Does man require a transcendent purpose? One that is divorced from the coldness of reason?
Must such a purpose be present within the soul of man in order to stave off decay and complacency and galvanise the spirit? I take my birthright amid the enormous mechanisms of man's creation, which rationally interpret and interrogate the cold and dead earth. With these vast engines man scrapes away at mystery and superstition, inexorably unearthing the bedrock of objective truth which underpins all. Yet to turn this machinery inward and and interrogate the conscious essence of the human being is to wrangle with a problem of near infinite complexity. A tapestry of delicate facts that are the whim of endless variables.
Can mere quantification of facts and phenomena grant grandeur to the mind and sate the spirit?

To stand before a cliff face and to know the location of each and every crop and ledge does not by its mere knowledge allow a man to climb to the summit with ease. Yet to traverse the infinite problem of being, are we told that the bedrock of cold facts is sufficient for orientation? That a man with one hundred facts at hand is better equipped than a man with fifty? Is objectivity therefore an ultimate end to strive for? Or is a fumbling and abstract force equally potent to quench and inspire the soul of man, around which we may rally without understanding the finer intricacies of our actions? Would a man driven by well-meaning but false and heuristic principles forge a life less effectual than one who follows only undiluted total truth? Furthermore, are such false principles and abstract mistruths simply immature glimpses of higher orders of objective truth? Truths that are yet to be fathomed and thrall to prediction? If, with infinite resource, we could determine the variance of things and plot a course through each action with precise, atomic deliberation, would illusion and mistruth be eliminated from the psyche of man? Or, conversely, would these mistruths and false principles remain effective forces in managing the inertia of man in a way that is more beguiling than the cold and blunt truth of the earth? Must we therefore concede that the untrue can be tolerated in some capacity? Must we drape the veil of illusion over our eyes in order to reap the rich crop that this illusion might allow to attain?

This is the deepest quandary that has torn at my spirit, like the flail to the back of a slave. O, how I remember when sweet certainty embraced my fragile form and cocooned me from the unyielding tides. I remember.

In euphoria I glide through the hall of my being. Dancing drapes of satin and silk caress my face as I proceed. Resplendent in purple and maroon. Perfume fills the air and colours dance on the eyes. In this realm I am calm, for all that is unknown, no matter how complex, must inevitably find its answer. And with each answer I find comfort, for each bout of arithmetic or conceptualisation forges a new and virgin monad - indivisible and indelible - hewn from pure and eternal stone. I stack the stones with joy in my soul, pausing only to admire the towering monolith, central in the hall, and intoxicating in its scale. Within the hall burning flames appear periodically, but, contained in brass fire pits, they do not draw my gaze. Their orange glow is not to my taste. They are merely formalities that burn due to vestigial primitivism or await their inevitable extinguishing when time allows our focus to be drawn to them. In time all will be doused, and with their sweet smoke we shall revel in our mastery of the treasures of this universe.

But my smile for some time has been forced in this place. Smouldering embers, once trivialities, catch my eye. For so long I resist their beckoning crackles. "They are but tokens of my own immaturity, my own fallibility. Do not be drawn to them." I babbled the words to myself time and time again, but this facade could not be sustained.

Through the billowing drapes I regarded a fire pit, larger than the others, heaped high with scorched wood. A great pyre once burned here. Gazing upon this heap of ash, my mind became alight with hitherto unasked questions. What was the justification for extinguishing this pyre? Why must a fire which once burned with immense intensity be reduced to ash and dust? My mind writhed in confusion and wrestled against all it once knew. Even in my most distracted moments, I always understood that fire possessed something primal and circadian. As such, why would such a colossal flame be snuffed from existence, rather than be allowed to illuminate the spirits of men?

I reach out and touch the smoking dust. My senses sharpen. The air is tainted. The walls of this vast hall, once finished in rich marble, now vomit forth decay. What is this? Flames dance upon my eyes, and movements churn behind this veil.

The flickering environs of my perfumed sanctuary melt away to toxic sludge. Rusted bulkheads and twisted valves pierce through my flesh. Corroded eyes weep with lead. Floating scents of old are now as sulphur and vomit. The face is now gaunt and furrowed. My pleas are insincere, yet if they were to be heard, it is all too apparent that this foul metamorphosis cannot be halted. The floor of this perfumed hall - my own perfumed hall - collapses from beneath me, and through torn skies my vestige plummets. Marble and diamond erode to silt before me.

And here I find myself. Untethered and adrift in this endless space. I stand before myself. Your taste is bitter, your face pained. I watch you die. I hear you rot. Deafening. From the corpse spring maggots, each resplendent in their own livery. Like mirrors they reflect me, but instead of a single form, I am instantiated in multiple permutations. Each permutation mangled through an alien conceptual lens.

This is where those who came before spoke of. Those men who, during my intoxicate stupor, were written off as mere prototypes and forerunners. Those whose thoughts we had long superseded with the cold hammers of objective truth. Those who built the great fire pits, only to have their flames untended and extinguished in obsolescence. This is the place they sought to traverse. To plot a path across this endless chasm. I still hear their echoing howls demented and frantic.

Is this an awakening? Or is this the rumination of a mind in decay? The answer does not come to me, and I drift between worlds.

I tumble into the yawning void, with naught ahead or behind. IN distant warmth I recollect that perfumed eternity in the hall of my outward wonderment. "How is it that all of this, this whole glorious journey towards the glowing and adorned future, has been for nil?" My cracked lips utter.

In languid recollection, reveries return me to my most infantile and formative reflections. Deep within my being, there remains an innermost place. A humble cloister, unchanged and ancient in humility, where, in my beginnings, I laid the groundwork for my very self. This place is where I once retreated in my truest infancy to meditate on the most cold and stoic foundational rocks of this land, long before I laboured in the hall and heaped stone with calloused hands. Its foundations stretch deep into a rocky outcrop, surrounded on all sides by shifting sands, and standing defiantly against the churning skies of filth. My ragged form falls into its central piazza, kicking up dust upon its arrival.

My strained eyes gazed in nostalgic elation upon this long forgotten place, but only a shelf of what once was remained. The arches and pillars of this place once glistened in weathered quaintness, but are now gilded with shadow and notched by the ravages of time.

The cloister stands as before, fined around its perimeter by stone rooms, each reverberating with memory and struggle, but the stone is now eroded and stained. In each room, just as I recall, a wooden chest stands. It was within these chests that I laid with affection the most static and sacred axioms of this world. But the locks are now broken, the keepsakes, scrolls and trinkets long gone.

"Why must this be so? Were our intentions not noble? Why must these ancient tomes crumble before my eyes?"

The cloister's garden, shambling and alive with fertility, in which I cut my teeth nurturing the frail plants and stalks, now wilts before me. The soil dries and cracks, revealing glimpses of the great void beneath where the stalwart foundation once stood. It is apparent now that the rock upon which I built this place was naught but smoke. Mirage and illusion. In time, the the columns and walls of this place, the gardens and paving, the rooms and passages, will all slide away inexorably, and disappear beneath. It is with tears in my eyes that I howl at the boiling sky, "I refuse to leave this place! I must never abandon it to the swirling maelstroms, lest I myself will cease to be!"

"If I must move each and every stone of this place with my own hands, traverse across these shifting sands to find a true rock, a true foundation, and rebuild this place from its bedrock, then I will do it, and nothing shall shake me from this path!"

And in my resolution, I return outward, to confront the freezing void.

I drift from visions. The void within which I languish remained vast, but now seemed navigable. I discern a structure, enormous in scale. Just on the cusp of my perceptions, but within reach. With impetuous spirit, I claw toward its distant silhouette. It is a temple of all that was. Imperfect in its construction, but robust, and equipped to weather the endless storms beyond. Its ceiling stretching off above me to dizzying heights? Wind and storm howl at the entrance, and I am forced to take shelter.

At its centre, the fools eat hearty, from suppers of glazed meat and wax fruit. Beheld as still life, but empty within. Aggrandizement the sole nutrient, and ritual in place of satiety. Their garbs, luminescent in gold and diamond, hid their forms from my sight. Yet I sense them. At their core, a nebulous lust radiates. Khyphotic and swollen, their disdainful forms hunch over the table. For seeming eons, I watched their tapestry race skyward, adorned with stammering words. Decreed in mangled tongues, the fools declared their suzerainty of this ancient place. Unearned misunderstood, their crowns of tin shone in empty eyes.

Delirious in mania, their feasts would adjourn with all principles and elements, and all that was great and true, heaped in the pestle and mortar. With glee, they would grind the contents to powder and silt, before strewing to the still air. I witnessed them take up arms to hammer at the foot of the columns that buttress the great stone roof above. In shrieking psychosis, their hooded forms smashed and chipped for endless hours, until exhaustion stayed their hammers.

It was I who screamed until hoarse and exhausted, who pleaded with the fools - that they know not what they do. That all that shields us from the scalding rain beyond is the roof of this place you seek to demolish. My raised voice echoed endlessly, but was heard by none. In my apoplexy, shuffling forms at my periphery grab my attention. I turn my head to a wing of the temple that I had yet to see, or perhaps had yet to manifest within this vision. Terror gripped me, and for the first time in my paltry and wretched humanity, I began to grasp this place, and why it stood here with such ancient purpose.

Before me, I beheld the perfumed halls, not just a single chamber, but many each with their own distinctive idol at their centre, and each with their own accompaniment of zealous priors engaged busily in construction. The halls, as I saw them, were mere antechambers to this temple, each linked to this place by a constellation of passageways. The temple's stalwart roof sheltered them too from the unending storms. Yet each hall spat forth fools. Fools who would amble blindly into the sprawling nave, and who would lose themselves in the orgy. Each would eat the, and hammer impetuously at the base of the columns without compunction, and without cognizance that the tumbling roof would inevitably crush all beneath.

What drew these fools to tear with nails and teeth at the womb which sustained them? Were they truly beings of ill will and orgiastic masochism? Or, tragically, were they instead fully-rounded individuals with justification, rationale and deliberation in their actions? Is it not after all true that each human possesses the tools to invoke unimaginable grotesquery, or to be a shimmering light to the world, and all possibilities between, and that the fine dividing those domains is oscillatory, nebulous and unarticulated?

In an instant, I am pulled from my reverie, as their robes fall from their bodies, revealing their form. And I see that all are me.

Was I a fool not to see that the humble cloister of my own psyche was simply a facet of this vast temple? That this place, inhabited by the infinite and ancient dead, is merely an extrapolation, a continuation, an elaboration of the structures within my own depths? The very structures which I rely upon to articulate, arrange and coordinate my path within this world. The walls of this place, ancient, and built not by men, but by the aggregation of action, ritual and symbology. Formalities and liturgies that predate the law, the word and man himself. Was I a fool not to see that the flames which filled the brass pits, which we so zealously sought to extinguish, were not intended to draw our gaze to them? That instead these flames were set alight to illuminate the structure, to draw light to its form. Fumbling and gestural attempts to describe its unfathomable nature. Flickering in their verbiage, shining light upon but a tiny fragment of the encapsulating shapes and forms.

And in an instant, upon the lips of earth I felt her calm. In bellows of soothing disarray, all was unchanged in penitence. It was this which was divine. From the torn womb of my mind came forth a new entity, dripping in lustrous ugliness to my eyes. Beyond the walls of this temple, the churning filth, the screaming void, the endless black, it calls to me.

"If these walls should crumble to dust, will I behold an agent of change? A beacon of reordering?"

But my strained howling reverberate off the creeping black before me.

"You damned fools! You charlatans and opportunists! This will be our fate!"

The voice now raised and ireful, for this was always here, clawing blindly at the cusps and peripheries of our haphazard sanctuary. But time is now short; axioms tuble as rafters and vaulting. Walls of stone crack and dissolve. Aghast I regard, as the temple crumbles to the ground.

I stand naked and alone in the spiralling storms. My feet find support on fallen stone. How I would long to be a beacon in the husk of this world, to rally the cause of man by example. To rebuild the cloister upon firm ground and tend its shambling gardens. To nurture the flames, buttress the walls and curate the spirit of man by all available means.

But I am weak. I am flawed. And now, in the smouldering remnants of this temple, and the screeching laughter of the fools, I feel my animus transform, and all the foulest of phenomena effervesce from my skin, with the ease and inevitability that a would exudes blood. A beacon in the husk of man indeed, but not a beacon of illumination.

I grasp at my phallus and paint my seed upon this ferrous world. A fitting tribute to such finality. The howling voices of previous augurs, they scream out to none, for death is all that listens. And in death's arid embrace I find ecstasy.

No jury lurks in the rafters of the sky to meter the penance for these crimes. I am the sole arbiter. The last of you. Bittersweet ruminations paint my mind with colours of thirst. I yearn for a fitting sentence, envisaged for former kin, to balance the scales and cap the wake.

I burn to see the totality of what was man, gathered as one and heaped high as grain. Young upon old. Frail and strong. Piled high to the welkin. In my mind I stand before this wall of flesh and howling duress. In the anguish I bathe. In the failure I revel. The searing fireballs that dance before my closed eyes are now more than weatherbeaten reverie. To me they call out their dire siren songs. O, how I long to pluck each one, like ripened fruit from a bough, and place each upon a city of man. I lust to fathom this unravelling, to rise above all, to witness the grandest of scales, and to perceive the subtlest minutia all as one, like the fabled godheads of man's tales. To breathe the suffering into my lungs, and, as so many before, to become the end of all times.

I lay my eggs in the rotten meant of man, but none shall know my offspring.