Amélie Dulay 4th may 2049

I sat on a lichen-encrusted and weather-worn rock on the southern side of the hill the mansion occupied, still shaded by the bulk of the hill due to the early hour, enjoying that the air was now moist with the evaporation of the last of the night’s dew. I watched as sunlight slowly crept around the girth of lookout hill, the landmark I was on, already illuminating the valley in front of me, working its way uphill amongst dead grapevines, some not only older than me but indeed dead since before I was born. The peculiar, somewhat enigmatic qualities of the property meant that unexplainably, they were almost mummified, preserved against all odds, withstanding the elements and biologic degradation much longer than seemed possible. In a way, they are beautiful, enduring, majestic. If I was poetically inclined I no doubt would have something to say about things enduring and beautifying long after their demise, some allegory for the way aspects of us, or our work, the way we touched the lives of others, our echo can endure after we ourselves are long gone.

They were of course almost drowned in the weird ever-present and entirely fruitless blackberry bushes, housing the likewise ubiquitous moths. The air was as objectively unpleasant and subjectively nostalgic- the smell and feel and sense laden and pregnant with bittersweet memories- as it always was.

Even the unpleasantness and foulness in itself was a bit of a paradox: it was cleaner than the air of the cosmopolitan metropolis I called home, despite all attempts at cleanliness and restoration, with its still omnipresent byproducts of incomplete combustion, and the fine dust generated by wear and tear of thousands of people walking, driving, toiling, living.

A thriving, bustling, teeming warren of life, worn down and thin and ragged by the very same life, only to be replaced and build upon, perpetually burying the old under the new, to continue on, retouching, painting, dressing up and temporarily covering in cheap make-up, aggregating more soot and grime and sorrow, and hiding underlying structural weaknesses along the way.

A city, I decided, is a good metaphor for the way a lot of people live their life, melancholic would-be philosophers enjoying morning air smelling very faintly of too old socks and more strongly if unknown more exotic things included, unfortunately.

Despite myself, I smirk. Yes, I did miss this place, all my history here and the weirdness and my family’s “eccentricities” and secrets notwithstanding. I take a bite of the shriveled apple I plucked, wondering again if I ever saw a normal one in the dilapidated orchard, that particular bounty growing plentiful but aged and decrepit from the start. It was bitter, as all I ever took were, and tasted slightly different than any I had before- just as any of them had tasted subtly different from any other. And as with any other, I felt refreshed by it, not merely because that, too, was a major callback to the time I spent here, talking to my uncle, listening, thinking, theorizing, discussing, and planning.

It was not all bad- even dreaming, strapped onto that single bed inside the faraday cage on the mansion’s first floor, monitored by just about any kind of sensor system humanity devised in over two hundred years, and the inability to remember my dreams was not all bad.

At least not as bad as monitoring oncle Pièrre and other volunteers during their shifts on the bed, writhing in stupor and struggling, rearing against their restraints involuntarily, barely within the upper limit of human physicality. That sight in turn was nothing compared to their reactions if you asked them any of the thousands of questions we collectively brainstormed during the day, never knowing what would lead them to the most peculiar epiphanies come morning. Those moments of Eureka, of revelation, of reinforcing the notion that what we did was worthwhile- they were almost worth the ululations and bizarre rambling that always came oh so very close to making sense, but never did to an awake, sane mind.

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Reflecting on or, to be completely honest, avoiding my history in the overgrown mansion lead me to think back to other aspects of my childhood. Apart from my visits and work with oncle Pièrre, religion was the defining feature of my childhood. Not any one particular religion- my parents changed denominations and even base belief systems as others would shop for new clothes. They were driven, haunted. Not by the pursuit of a glimpse of what they would deem a shadow or notion of divine truth. No, they, for whatever reason, looked for divine truth in the hope that it would offer them protection- or absolution, I guess.

The same fervor that got them to join just about every guru cum methdealer they could find was what lead them to leave just as quickly.

What changed their mind was not the fact that about any one of two thirds of their chosen saviors was an armed paranoid sleazebag looking at their prepubescent daughters as a starving man would a banquet.

That any one of them was spouting vague new age platitudes and insisting that for the end of material longing, it was necessary to give your earthly possessions, I mean burdens, to him.

That such a person might not be the most trustworthy or enlightened source of spiritual fulfillment- albeit that put those particular individuals in lather lustrous company, now that I think about it.

No, it was the gurus’ and snake-oil salesmen’s and would-be cult leader’s and actual cult leader’s inability to answer specific questions. Even more often, it was their attempt to answer them in a predictable fashion according to common cultural depictions in western media or according to whatever mythology they “borrowed” from to cobble together their particular narrative- as was expected of the unimaginative, the creatively deprived, the slimy hacks and liars they were. Questions concerning curses and otherworldly entities.

I was thankfully roused from my progressively darker reminiscence, and for a moment, I thought it is due to the morning sun having reached me and pleasantly warming me and the soil underneath, light, clear, life-giving and pure and beautiful, reaching even here, despite the superstitious nonsense my irreverent, small father would claim about his brother-in-law’s home.

No such luck. What broke through my thoughts is the person approaching me.

I have never seen him before, but I have seen people like him plenty of times.

It was not the haunted look, or the ever so slightly miscoordinated, clumsy movement. Neither was it the tattered clothing.

Any of these could have identified the man as one of the many unfortunate homeless afflicted with mental illness, one of the aspects of city life I just wallowed in sophistry about, one of the aspects of expected wear and tear to be advocated for on social media and op-eds and other soapboxes to display one’s personal virtue and hide one’s unwillingness to do anything substantial- meaning one of the aspects to be covered, paved over, forgotten about.

What differed was that this man ignored the perfectly serviceable path not two steps to his side- the dirt road, meticulously maintained on my dime for years now, let me remind you- that he ignored his numerous superficial scrapes and bruises- and the tangle of blackberry vines currently clinging to his unerringly approaching form, cutting his exposed skin, ultimately harmless, perhaps, but most certainly unpleasant. All ignored, disregarded, irrelevant in his effort to move in the most direct line possible to the peak of lookout hill.