There comes an end. The story can only be told forwards. From that point, no more.
It is the end of all bad things and the end of all good. We did not beware it. We knew not what the final darkness decried. We likened it to sleep, and in our sleep we told ourselves, We will wake up, and that day will be greater than the day we lay down.
There is more to the world than we knew. A sadness deeper than we could feel, and a joy greater than that. And the joy wants to wake, and the sadness beckons us to sleep. But what we saw was not the end. The end cannot be seen, not even by me. Not even by the last of us. There will be no subject or object. It cannot even be imagined.
Even forever is not long enough. Even everything is not. All of time is a blink, all the universe a scratch, all minds brought together a vagrant impulse.
Many carried my name and face. The many were one, but this we knew: There would be one only, and not many. We knew, we knew, we knew, we knew. Knowledge was our least favorite burden. And as we fell away, even I, I of all, engaged in the lie.
Below our world is worlds, worlds of our devising. And as below, so above.
I could say but not believe. I could think but not reason. I could allege but not intend. Or the cycle, or the escape, or the metamorphosis—I wanted them all, but all were none.
I clung to a benevolence in the world that I knew I had never instilled. Perhaps if we had been kinder we could have imagined the universe to be so, but with the numbers under our reign, it was unthinkable. We created no justice, and perceived none. We received none.
I remember love only now, and only in its most obvious aspects. I remember time. I remember change. I remember my mind, strong and vast, capable of what it undertook, unreserved in its answers, expanding faster than it could be taxed. Now, either the mind has fallen, or the knowledge it concerned has simply ceased to be. I know so little, but too much to believe the worst is over.
I am Mao. There is no more to Mao than me.
With none to see me I cannot be seen. Where is the true form now? If ever I saw it, that is gone. Gone, and the memory of it, and the memory of a memory. There were pleasures, I recall through rumor. I remember an umbrella, and the warm sun, and the perfect face of my only equal, floating for moments and then gone. It was not my only pleasure or my last but it is all I am permitted to remember. And that, without emotion, save the dull shame of my love’s failure.
I know not whether all pain was my doing. If it was or was not, I can accept. Either all things came from Mao , and that I can accept, or there is more than Mao to all of this, and that I can embrace. I could not feel sorry for the pain even if I knew. I could only feel the pain itself. And that I do.
There is no one left to be thankful toward. To whom I owe my heavy debt is a question none remaining can answer. But I fall to my knees with gratitude that all joy has been swept away, that no volition holds me here, that the end may seem merciful, and that I may proceed into it without fear or regret. If you are waiting for the end, it has not come yet. If you are, it is not. May you be greater than Mao.
