Chap 2 : Loher

A look back at life

It was an age before Eros … the string of impulses we feel in our being … sometimes sensual … quite often sexual … and then desire … sometimes even willful drives. It was before all that. We called it youth. My mind was like the trees … standing proudly … straight and with purpose … but built on a dream of life's possibilities. Little did I realize the role … I myself was to play … in a life to be built someday.

The winds carried whispers … the streams were filled with laughter and fishes. The light from the sun beamed with a light radiance … that reflected in my person. The passions of youth are such as to defy any warning … fear … or forecast. I related to DW … corrected her even … with that which I came to perceive in my life. She became reticent … as if I was spoiling her fun and activity. It was then that I met father.

I thought it curious that my experience of father and the father image contained some differences. OJ had reappeared and then it became obvious to me that I was now face to face with his father. I tried telling OJ that I didn't mean to take anything from him that was his. His father … who called himself Loher … suddenly appeared in a bright daze of light. He told me that he was also father to Dies. I thought I detected a trace of melancholy in him … but he maintained a rigid will of virtue … that erased such thoughts from my mind.

I was in a severe depression during this period ...and could not bring myself to think coherently … simply grateful for the presence of Loher and the positive optimism he represented. He said he was surprised that my growth of understanding had eclipsed that of his sons … OJ and Dies. He intimated that a life of knowledge was hard to pursue … that it would be necessary to die and to be reborn. A person had to be not only intelligent … but brave … and inventive. He emphasized that I would have to create my own opportunities with my bare hands.

I was to come into contact … at this time … with a strange notion … that continues to be preposterous to this day. It appeared to me that … there had been a serious accident of some kind … that had devastated life and limb and turned everything into a miasma of strangeness and apathy. Father had lost contact with child … mother is now off on her own initiatives … friends and allies had broken away to form their own groups for survival. We had become completely broken as a family … and were now totally dysfunctional as a result. It explained why no one could tell me what was going on.

I was astounded. Broken from what … where … how ? But I only received the mute response of surprise and shock. It slowly dawned on me that I now represented new hope … and if I continued my course … I would come into contact with the great destroyer … who had brought us to this condition. I applied myself as well as I could … travelling to the very depths of despair and loss of hope. It was grueling … but I kept reminding myself that it was a dream … its not physically real.

And then … after some years … I came to discover the source of the pain and injury. It was the destruction of perfection … a perfection of the species and of life in the universe … it had fallen without warning … and no one could explain why. It sounded like the failure of the planet Krypton and the escape of Kal-El to earth. It occurred to me that … to seek the answer … I had to transform every fallen and negative notion … into something positive and to view what was previously experienced as perfect. … And then I saw … before passing out into a deathless death … in which everything I encountered was false.