A man looks down upon a moth that is fluttering above a carpet surface.
I’m thinking of something I don’t know. I’ve heard of enigmatic messages, and more specifically of something called intromission, as there is nothing happening here that can be called a tenderness. It is simply a reference point to an unknowable moment. My feeling is cold, detached, and tender in the broadest sense because of the gap between my life and that of an imminent victim. A notion of anal-sadistic objects comes to me, cut from a slice of film from memory—an hoary Spanish drama featuring cruel children beating upon a legless cripple, captured upon grainy black and white celluloid. Luis Bunuel: what a childhood he must’ve had to think this was worth expressing. Back to the moth. The fluttering, oblivious creature is an already defined, pre-digested figure. It has no meaning beyond its lesser form, its already brokenness, so the impending cruelty lacks meaning. It, the crushing sudden death, will make no sense to it. Its life will be reduced to a supposed nothing, but its life’s meaning only makes sense as part of a multitude. As part of a species, the moth has a purpose. Alone, separate from its group, its pack, it is asking for its own end.
What was the story here? Why did it separate from its familiar others, and is this what moths do? A scientist would know. This is the kind of question, after all, that scientists do know. If not, they’ll at least have a specific name for the kind of scientist that knows things about moths. Well, it seems to have been searching for food. Nothing surprising there. Don’t blame you, pal. Been there, done that. Feeling peckish myself, though you’re not my type, actually. Anyway, I get it. Sometimes, you have to stray from home, from the breast, to find that sticky globule of sugar on the floor, that crusty residue of bread. Everything that lives has gotta eat, even in the face of death. Last supper, and so on. The difference with us humans is that we think we know when death’s coming. Yeah, we know because we’ve noticed our brethren hit the ground and not get up; some of us have seen them close their eyes and not open them again. At times, if unlucky, we’ve seen one another get eviscerated, annihilated—blown or torn to pieces, and disappear, rendered meaningless. That’s how it seemed when I witnessed something like that in my life. In the human world that’s called trauma. It’s called trauma because we’re invested with something called memory.
You’re lucky, I suppose, watching you enjoy your last meal. You don’t have memory, or fear. You can’t. You probably don’t even have pain. You’re virtually broken, a nothing. This will mean nothing to you, what I’m about to do. Above all, you won’t understand what’s happening, even when you perceive the looming threat in that split-second in which you attempt flight. It will be too late because I have been patient in my cruelty. I have hovered my hand over you and slowly descended to the point in which the final, decisive strike can be made. You have not noticed soon enough. You have been enjoying your meal, your short life and all of its pleasures, and your reflexive, signal danger mechanisms that ordinarily served you to this point have let you down. It’s okay. This was meant to be. You are small, insignificant, and a nuisance, and though it seems gratuitous, I must establish my control, my dominion over this space. See, I imagine that your brethren will be watching off to the side, taking note of the warning. Or not, if they’re as stupid as you—if they’re not paying attention, not learning about power, un-sentient and thus unaware of individual life. Alright, enough of this. This has already taken up enough time in my day. Life goes on. Well, mine will, at least. So long, pal. Try to relax when you notice what’s happening. Your short, brutish life was predestined, and maybe its point will make sense to you at some point. It’ll…wait, what’s that falling down towards me. It’s darkening and huge and…getting bigger. What the…
Graeme Daniels Psychewriter 