Antiphony

by Chris Katsaropoulos

  It is a short walk down a wide hallway, a gallery really, of empty conference rooms with walls of glass. The one he wants is the largest one, at the end of the corridor. Each of these rooms is like a fish bowl surrounded and defined by glass, their inhabitants visible for all to see. He stops outside and sees the room full of people, many of whom he knows, and the sight of him freezes them for an instant, the ones who don’t have their backs to him. There is Pradeep, his eyes wide, watching him with the same look Thomas must have had, seeing him stand before them again, back from the dead. There are several of the Board Members, half a dozen of them on one side of the room who can see him through the glass, with the Chairman at one end of the table, wondering why he is here. And there is Victor at the other end, staring at him, his eyes pinched down to a glare, gesturing with one hand touching the other, about to make a point, and wondering whether Theodore will simply continue to stand there as a spectator, a witness to what is happening, or whether he will have the audacity to actually come into the room among them.

  Theodore does go in. He watches them for a moment longer, frozen there in a tableau, a group of men gathered round a table in a painting; he approaches the glass door and opens it and enters. Then there is a moment, the moment of his ultimate power, when all eyes are on him standing before them in one corner of the fish bowl as it were, even the eyes of those who had their backs to him, who have turned to see what the others are staring at—who has entered the room?

  And Theodore can see now what he couldn’t have understood yesterday or the day before: They have brought someone in from outside! Theodore is not the only reason Pradeep has a look of shock and anguish on his face. There, on the righthand side of the room, among the women and men who had their backs to him, is the outsider, a Russian physicist named Rainer Milshovsky—half Russian, half German now that he thinks about it—the director of the program at the University of Moscow, who could be here for no other reason than to take Victor’s job. That’s the one thing Pradeep and Theodore could not consider in their closeness to the situation and to each other, that the Board might actually dare to go to someone outside the Institute—they had been so busy trying to jockey for position between themselves, and Victor had never given them any reason to believe otherwise, and now here he is, Rainer, sitting between Amanda and the Chairman looking already like he owns the place.

  It could be that they have brought Rainer in as the token of a thorough search, to mollify the Board and maintain all sense of propriety that all available qualified candidates have been considered. There had briefly been talk from Victor of wanting to hire a woman, or some other minority candidate, but in their many discussions over lunch in the student union or in the narrow enclosure of Victor’s office, Victor had always assured Theodore that he had the inside track. The look of pure shock and despair on Pradeep’s face confirms it—the Russian is in.

  Victor breaks the spell. “Theodore, it’s good to see you. I’m glad you’re okay.” This last is said without a trace of malice towards the interloper in the midst of their party. But then Victor does have to ask the question everyone is thinking as they stare at him.

  “What do you want?”

  The revelation comes from the question. Theodore scans the room and then his eyes go towards the far wall, also floor to ceiling glass, with a broad expanse of sky on the other side. From behind a shred of cloud, a single ray of sun erupts, glances past and imparts to the cloud a celestial outline of golden filigree. And there, beyond the golden cloud, a single star shines halfway up the sky from the horizon—or could it be a planet? It is still close enough to daybreak to see the star trembling there, its light flickering against the gray backdrop of the morning. He closes his eyes and the light from the star approaches, the light from the star fills his vision, fills his head and he sees it as a worshipping of the star in the east in the chambers of his imagery, the star of morning and the sun combining, the star of morning fills his vision as a single eye. The secret vision of the spirit thrust his sword in the fellow’s side to open the star everywhere to seek what’s inside and also afar off the star brought near enough to touch, the star which is fallen down from heaven into his open sword wound and his open single eye, the star which grows beyond his secret vision to encompass all and all, with colors blooming from points of color dying daily, point of orange grows to red and green and blue, point of blue enthralls to purple, pushes open leaves of violet and magenta, octave pushing up and out to the eye between the brow and through the crown beyond the head, the thousand-petalled canticle, the hymnal lingers at the door to seek what’s inside and afar off, the star that opens everywhere encompassing all and all. Trembling literal raise a whisper of light of perishable undaunted violent light to the heavens from within exploding outward through the star that’s fallen from the sky and flowing once again through the body through the coursers and the rivulets and channels of the body through the lovely luxury clean replies of petals at each crossing whom the light belongs to wrapped up and from every candle rippling petals flickering the light progresses up and out and back through the body to the heavens once again. Be the star that he is one with it, with points and spheres and whirls of color dying daily. Be the light and behold it—for beyond the light is only the source of the light. And the source of the light is only he who is. Why lament the light and the source of the light when he is one with it, why suffer being separate and apart. He allows to be open the thousand petals thousand doors to every myriad channel and the light pours through him, directs from violet into white. The whiteness of all colors and all sound, the blessed chord of all vibrations all notes sounding together and at once, turning light into color into brightness into blossom abstract absence of substance torrents bursting out of breathing into sound all white and bright and standing in the middle of the sun there is no feeling left, there is only empty whiteness and a terrible savage tearing sound which is the absence of all notes because they all become as one. This is the perfect point where all wishers wants are washed away, the circle point, the diameter circumference and center all in one. From unity there is no need, there is no angle to perceive. From oneness one whole note the prayers of the saints are whispers undenied, from one and only sound the exhibition of another angel with a golden censer floating and sinking can only perish exposed until it is no sound at all. From one whole and only light, there is no more singing, no more dance, there is only tapestry of white. The circle point, the center golden white, the source of every light. I am, in a word, in an instant, I am the point and the circle which is perfect every where and no where all at once. I am here and there, which is singularity and infinity and every moment locked into one, the circle and the point which knows no bounds, which knows and loves and is. I and he and others never wasn’t, we will always be. The moment of beginning is a dreadnaught moment without end. The only every many one of whiteness and dazzling triumph cornets from the heavenly harp magnifical and mighty. The thousandfold and billionfold and myriads of millions of conspirators of particles of light are only really sound the single sound that made the ravening the rending falling out on the earth, are really only one sound that precipitates and propagates through whatever promise of joy could hold itself together long enough to love. There is only one, there is only I me I he I we am are he is I am us. There is only white bright sound light spell forth twanging single sound chord note behold bespoke to forthwith hold the white bright flagrant flashing light sound noise that’s twanging back and forth behold the earth. There is only what he is and only what he is being through his seeing solid sea of sound. Through his hearing solid spectacles of searing light. Through this one and only antiphony of sacred bliss, insomuch as he is and it is and there is only it, he is delivered to a glorified is and only is, he is pouring out his vial to the only vessel which can receive it, sending it out unto himself. He is and only that which is can be him. Can pour it out and send it unto himself and receive it. And then, behold a new thing. A second thing, an other thing. A s
eed of thought, a grain of sand that grows and grows, propelled by nothing more than the authority of his thinking. The word came forth, the thought that gives rise to everything in form is nothing more than the idea that there is separation, there can be more than one. Blessed is the man, the voice which gives authority to the word, and blessed is the thought, which is not a chastisement nor a blasphemy, blessed is the thought which moves the one into the many, for the one must know itself and feel the force of movement through the growing burgeoning wideness of the more than one. So—a seed of thought that grows and grows and here now everything erupts and goes out and on and fathers outward a cup filled with separation, lamps made precious with griefs with roared and roaring bosom secret places perfect decomposition slumping outward from perfection ignorable only here now everything explodes and goes on and exhilarates here now declare ye here how now goes out from past which is the one to future which is many, here now he is blown down to his knees with roaring through his hearing ears with seeing through his searing eyes here he on his knees is blown down as everything is trumpeted and shouted out and on and on, word thought deed word on reel and fisher soul of vast and shamed battalions mountains majestic presence [shall return shall set forth] his image his aura injured his misery priceless and precise his alarm his etheric body and his every age and [plaything] and signal flame and retribution for his spirit and out and on it goes his everything explodes and dissipates and blasts itself onward as he sinks down to his knees his nostrils shrank his gazes through his Horus eyes are open and nations declaring and passage over seas and twilight liveries his flannel sweating through his shirt his trumpet call, his strings his keys and notes of the harp of stupendous magnitude and melody the red key the golden tannin beauty of the bottle, therefore on and outward he goes exploding and blasting onward from one thought that there is me and there is what is not me bursting forth from nowhere which is he: go set forth and propagate initiate and boil and burn, bait beyond the spiral exposition is expounding [shall gladly lead and instigate] and declare an adamant rejection of true sight and knowing go on and get ye hence go hear ye this O priests and hearken for there is only all the songs of things that bursting forth from him are: cash brow self-made startling soaring open air, are heart and mind and body, are certain joys and sycophants, are heavenward ridiculous inceptions, are rounding and resounding grapple calls strapping themselves besides the sky, are bosom untended and denying, so hear ye this O priests for wherewith undertaken in the exploding mysteries of light are many things [acolytes and Orion catbird calls] shall gladly lead and instigate, and all this is one moment, one instant wherein he has been driven to his knees by sound and light and many things exploding from the night, from his dreams and visions all distilled through the five-pointed beauty of the star in morning bright, from the oneness with the only one and separating from the point and riven radius circumference. Driven to his knees his singing sound is resounding through him, his light and blessed heavenward inception calls a madness through him, clarion reception in a private point of starry pearl of light. And they said to him—wherefore art thou a madness and a madman—they say to him the one at the head of one end of the table and the other at the other end—first “What do you want?” then “What are you doing?” Then, he answered, if only in his mind [behold thy servant.] And he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened, if only in his mind. The book of revelations is a secondary symptom of a madman; only those who are insane can know beyond the solipsism of this world. And in a dim corner of his madness he hears them asking, hears them filter through the on-rushing explosion of the sound. [What are you doing?] Singing, living, knowing. Opening all the way to joy. Shouting out in pure preciseness piercing pain. Be gentle, for their souls are at work. Open all the way to joy. Song, is singing, song, song, song. Be kind, for creation is also their power now and ever after. He knows now that to have a dream he must fall asleep and forget that the dream is one with the dreamer. He must have fallen asleep like all the others here and now he sees them sleeping [while he is singing]. While he is awake now what was rejected becomes the corner-stone the basis and foundation of a mighty edifice he is awake and he is pure light as thought transcending bursting forth through him as song vibration through infinity channeled through as one resounding call and response antiphony, the call is I am and the response is that I am, crucified and slain the courses of the luminaries of the heavens egress logic was asleep with nervous silver handicraft might control to Urizen to cloud-tracking holders-on with rolling lures direction precipice with heavenly eyes of Horus the gazers no particular life to suffering to Zion to blaspheme with the celestial city with the all-seeing one the solitude through changeful courage and eternity, he calls them by their names he savors as an ointment poured forth with invisible and dignified and decomposed with weeping sought the bare beginning famous for life a crown redeemed. I am light which is spirit which is energy which is projected through a screen of thought which is the idea of pure form which is as an angel standing in the sun and refracts the light into forms which manifest and express into the world of physical frozen light slowed down into objects manifest and beholden to the Lord. And the Lord is the Law of Laws which describes the forms and functions of the objects and the litanies of all the heavens and all the earth, in which way they must congregate and hold together and bear all within the bosom of their forms, which is the King of Kings, which is the Theory he sought and treasured in his days, the Lord of Lords. The Law of Laws decries that all things must turn back upon their maker, all things are emitted by their thoughts and forms through energy of spirit which is light of consciousness which is all, and refracted through the holographic screen of pure form idea they must remit and propagate and hence forth disintegrate and turn back unto their maker. So knowing this decrees it, showing this belies it, misunderstanding this is only one way to deny it. The Lord of Lords is and all ways will be was. He sees that all is thought and all is light, the King of Kings is a giant thought which came forth and always is and he is always part of it. And as a giant thought triumphant holds together cleaves unto itself, which is what he has known as Gravity, pulls itself together always any part of it is held unto the one. And as the Lord of Lords is and always will be a giant thought composed of light, all things are made of light and traverse from one point to the next in the self-same always instant, so there is no time there is only separateness of thought or unity of thought, and the degree of separateness of thought decrees how far apart the one thing is from the many, how long ago or in the future is the deed. With thought and in thought the one can travel across the vastness span of light in the selfsame always instant so traversing future past and present into now, so transgressing here and there and every-where into one. With thought and in thought most thoughts are directed into otherness and into separated forms and so they are dreams of a myriad of forms a thousand thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand, and all these forms are of necessity a promulgation and transmission of the light of thought as in a dream. And dreams dissolve and dissipate when the dreamer wakes. All dreams resolve and withdraw again into the mind the consciousness of the dreamer. So while he is awake now the dream is resolved and the only pure vision is sound vibration light of conscious spirit [while he is singing] through his body resonating with the one true light which is the Lord of Lords. And he sees now that the first forms are the simplest and they are spiral toroids whirlwinds of light twisted around upon itself and always spinning in one direction or the other up or down around or across and these are the first and basic parts of transgression physical transmission and as above so below, so all things partake of this basic formula and forging format. A human body spins and whirls with the same design as the selfsame particles that form it, for they are all projected, as above and as below, with light through the identical imaging and holographic screen. Encompass the breath of spirit, endeavor to unfold within a sheath light slowed down enough to pull together as a bright and insubstantial whir
lwind of matter, the first-slung fouling come-together of glory. This is not the first time he has awakened and seen that the Lord of Lords is this: the Law of Laws is everything is rendered unto itself, everything unto itself is rendered. This is not the first time he has been awake and seen the Duat the Qa’aba the celestial chamber the lofty ones the eye of Horus the opening of the mouth and the shaking of the earth, the horn of the hidden place watched over by the phoenix bird which is the stairway to heaven. His name was given once when he did not die a second time, he has awakened not only once but a thousand times. Everything is expelled and whirls about and turns about and is rendered unto its maker. This is not the first time he has seen his lives and who he is and has been and will be all the same. He was a priest of Akkad and Shumer once he was a tailor in Chaldee he counted bales of wheat he will be a father of a glorious sun, he dried date palms and stomped on plains of withering mud in the ancient kingdom of Sesonchusis. On Saturn once he lived as a spirit intermediary between his lives on earth, his mind expressed in colors green and tan and blue, his love endowed with crystal flowers of methane and his wisdom flowed like winds through channels curling and unfurling at a thousand miles an hour. He bore a child once in Ur and died in the bearing, in ancient Armenia he scaled the highest peak and witnessed the cavern remains of the Double Doors of Heaven, his name was given once and he rose upon the steps of Light the red eye of Horus rising through the eastern midnight, he lived as a creature barely awake through many pasts and lifetimes living his droning stately and motley lives unaware of what they might have meant, these lifetimes hereby accounted only dim and distant memories and glimpses down a mirrored hall. A meal of roasted horse flesh gathered up from the dirt floor of a wooden hut on the plains of Scythia, a life as a leather tanner in the precincts of Adana and the Cilician Gates. He died as a child and in childbirth many times, he died as a young girl slashed and hacked by marauders, he died as an old man in the precincts of Zwickau, in the land of Thuringia died then in his sleep, and all of these lives were lived half asleep doing things going places, moments of song and dance moments of despair but hardly recognized and barely remembered after death, for he was not awake then. And also there were other lives many others when he knew, he woke and was awakened and he caught himself without falling, he rose up and is risen. A life one hundred and seventy eight thousand years ago in a land whose name he has forgotten and has been wiped away from history, a language lost to eternity he spoke and taught others to speak, he wrote it down on parchments and kept it safe within the halls of a temple whose pillars and beams have turned to dust. He was awake then and he knew the Law of Laws that everything is rendered unto itself. He lived many short lives and several of them in China and others in America thousands of years before it was called that, and he was awake in those lives and saw his former and future selves, in one of those lives he was a teacher, in several of them he was a slave not knowing half-asleep, in one of those short lives he lived as a merchant selling wine in the ports of Santander and Gijon. He never left some places traces of his spirit there remain, he went back to several times and places and lived with his other selves there again and again. In India he died once or twice or a hundred times, the lives spread before him are too numerous to count. The lives and births and deaths spread out before him like a tapestry of knowing and unknowing, motion pictures that are more than films, that are lives he could slip into and exist within again if he chose. All the languages he ever spoke too numerous to count: Hebrew, Persian, Syriac and Ethiop, Armenian and Akkadian, and Old Church Slavonic, Greek and Saxon and Roman and Manx and languages whose names and sounds are lost and forgotten and have not yet been spoken. He performed the designs, he has felt every emotion joy and love and fear there is to be felt, he wore on his head the celestial disk. Spread before him even are his future lives—he has raised himself so high enough to see them. They keep on going, they never end. He calls to himself and to himself responds. He leaves these lives behind. And the Lord has sent him to Beth-El and to Cambyses where the water is so weak that nothing floats upon it, and he sees a great end and in turn a great beginning for what was selected is cast away, what was rejected becomes the corner-stone of a mighty edifice. The stumbling block becomes the rock, the foundation upon which he reaches and raising himself up he has not answered them, he sees further, beyond his own lives and the lives of others, out and onward and beyond. He has raised himself up as if to float upon it, though nothing can float upon these waters, he is receiving now, for everything that can exist is in the image of the beholder. He has all time before him now he drinks from the stream of eternity and has passed by Zotiel who guards the gates, he has raised himself up to the summit of the mountain that reaches to heaven and the treasuries of the stars, he has all eternity before him. And his name was raised and his spirit, and he raises himself and the angels raise him. And he looks and sees stone and star and earth receding and all the tapestry of lives receding so he sees the luminaries of the stars in the east in their courses towards the sun and the luminaries in their courses to the heights of the darkness beyond and these are as lights cast before him as stones and pebbles in a garden, and he is lifted up to see the culminating arms and centuries and their dawn of treasure sent across the gulf beyond the regions of heaven known to man. The word of the Lord comes and electrified and with only his name and his spirit he raises himself up to beyond the stars of heaven bound together for there are cycles beyond the stars and their worlds, at the place where the stars are bound together gates are guarded by tongues of light and slipstream vehicles to deny the blight of missing currents for there is a blackness at the center which denies all everything who enter. Beyond the blackness are cycles beyond the vanities of flesh, drawn within and higher still than any luminaries in the regions known to man. And even as he has drawn himself here he sees the other men who watch him [their eyes projecting what they choose to see] their eyes projecting tubes of vision of their local cramped and building world, they see him as a horror and he sees beyond what they will ever [choose] to know/ here there is a circle of cherubim with feet of burnished bronze with sickened and holy smiles to welcome whom they watch, here the wicked dare not tread the weary wanderer may come to dread the boiling treaty of his faith in form and physicality dissolves and dissipates and he sees it terraced and carved up into the screen from which it is projected overlaid with a swastika pattern of creased and cruciform grid, which is the screen of holographic projection, which is the pure form of idea laid over the light of spirit which infuses every thing. It sickens him and frightens him. When he is high enough and within enough now, the images he sees are beyond celestial and also still within this room and he sees the conference table and the faces of the men who look at him in horror dissolve into a cruciform swastika grid which overlays them, the whole conception of this time and space is seen by him as only something as if it might be a pixelated holograph projection without himself to do the direction /[they call for help he horrifies them so/] when he is high enough now and within enough he sees them dissolve and he is in the black space where the stars have come together, and he sees that every star is an entity, a being not unlike himself but of greater cohesion and magnitude, their coursers and their columns of light are like their limbs and pillars marching across the sun, their spirits and their names are famous creases of roiling light contained and compressed into brilliance and they come together now and then to burst forth into another life. Forsaken in the black space there are cycles above and beyond, cycles and heavens beyond spaces and times he could ever hope or dream to imagine and the only archers and singers and bidding to become is the constant Law of Laws which even here is judging and supreme, the Lord of Lords conceives of even this and defines it, which is everything unimaginable sacred and profane. For these cycles some of which are darkness for darkness is as necessary as light for darkness is only the space which light has filled and seeing the darkness means he is the light that fills it, for these cycles some of which are desp
erateness and derision for he sees there the transform of effect the pure form and foundation of physical laws, the Theory that operates on the lower level from which he has come. For these cycles are the circuits of heaven spiraling up and up and within and in and ever inward and onward and unto their courses and their cycles there is never any end. So therefore there is only himself to chastise and revise and ever inward he is drawn as outward and beyond the celestial disk he goes, and so therefore in the blackness and pure light his images are washed and torn away floods and history and crosses sheared of water hills and dread and shaking ground and music and perfume shaking trembling washed and torn away, pious land ploughed away and furrowed through the ruts on the plain and on the mount, on Capernaum and Galilee it sings through him even as it dissolves. There is a song that he is singing even as his every sense and image is washed and torn away, which is everything unimaginable and sacred and profane, his city smoke and dust his principalities, his flesh and bone and blood through these cycles and these circuits of heaven even as his limbs and lusts are torn and burned away, so therefore the veil of the temple has been rent asunder and his loosened spirit climbs the sky, trembling electrified and transformative, pulled forcibly loose legs and feet first and dragged up into the heaven, even so therefore his tormentors do see him and they [/call security, get someone up here to take him away]/ and they removed from him his tresses and his skin and his sable enclosure and tonsure at the top of his head which connects him still apparently to this world, and his song is a call that reaches to himself and the vibration of a chord that has been struck which is the string of a magnifical harp the size of infinity and no wider then a zero point, and he sees now that there is no end to the number of ticking trembling points of light that can inhabit any particle of space because there is no space there is only light God’s ways are ingenious and as it always has been is and forever shall be therefore nothing more than his own imperious and self-provoking thought and now here they are the men [who grasp him by the shoulders] they drag him knees scraping drag and pull him up the men who say/what is he doing is he singing/ some men who are come to take him away in dishonor and disgrace, but this is not the first time he has awakened and perhaps it is not the last, for he has seen now not only what and who and when and how, he has seen that it is for the sacred and profane, the darkness and the light, the madness and the sanity and reason, he has seen this time the WHY, which is a single unity of being which diverged into a myriad of forms, a thousand thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand forms, to delight in the very consciousness of being and to awaken and discover itself ten thousand times ten thousand times and as they drag him away in dishonor and disgrace he sees that it is finished now, he sees everything. He knows.