we felt like it, and sometimes, truth be told, we do want to. Still, they're wrong. They're wrong they're wrong they're all wrong one after the other. No one is more wrong than they are, poor little creatures left behind, abandoned in the darkness, forgotten, rejected. Alone. Oh, so alone.

They are as wrong about us as they are about themselves. They never see us. They have always been alone. And this place leads nowhere. There is no way out no boundaries no escape no beginning. There is nothing. There has never been anything here. This is a place of emptiness and void, of darkness and disillusionment. At first, they don't really pay attention. They're too focused, too optimistic, they think that the dark must lead to the light, but here's the glaring truth, children : the dark leads to nothing. Nothing. It is not that kind of place. The dark is everything and everything is the dark. The circle is endless.

You won't see any shape, any color, any outline, because this place doesn't want you to. It was not designed for that, if you accept the theory that every place is the result of a decision external to its existence. But the more you walk in this place, the more you surrender, the more you forget yourself, and the more we are here, and beliefs of that sort collapse. Sometimes we think it's because they don't have a solid foundation.

Oh, gods. Gods on this side of the world, gods on the other. Gods, goddesses, demi-gods, false, true, great, tiny, important and forgettable. They all believe in it, and then they set foot here, and then we wait, we watch, we follow them as they move forward, in the dark, trying to believe, trying to hold on to something, but the fact that there is nothing to hold on to in the dark, because the dark is everything.

There are no beliefs. No gods. There have never been gods. There has always been only Us.

(US US US US US US)

The fact is, we don't show up. We're shy. We always have been, more or less. We are many things, but above all we are shy. There come those strange moments when, as we float, as we let ourselves be carried away and look without concentrating too much, we think then, and thoughts lead to memories, and our memories are old (oh), they are so old, so ancient, so rancid (rancid and bitter and cold and ugly and WHITE), so much so, that whenever we can, we turn our gaze away from them, or rather our gazes, for we have more than one. But about that, of course, you know.

If you can hear us, if you can feel us, if you know who we are, then you are in this place too. Only in this place can small things like you take the measure of our existence. Otherwise, you live the totality of yours without ever suspecting it without ever seeing it without ever wanting to see it, for therein lies the key to the mystery, the great Question, the great Problem of the species that treads with its two flat feet on the earth and builds upon it countries and empires, dynasties and wars. The fact is, children, you don't want to see us. You never did.

No matter how much you say you are ready to face us, to challenge us, the wheel always comes back to its starting point, and without stopping you run away from us, you avoid us, you postpone the confrontation because deep down, in your conscious depths, in the bloody juices of your bellies, you (KNOW). All of you, as many as you are, know. And because you know so well, you don't want to see and oh, how wise you are to do so, to look away, to escape far, far away, farther and farther away, because you would have to be chronically and dramatically stupid to even look at us, even for a moment, even for less than a blink of an eye. You know. You don't look. No one looks. No one should. And we let it happen, because we know as well as you do, and that's the way it was meant to be, the way we wanted it.

We told you that there were never any gods. Never anything but blackness, nothingness, endlessly repeating cycles, and (US).

When we tell you that cycles reoccur, that things repeat themselves, it is because it is almost one of the few unique truths of existence, yours and ours. Nevertheless, you must be acknowledged for your prodigious ability to want to ignore the issue at all costs, but to say that the fact is surprising would be a lie, since we are at the very foundation of this pattern, of these repetitions, and as we pointed out to you earlier, you prefer to run away from us like the plague rather than to give us one single true look. The phenomenon has been going on for too long for us to complain about it anymore.

You want other truths? So be it. Here's one: you're always waiting for change. You hope for progress, improvement, growth. You desire and aspire to nothing more than to wallow in abundance and perfection, in evolution and development. You pray to the gods, and ask them to give you these favors. You pray to be better, to be richer, to be younger, to be more beautiful.

Another truth. We told you that the gods do not exist. Your prayers go to the wind, to silence. Your prayers go to the dark. And so, with them, your hopes. You do not change. You do not progress. In truth, while you aim for the permanent rise, you only go up a little, and then down again. Your lives are curves, with an ascending point, and a dizzying fall thereafter. Once you reach this point, no further rise is possible. From then on you just fall down, and the more you fall into the void, into time, the more you fall into us. And you close your eyes in doing so.

And so it is. Birth. Existence. Death. Most of you already know this, and half of you have already buried your heads in the sand so you don't have to face it. To face us. Because we are the end. Of what exactly is made the beginning, we only ever have a rough, limited knowledge. That is not our role. That is not our interest. The beginning is the beginning. We know when to give way. Our turn always comes eventually.

Nevertheless, and some of you may already be aware of this, and these are probably the ones that come to us the earliest, because of this terrible awareness of the ultimate destination, and the fact that everything in between, between the beginning and the end, is a distraction, we are in this beginning. We have always been in this beginning. We are scattered throughout the beginning and the middle, at every interval, at every intersection. Everything reminds you of us, everything brings you back to us.

It is not yet dark for you, of course, but the painting has already begun, and the first brushstrokes have been laid down and are waiting to dry, before the next and the next and the next, and so on until the canvas is completely black and all that is left is for you to look up to us, and let yourself be sucked into the dark. It is a thick dark, a compact dark. The beginning is also composed of darkness.

Do you see it now? How things repeat and repeat and the wheels keep turning the same way. Sure, there may be notches in those wheels. But those same notches never stop them from turning.

You will come to us. You all come. This is your end. But then what? What is the dark? Then, nothing. The dark becomes your perspective, the dark becomes your horizon. In the dark, too, it is fascinating to observe how processes are renewed. When you emerge into the dark for the first time, you feel disoriented, afraid, even terrified, and confused. Fear and incomprehension are regularly accomplices. And fear is the oldest of your reflexes, the most primitive of your reactions. Once it is chained to you, it doesn't leave you anymore. It comes to life, and its teeth are long and its claws sharp.

You appear, frightened, tiny and lost, and without fail, we send you a guide, a kind soul whose steps we guide to you, whom we separate from his former shepherd to give them the role. And to this other guardian we give another mission, another company. Here, no one is ever alone. Or, at least, no one is ever alone in practice. From a purely metaphorical point of view, however, there is hardly any place that is more likely to put the weight of loneliness on your frail little shoulders. The end is like that. You face it alone.

No one will show you the way to the dark. You have to reach it by yourself. The end is the lonely experience above all. No one else can experience it but you. It is an ocean. Swimming on the surface will still provide you with some light and company, but the further down you go, the darker it gets, and the fewer fish there are. You go down alone. We can't do anything for you until you reach the bottom.

But as soon as you set foot on it, we send someone to you. And we guide you while that someone guides you, or thinks they are guiding you. They receive only one instruction, only one indication: "walk, and walk fast". They received it from their previous guides, who received it themselves from their previous guides, who received it themselves from their previous guides. The wheel, the repetition. This is what the dark is. The same thing, again and again, without end, without beginning. Nothingness.

Oh but sometimes, sometimes we are tired. You go around in circles and we go around in circles and we are tired so tired so tired (I am so). From the moment the tiredness comes, the before follows. We were, before. Just like you were. We only remember it partially, in fragments, because the darkness has since covered everything and we have been around for so long so long, but the fact is that we were. We were not remarkably cheerful or eminently happy. But we were.

Since then, our parents are no more, our sisters are no more, nor are our children, because the dark takes everything, but we are the dark, and we took them, one after another, when the time came, when we decided it. We delayed the term once, and we always regretted it. The second one was permanent. Since then they have been wandering in the dark, like you, and you will never meet them, never hear them.

The dark is the experience of uniqueness. Except for your guide, you will see no one like you. You are unique, and Unique, under her appearance as a seductive and attractive courtesan with a melodious voice singing about greatness and her eyes glittering with ambition, promising you gold and wonders, has never been anything more than a substitute for a balding old whore named "Alone".

We look and we're tired and time does not exist any more than space and hope in this place, in the other place, in our kingdom, our territory of nothing and emptiness. The doors have always been closed to those who still refuse to look at us. In truth, even after the hinges are locked, you still refuse to look at us. Sometimes we don't mind. On the other hand, there are times when your attitudes conjure up memories, images, and the looks of our parents turning away from us so long ago (oh). We don't like to think about it. We avoid it, as you avoid us.

We have always been like that: the ones you don't want to see. The rejected ones. We used to call ourselves "the abandoned". Abandoned out of sight out of mind out of everything. In the dark, you are all as abandoned as we were. And so we guide you. We have done this before. We have gone by many names, and with them many lives. In the very beginning we were called the "soul healers". Some who have seen us, really seen us, call us "The Peacock" because there are so many of us. Or those "with the flower".

We still come with that flower. You don't like it. We don't like it either since it follows us. It scares you. We terrify you. It has been a long, oh so long time since we healed souls. We have lost what we were in the beginning. We drank too much of the dark. Instead, we watch them, alone, forgotten, wandering, and we wait. We have always waited. The wheels turn, but they can also break. All it takes is the right tools. And there are so many of us now, so many and resentful and (I want to get out I want to get out I want to get out we want to get out).

It was bound to happen. It has happened before, but you never remembered it. You probably won't remember this time either. For us, it is yet another cycle ending, another wheel being built. Always the same plan, always the same shape. But we must renew ourselves to better rule. We have always done it, since the dawn of time, since the first cosmos where the stars were magmas. We must stretch ourselves, transform ourselves. You have always provided us with such perfect opportunities.

This one is only part of a continuity that exceeds you and will exceed you forever. When it is all over, when we will have been changed and rejuvenated, when we will have regained power, then you will forget. You will forget because you will refuse to believe it, as you refuse to see us. But we are still here. We have always been here. You do not see us, you do not want to see us, but we see you. We are opened in the dark, so many of us, and we are looking.

We see you so well, now that we are (OUT).