Deletion of Self

Deletion of Self

By Apeiroschema

I was upended. I thought back to Sweet, and their drink of choice: a stone cup heated in the hand, water and rootleaf mixed together in the vessel. Sweet called it a ‘drug’ for, “it altered the mind.” Even though Sweet drank it everyday, it still shifted the mind. There was no getting used to it.

Sweet had spoke of a Walker who had made way from burrow to burrow, from Stonewalls to Mudbricks, from Rothouse to Openair. It was in Stonewall that the Walker had read words, or rather, had words dictated. The Walker had a reputation for carrying information from place to place, so Stonewalls showed the Walker something it held dear. Knowledge. It was kept in the Drymid of Stonewall, where the walls seemed to reach forever down the city. The rooms were thin-like tunnels, but unlike those in the burrows they came lined with carvings in the stone work. Broken apart by 7 steps were stretches. Upon each stretch sat a face, adorned and laden with stress and age, fat and stern. The stone work would appear to change at every stretch, some indistinguishable from a living person. The only indication to challenge the notion was the unmoving grey. Others were crude imitations of what must be a person given the surrounding context. The Walker said that the people of Stonewalls were unsure of what they were. There was much debate as to why such a thing would be cast in stone and as to why there would be such variation. Some people believed they had been simply works made in leisure, as any place with such walls must have afforded the those who had constructed it some grand sense of comfort and time to do nothing. And given enough time and enough nothing, it was popular belief, one would get tired of relaxing and begin to make work where there was none to be had. Those who saw the visages and were struck with foreboding, saw the faces as captives, Baddoers that had their Being ripped from them and cast under stone, to be kept as punishment for all the pain they had brought to this place. Some of those people had looked upon that as quite a forgiving gesture, for they now held the building together. Where they may not have been able to contribute in their active lives they can assist with their passive ones. Others thought it a fitting punishment, and that those people who had thought of and carried out such a rending must have been such knowers of life that to fit such a curse was enough of a terrifying image that few would seek to do bad had they ever laid eyes on these captive Beings. How do you explain the fat and the jowls? It must have been because they move so little now, be it so fitting they form some apparent sign of their inactivity. But one of the keepers, one of those who kept the books, knew another answer. These carved faces belonged to the holders of the highest responsibility of Stonewalls. Though these faces were carved long before Stonewalls was called Stonewalls. The carvings were a record of those who had held such a title as the most ‘responsible,’ the most ‘authority,’ the most ‘accountable.’ These people were what one book called ‘leaders.’

The Walker had posed the question then, “Why is there no consensus if you know.” And the answer from the Keeper had been muddying. “Few people could agree on anything, even if I find evidence pointing towards a Truth. Those who disagreed and held respect for me, like other keepers, would say I had simply read it wrong, that the passage had been short and only referenced the existence of such ‘leaders.’ The passage in fact did not say that the carved faces had indeed belonged to anyone of such standing and holding. Rather the passage had said that there were leaders and that leaders had resided in what was now called Stonewalls. I would agree the passage said that, but also refute the conclusion because it had indeed said more. There was a line of such leaders that continued from one to the other, and that their features were consistent and notable. These faces held those same consistencies. But again, I would be challenged by the idea that, perhaps, there was just ‘a people’ and there was nothing uncommon about uncommonality. Those were the remarks from those that respected me. From those who did not, it was a much faster disagreement. Those reverent miners and diggers would say that I had spent too much time trying to parse out what a string of figures might mean and that I had lost sight of the obvious. These faces belonged to the ill and it was that simple. In fact, annoyed by my persistence they would become more hardened, not in their belief, but in their opposition to me. And those most annoyed by my time spent worming through the figures would take on much the same stern faced look that was carved onto the most angry looking faces in the hall. It had become obvious to me that those opponents cared the least about what we argued over and cared the most about me. Part of me is humbled by that, and leads to question whether any amount of time is worth being spent trying to figure out if there is anything worth being said about what those faces mean. But the other part of me knows there is value there simply because I am drawn to it. And when I come to this realization I am humbled further, thinking that perhaps those carvings are just acts of leisure.”

The Walker had stressed some point of frustration with the Keeper. The Keeper had a tendency to go on and on about life between the stretches of Drymid and rarely got to the point. Though the Walker loved to trade knowing and barb, they cared little for the frustrations that come from working and living. Sweet reasoned this is part of what makes a good Walker, someone who hates personal accounts but loves interactions. That is why Sweet and the Walker talked so long. The discussion, according to Sweet, came about over a cup of brewed rootleaf. The Walker had tried a few and began on the monologue about the frustrations surrounding finding information. The Walker noted that this particular cup of drink had provided such a feeling that it could be nothing other than what that Keeper had called a ‘drug,’ sometimes called a substance, other times called a medicine, and even others called a poison. Sweet could attest that taken in excess it was surely a poison, and taken just a little less than excess it was a medicine. But the classification of ‘drug’ was something new to Sweet. It had seemed to Sweet that the consumption of the ‘drug’ was surely something that set Sweet apart from those around. But never had it been considered that at one time there had been entire books dedicated to this as a study. Sweet had poured into the Walker, looking for more ways to create such a thing. The Walker, painfully, said that most of the ingredients for those noted concoctions were long since dusted and would never see the Light again. But, it was a matter of experimentation, and the Walker luckily had something similar for Sweet to try. A dried herb placed in a bored pipe, heated, and inhaled produced a potent misalignment of the mind. Very much unlike the rootleaf brew which produced an energy and focus that would result in racing thoughts, the herbs pushed the mind down and out of the body.

Sweet tried the substance, and could only babble about how the sensation was unlike any other. But one point of salience that Sweet managed to translate from the experience was the movement of self. Sweet had asked the Walker if there had been, in the Walker’s study, a mechanism to delete people from the mind. Sweet was plagued by memories of past people who had disappeared from being but remained in memories. The rootleaf could produce particularly noxious bouts of this memory. Sweet sought to lessen the feeling, if not nullify it altogether. The Walker insisted instead it would be easier to delete the self.