A Personal Myth (fiction)
Before the World, all was dark, an empty voracious night called the Dream. At the heart of this Dream lay the Maelstrom, a blind crawling chaos with eight thousand hoary legs skittering out into the void. The Maelstrom had no parents, no progeny, but had woven a great Web from her womb that stretched to the ends of the Dream, and she slept in the middle of this Web, waiting, and dreaming all the possible things that might one day be. She dreamt of animals, constructions, man, and each Form she dreamt was drawn by her legs into the Web, there the Forms hung frozen in the Dream, ready for her to consume, and digest them back into chaos to be spun again.
One such dream was a man named Murphy, who likewise had no history, having just been dreamt. But on seeing that all the scattered Forms around him were being drawn slowly into the monster’s gaping maw decided that he would not be eaten and returned back to the unformed chaos. The Maelstrom’s Dream had grown so large by now that there were endless places to hide; one could wander for lifetimes in any direction through the strange frozen Forms without ever once escaping the Web. Murphy realized that if he were to combat the Maelstrom, he too would have to dream, imagining a Sword, a great Knowledge, and a Reflection of himself to act as a decoy, as food for the beast while he waited in the shadows, ready to slay her.
And so Murphy dreamt, and waited, and soon he had his Sword and Knowledge, and the Maelstrom’s legs reached for the Reflection to draw it into her jaws, and still he waited, at the edge of the Dream, for that moment when the Maelstrom was busy consuming his Reflection, and he would be able to strike. And as planned, she ate. The Reflection was slowly ground down in endless rows of jagged teeth into shimmering shards that were scattered to the edges of the Night, becoming Stars. All the while the Maelstrom hummed a low tuneless melody to herself, as it was all the same to her what she ate, a screaming man or his mute reflection, for she was the dark itself, which consumes all things. Then Murphy raised his Sword, its edge sharpened to pierce his toothsome foe, and he slashed down through the Web, through the Dream, and cleaved the Maelstrom in two. Each of the Maelstrom’s halves reared up to attack, one of them raked its great pincers across the side of his face so that his left Eye was torn and blinded. But Murphy was too close to the Dream’s core for the Maelstrom’s halves to grasp him.
He slashed again, and a third time, each slice further subdividing the Maelstrom until it was sundered into a thousand pieces, each no bigger than a man’s hand, eight-limbed miniatures of their Mother’s pattern, all skittering about at Murphy’s feet. The Hero, for that’s what he had become for this half-formed Dream, summoned his great Knowledge and called the creatures “Spider,” a grave insult he had overheard in the Maelstrom’s sleeping murmurs. Murphy banished the Spiders to the edges of the Dream, where they might bide in the dark corners in their own small webs, but never come back together to overwhelm the Dream. With his foe thus fought, and her remnants dispersed, Murphy planted the Sword in the darkness beside him. And then he smiled, which was like a glimmer of Light for the first time striking the dark World. The battle had made him tired, so gathering the cut strands of the Web around him like a blanket, he laid in the center where the Maelstrom had lay, and had a Dream of his own.
As he slept, Murphy grew, until his body filled the void. His ribs became the rocky earth, his fingers blossomed into flowers and trees, and his blood flowed into rivers and seas. He dreamt that his head would become a castle, but it continued to expand until it was a mountain whose peak brushed the Sky and looked down over the whole young World. His Eyes took flight, and chased each other around the Sky, the whole one shedding such a glorious Light that it illuminated everything below, and the torn Eye reflecting as best it could, following the glowing orb as a sullen moon. And above their orbit, his haughty brow formed the dome of Space, and his hair tangled with the Stars of his shattered Reflection. And so the World came into being and was quickly populated with Murphy’s imagination, all life a Dream to stave off the uncertainty that lies in the darkness of night.
Murphy had but one law for his newborn Dream: that whatever could happen would happen, with as much glory and wonder as might be brought forth into the World. However, being only a young World, he was mightily alone, and could dream only those Forms that he had seen hanging in the Maelstrom’s Web. The next day, Murphy’s strong Eye arched over the whole World while his other Eye struggled to catch up, shedding its meager gaze through the night. Murphy reflected on the Forms he had seen and how he might make sense of their disorder, all chaotic from being hung in the limbo of the Web. Murphy took one Form into his hands, and called it a Book, and when next his Eye illuminated the land, he transcribed what he saw into the Book. Later, as he lay in his castle on top of the mountain, he reflected over what had been written, naming the Forms and sorting them out into Classes and Orders: those that moved and those that were rooted, those that had no life, and those which were invisible, spirits or forces he could only see by their affect on the others; that which stirs water, that which melts snow, that which weighs on beasts and reduces them to bones. Murphy watched his World, and wrote, and soon filled the whole Book, which he closed with another bright smile, feeling that he had now ordered everything in its right place.
Yet when next his Eye rose Murphy looked closer and was shocked, and looked closer still at his World. For he saw that where there had been only enough Forms to fill a Book, now there were Details, each Form its own small World of infinite variations. And Murphy realized that he would have to write another Book, several Books, a Book for each Form, which he started at once, each day focusing his Eye on all the Details of just one Form. He wrote intensely, setting each finished Book on a shelf in his keep, but soon realized there would be little room left to sleep, and he would have to do something with this endless library. Being ever resourceful, as this was his own Dream after all, Murphy erected another story to his castle, and another story after that, filling each with Books and moving his bed ever closer to the Sky.
But still he had but scratched the surface of recording everything in his domain, and rarely going down to the lowest stories of his castle anymore became afraid, that he might forget something that he had written, that he might accidentally record something twice. This thought filled Murphy with much confusion, over what a doubling of Forms might mean (for he felt still somewhat guilty for casting his Reflection into the Maelstrom’s jaws). So one night he hurried down the Book-lined stairs, determined to take note of what each volume contained, and if possible devise a catalogue, an Order of Orders, which was more work and Words, but he had an eternity to fill with Words, his only companion. So he descended and descended and somewhere on the second story he began to notice Webs, thick draping dust which sent a chill down his spine. Having built his knowledge up to the Sky, Murphy had left his earliest words to rot and ruin. For roping up his earliest tomes, and shredding them back into chaos, was a Spider, still a slivered reflection of its Dark Mother’s horror. Had it not obeyed his banishing Words? He called it Spider again, but still it spun a web that threatened to tear his Words asunder and reduce them back into unknown Forms.
Murphy rued that he had planted his Sword on the roof of his castle, where it had grown to be a Tree of enormous girth, whose branches gave shade and sweet fruit to his whole World. If only he had the Sword now he might slay this intruder. But at the very thought of his dark, dividing blade, the Spider trembled and turned and straightaway leapt towards Murphy, its jaws snapping wide to avenge its Mother’s murder. Unarmed and in profound terror, Murphy turned and fled, scattering stacks of precious manuscripts in his flight. Up story after story he fled, racing to the top of his tower, with the Spider eating his every footstep, not more than a pace behind and growing larger as it climbed, filing the entire castle with its chaotic binds.
Once upon the roof Murphy didn’t dare stop, but climbed right up the Tree, what had once been his Sword, struggling up the branches towards the overhanging void of the Sky. In his haste the branches were stripped bare and became bones, their fruit made quick into beating organs. But Murphy had no time to marvel at this transformation, for the Spider was rapidly gaining. Glancing back, Murphy swore that it was a Spider no more, but the Mother, the very Maelstrom herself come back to torment him, to finish what she started when she first spun his Form. So Murphy climbed, and wondered that the Tree had no end in sight and seemed to breathe and sigh as he rushed up higher. Indeed it rose so high that its branches pierced the Sky, and Murphy clambered out through this hole into another World, where at last he stopped and looked down below.
The Maelstrom had now webbed the entire Tree, the ropey tendrils almost obscuring its natural growth. Murphy gasped, for there was his sought for Order of Order, not the linear branches he had written in his Books, but a sprawling Net that connected each Form to all others. He could embrace the Maelstrom if it wasn’t his sworn Nemesis, so instead he smiled, and at his joy the Maelstrom was reduced, turning back into a Spider that cowered in the branches, rattling the bones of Forms that lay caught in its Web. Gasping, Murphy stepped back again. For he had not climbed up the Tree and out of a hole in the Sky at all, but had emerged from the head of another Form, one he had not seen before yet was the loveliest in this entire World. This Form was familiar, in a way his own body was familiar, but different in certain appealing ways. He called the Form Woman, and lay down like the Sky over the Earth to gaze into her eyes, which slowly opened with an equally radiant smile.
The Woman called herself Mata, and told Murphy she had just woken from the most peculiar Dream, in which a small man had climbed up from out of her insides, frightened and chased by his own frail Shadow. Murphy listened and wondered what this could mean, for hadn’t it been his World, his Dream, that was now this beautiful Woman? Perhaps there were several Worlds, endless Dreamers, of whom he was only one, and Murphy wanted to set out at once to find them all, to record all the Forms of all the Dreams that might be. But Mata grabbed his hand with such force and held him to her, so that Murphy decided to be content in her sweet embrace. And that is why the Sky rests above the Earth and does not go running off at the slightest whim and wonder. And so they lay like this, with his Eyes gazing over her entire body, learning her Details that still contained all the Forms he had studied before.
And all he saw was beautiful and wondrous, though sometimes behind Mata’s Eyes, when she was gazing off at a distant storm, Murphy thought he saw a darkness unfurling, the spinning Form of the Shadow he had left behind in that other World. For somewhere the Maelstrom was still inside her, biding its Time and weaving its Order of Orders that would inevitably consume his Books and Words. He called that Shadow Death, and though it made him deeply sad, Murphy loved Mata even more for that chaos she bore inside her chest; the necessary uncertainty of living that drove off boredom and forced him to act his best. For on the day it might strike and finally take him back into the darkness of night, he wanted to be as full of love and wonder as it was possible for a man to realize in this life.
And so Murphy and Mata lived like this, reveling in their shared Dream, and occasionally other Dreamers wandered by, whose Dreams Murphy wrote down in his Books and added to his own. And they were happy and as full of love and wonder as it was possible for them to be, and before long Mata gave birth, her body heaving with great tremors which shook the entire Earth. From between the mountains of her legs a bright being shot forth, a boy of such vigor and mirth that he might have glory over the entire World. Murphy named him Will, writing the name down on the first page of a new Book. But Mata was not done, for in her labors still struggled a second son, who after many more hours crept slowly into the World. This boy seemed weak and woeful, trembling at life and almost unable to survive. Yet Murphy saw a gleam in his second son’s ryes, a deep understanding immediately applied when the boy crawled over to the Book and began reading what had been written inside. So Murphy called the boy Wise, and that night, Mata dreamt that her youngest child would grow to take care of his father’s library, ordering all the Dreams in all the Worlds, a task of which Murphy thoughtfully approved.
As for the first Twin, Will was wild, and so full of life that they could never predict what he would get into. He was always found running around and building forts from unfinished Forms, or inventing games and songs for the children of the other Dreamers to play, who all worshipped him for his bright smile and exuberance. He even carved a Sword like his father’s and went around stabbing at dark corners, saying that he was hunting the Maelstrom, which touched Murphy’s heart, though he didn’t know what this act boded for the boy’s future.
Then one day Murphy and Mata’s neighbor, an old man named Kairos, who was said to be the most ancient of the Dreamers, older perhaps than the Maelstrom herself, came and told Murphy that he had caught Will stealing the apples from his garden. At his father’s displeasure, the youth said he only wanted to hold a Feast for the other children, especially those who did not have apples of their own, which eased some of Murphy’s anger. But Kairos was not so easily appeased, and working himself up into a divine frenzy began to prophesy that what the boy needed was to go on a Quest. But first, he cried, eyes rolling wide and foot stamping on the ground, there would be many trials. A great flood would descend, heralding the Maelstrom’s return, and all the Dreamers would have to set sail towards another Dream, filled with stone Towers hung with Webs and strange Machines, where in their tears they would forget that they were dreaming. And after several generations this dark Dream would be overcome by Wars and Flame, and only then would Will be called to his Quest: to find the Key of Remembering how to dream, to slay the Maelstrom again, and to lead the people through the Flames towards a Feast with which they would found a new Dream. And only then would the theft of the apples be atoned.
Will did not believe the old man’s Words, thinking them the raving of a madman, and promptly forgot, running off overjoyed to have evaded punishment. Murphy himself was not so unconcerned, but even he felt Kairos’s predictions to be rather absurd. He could easily have repaid the apple’s theft and then they could all continue to dream in peace, but just in case he decided to dream of a Ship that night. Wise, who had been listening quietly this whole time, wrote down the old man’s Words the way he wrote down all Words, as if they were the Truth. And then he closed his book and bound it tight, for as Mata cried over her son’s cursed fate, it had quickly began to rain.
I am reminded of the outsider artist Henry Darger (best depicted In the Realms of the Unreal), creating an elaborate mythology of armies of little girls till he died unknown in his attic and his neighbors found the bizarre 15,000 page illustrated manuscript. Talk about tomes. To some degree great works seem to take actually existing in these fantastic other places for extended periods of time, whole lives, yet we still have to do what we have to to be here, because living is a great work as well.
