Von’s mood seemed to change. He picked up the crystal decanter, a beautiful antique that Kyra made a note to ask him about some day, and slowly poured two more glasses full with amber snoot. Kyra could have sworn she saw his hand shaking ever so slight.
“To answer your question, I call them connections. They define our life, give it meaning. Most of the time, we never think about the web we live in, the thousands of little touches that shape everything we do—that is, until someone or something takes them away. Then,” Von raised his glass in silent salute, “as if someone pulled back the blinders, all is clear and all is both terrifying and serene at the same time.”
Von took a sip without taking his eyes off Kyra. She didn’t move nor did she break eye contact and so he continued. “Back on Hyneria, on-world and in society, everything is connected to everything else. Get sick, you call your doctor and he or she takes care of you. Need a loan, a thousand bankers will vie for your business. Wreak your transport, one call and a tow is there, a second call and a shop repairs. Hungry? Go to a restaurant, pay by cash or credit. Want entertainment, a hundred shows await. Every one and a thousand more is a connection.”
“I can see that,” said Kyra, enthralled with the Papaesque nature of this conversation.
“It goes deeper,” continued Von. “Our systems, our language, our traditions—all of these are connections in their own right. Our nationality, our politics, count them too. And then, there is family. Parents, siblings, relatives. At work, we have colleagues, bosses and subordinates. And when we get home, our pets or even Goldie. Every one of them, again, a connection.”
Kyra took a sip and the lights seemed to dim as if on schedule. Only thing missing was the crashing of the waves and a campfire. “Please continue Von.”
“Well, there is also Hyneria itself. The pungent smell of fresh turned farmland. The salty sea breeze or even just the ground under our feet on a hike in the mountains. More connections. You see, in a way, everything we do, everywhere we go, touches someone or something that literally defines who we are.”
“Very interesting Von, but what does all this have to do with Em’s soulless comment?”
“A lot. On the surface, everything we knew about who we were, who we are, everything that defined our lives, is gone. Think about that for a second. We no longer have firm soil under our feet or fresh air to breath. Get sick, there is no doctor. Want an education, there is no university. Want to get married, neither church nor minister. Support a cause, no political party to join. Bravo breaks down, nowhere to take her. You see, our thousands upon thousands of connections, they’re gone. We still have a few, but the contrast is night and day. Here on Bravo, just the seven or eight of us, well, I suppose it’s kinda like walking to the cliff and looking over the edge and the net that was always there, is gone. I’m only surprised it has taken the better part of a year for anyone to voice this feeling, although I suspect the angst has been present for quite some time.”
“I think you’re right Von. Has been one helluva year with hardly time to catch our breath. Can I ask you a question?”
“Go for it.”
“It’s rather personal so if you don’t want to answer just tell me it’s none of my business.”
“Fair enough?”
“I’m thinking you didn’t just stumble upon this view one day out picking flowers?”
Von tried to smile. “Well, no, I wouldn’t quite put it that way.”
Kyra put her chin on her chest and widened her eyes. “You don’t have to continue if you don’t want. I really don’t mean to pry.”
“No, no, good for the soul to share. As you know, many years ago, I was taken prisoner and tortured at the hands of the Javalinas. Most know of the neural trace they implanted in my brain, long since removed, although that damned ghost of an itch remains, and probably will so until the day my spirit departs to places unknown. But there is another part of the story I’ve not shared.” Von’s complexion changed and his face suddenly appeared drawn and old, the creases of which looked like dry riverbeds as seen from above.
“The greatest torture is passive, not active. Once the neural trace was planted and they had what they wanted, well, I can’t speculate on motive, but the bastards put me in solitary confinement. They took away food and light and space and gave me only enough water to keep me alive and for forty days I endured what no living creature should have to endure at the hands of another. Torture comes in two forms. Brute force is perhaps the crudest and least skillful, although I must say eventually either produces results or kills the prisoner. But there is another form of torture, a form much more sinister, more imaginative, and, if pure hell is the goal, much more effective—solitude.
“You see, brute force, no matter how painful or agonizing actually gives the prisoner something useful. It gives him affirmation, it gives contact, a connection to another living entity, an entity that at least thinks enough of you to torture you, to expend their time and energy on you, and as strange as it may sound, you feel important with each blow, or punch, or slap or beating. Now don’t get me wrong, physical torture will break you and you will curse the day you were ever born, but it doesn’t take everything.
“Solitude of total deprivation, however, is something very, very different. The torture is simple. They put you in a very small box, lock you up, and leave. In effect, they remove every connection you have to virtually everything. I would ask you to stop and think about that for a second, but try as you might, the exercise would be pointless. There are some experiences that simply go pass the ability of the imagination.
“Slowly, you feel a dismantling. You see, before they put you in the hole, they tell you things, plant seeds. They tell you you will never see another living soul again, nor will you ever see light, or taste food, or read, or walk, or stand upright. They tell you they already have everything they need from you such that not even your torturers have need or desire of you anymore.
“They strip from you the most basic need of significance, the need to matter—to someone, even if that someone is just the person who beats you every day. They sever every living connection to everyone and everything and in this state one of three things happens and they happen rather quickly, although at the time it did not seem that way nor even now does it seem as short a time as I have come to learn it was.
“First, most prisoners give up and die. Second, most of those that don’t die go insane. But there are a few, not many, who manage somehow to come out the other side. I would like to tell you I did it on my own, but the credit goes to my training, the very training Zeke instilled in me. You see, in solitary confinement, you are forced to see your face before you had a face and when you see that, the stark terror cannot be put into words. That terror, however, is a mistress and she will take you one of two ways. If you try to hold on to the external connections that defined who you thought you were, she will take you under the veil of insanity. If, however, you are able to let go of those illusions, to allow the current to take you out to sea and trust that although the shore is receding that this is the only way home, then and only then will she take you to places you never imagined existed.
“My dear Kyra, I do not know how to tell you what it is like to go within, but I can tell you this, when you release yourself into the flow of the mistress and you taste your own tongue and swim in your own blood, you enter a non-conceptual world, a world without words, or sights or sounds, a world where there is nothing to be connected and at first you don’t understand, but quickly you feel, I suppose as fish do underwater, but you come to understand the reason there is nothing to be connected, nothing to be in relationship with is, well, how do I say this, hell, here it is, there is just a oneness and that oneness is full and complete. Now don’t ask me no questions because I can’t give you any answers."
Kyra sat stunned and even if she did have a question she wasn’t at all sure her tongue was willing to move.
“Getting back to your original query on soullessness and my answer about connections I hope you see there are three basic positions. First is where we live without the awareness of the conceptual web of relationships that some call society or civilization, although I feel both definitions miss the mark. This is where most live their lives, unaware, unthinking, caught in a fantasy world that literally exists only in their own heads, and, I suppose, what is most sad, is most of those never even realize their whole life is nothing but a dream. Second is where Em is at the moment, although I would hazard a guess she is only vaguely aware that all is not as it is or should be. Em is in that space between unawareness and awareness and I can tell you, that is a most uncomfortable place to be, very close to being lost, of feeling dispossessed. It is, however, the first step to the third stage or position, the position of oneness in which the illusion of separation disappears.”
Kyra sat for a long time and so did Von and neither said anything. Then slowly a smile emerged from Kyra’s face and she stood up, emptied her glass and slammed it down on the table. “Von, you are one righteous dude. Now do right by this Hynerian and pour us both another.”
And so he did, and the two drank into the night such as Kyra had never partaken before. She missed her Papa, but Von was doing a damn fine imitation and that was just alright with her.
Categories: Story, Kyra, Von
18 comments:
Fan*tastic!
Von is one righteous dude.
Gotta go read the above first.
:-D
I think I like Kyra with a few snoots in her bellie. :-D
And yes, Von is one righteous dude. :-D
This is one of your best so far! Really really awesome.
As I read again, I marvel anew and how fantastic this chapter is. Had I written right away this morning, I know I would have had more to say regarding the first part of it, where Von explains what he meant by "connections". Though I never finished, I would be repeating much of what I said in the post below. So instead, I am moving on to the next part, Von's recollections of his time confined by the Javalinas.
Before anything else, I just have to say this is very much a wow chapter. As I read (must stop speaking for everyone) and each new piece of information enters, it does so without mishap. From what I know, what little I know, have heard of that could support what Von says he experienced, with more ease than one might imagine, it is taken as given. For once, which is seldom the case during reading, I was thinking of them consciously as them as your words. Wondering how and why, noticable only really when I moved over the part that reads: You see, in solitary confinement, you are forced to see your face... In a word, one could perhaps best describe it as a sense of wow.
There's no questioning of the truth of what Von is describing, I find that rather interesting - whether this is by use of pure imagination or whether it is moulded to fit to what I perceive, linked to any and all experiences that I have had that would even remotely give me a sense.
More in a bit. :-D
Thanks Jenni. Your kind words are always most appreciated. Wanna share some of that ice cream? :-)
Sweetest, thanks as always. I'll wait and give you a chance to finish your thoughts before I respond but I did want to let you know I've read your first part and as usual it warms my heart. :-)
WOW; Von has been through so much yet he's not bitter, he's used the bad to bring out the good and see the good. I have much more respect for the man and I understand him a lot more too. Awesome!!
HUGS & KISSES to you and Jack!
These last few chapters put me back to the summer again, where sometimes I would have to wait before I could comment, to just let that wave that rose up from the first reading run it's course and then return later. That first wave is by far better to ride.
A few days later, this chapter is as good, but many of those initial thoughts have come and gone.
I'm still fascinated by the part about faces before faces and I cannot quite get my head around it. What precisely he means. But then how could I, I have not been in that situation. It makes me think of several things though, the most obvious perhaps being the way in which we interact with other people and the different roles that we have in life, whether they be friends, lovers, collegues, parents and though we may not think so, and granted I do think we each are somewhere on a scale, there are always faces that we wear. What dictates them could be a whole host of things, expectation, society, tradition, environment, and though they all may be ours, they are still different to some extent or another. Hmmm - just pondering aloud. I keep coming back just as I go about my life to the question of how much of our lives are really ours. Back too to what I said about Kyra in the sense of all our decisions being based on who we are, and if we are moulded in this way by expectation etc, then surely there will always be parts of ourselves that we are repressing. Outside of that, I would have to say there are parts being repressed always, truths about ourselves that we cannot see or do not want to acknowledge. The very fact that there is a world around us, activity, people, our lives means that there is always something to be preoccupied with, there is always something going on that requires our attention, and so pondering still, without anything to bounce our attention off the only other place it could go is inside. Nothing being reflected back at us, and so we would be forced to create our own image, our only sound. If everything were quiet in this manner, I imagine we would ourselves get very noisy, trying to drown out the emptiness first and foremost, but after than, because there would be nothing else to hear and nothing else to see and so there would be room for all of us.
I keep thinking about Von's statement that this would be the worst kind of torture, to be cut off in every way from everyone and everything else and not to know whether that would ever change. To not matter (as he said it) and all I see is a big, black hole of darkness, of nothingness, of falling into just existing. I start thinking about the whole apple in the forest question (if in fact it was an apple..) and whether, not that if there were nobody to hear us we still would be able to make noise, but rather what that cloak of insignificance must feel like. Nothingness. Only what we are is left. And if that was all that was left, it's clarity must be stark, no hiding places left, no interuptions, no deflection.
I've really no idea, all I know is that when I read that sentence, windows started popping up everywhere and I wish, I were still back there in the process, before they got too many and all systems shut down. :-)
I have so much I want to say, I cannot find my way around it. Again, I reserve the right to say 'more later'. :-)
Sweetest, I suppose each of us will interpret that sentence to mean what we want it to me or what we think it means and I'm not sure there is any one right or wrong answer. It is a statement or question designed to cause one to see differently, to think differently, to step back out of the flow of what we think is reality and look with new eyes.
For me, our face before we had a face is a way of asking the most fundamental question of all, who are we? Are we who we think we are? Are we our face, our name, our story, our history, our memories, our life experiences, our connections, our jobs, our roles? Or, perhaps, is all that no more than clothes that hang or cover something else, something that was there before (birth) and will be there after (death). That face, the face before and the face after, is a question most of us rarely take time to ponder, to ask, to meditate or contemplate. I don't take as much time as I could to reflect on these things, to step out of the flow of busy-ness, to just be, and be in touch with being as opposed to running and doing and acting all important because I am so busy.
I don't know what my face before looks like. I have ideas, and those ideas tell me this face is perhaps more important than the face I see in the mirror, and my ideas tell me perhaps that other face is still there, just under the surface, kindly watching everything my other face does.
Well, that's just Poppet's two cents. :-D
Karen, about the only way I can describe Von is how Kyra did, as one righteous dude. :-D
I do like Von the more and more I get to know him and I do appreciate all that he has been through and the fact there seems to be no bitterness, a rare thing in my mind.
Hugs and kisses from Jack and I. :-)
Wow, excellent description of solitary confinement. It's not something one thinks about too often. It's certainly the most brutal and form of torture.
Thanks Deb. This chapter in part was born from a relationship I have with someone I work with who, for whatever reason, stopped communicating. The silence and non-response, the wondering of why, is much worse than any yelling or cursing.
And so he did, and the two drank into the night such as Kyra had never partaken before. She missed her Papa, but Von was doing a damn fine imitation and that was just alright with her.
***I was thinking she and Von might...YOU KNOW. Guess I am wrong.
LMAO, Danna, I love seeing the perspective of someone reading the story from the end backwards. :-D. Von is actually the oldest member onboard and more like a father figure. He knew her grandfather, owed him a favor, and came on Bravo to watch over her, although Kyra really doesn't need watching over. Nothing sexual between Kyra and Von. Kyra's love interest was/is Kieran, although she has had some flirtations with Johnny Disco, aka John Discovery. :-D
I will have to go looking for Johnny Disco.
I am off to November 06 and Yul...
☼)
The same thing keeps happening to me as I re-hit those comment buttons, as I do I have (since this is the second time around) a sentence or two that I intend to write and when I get here, I see that it already exists. I intended to write: I wholeheartedly agree with Kyra, Von is one righteous dude! In the repetitiveness there is an essential fact, namely that these chapters lose nothing through time. (Or through already knowing them, and that they do stand complete on their own.) As profound and penetrating today as it was that day.
"Kyra sat stunned and even if she did have a question she wasn’t at all sure her tongue was willing to move."
Kyra's tongue, my fingers. I am glad that you linked to this post. It was amazing.
Jen, I love it when readers actually follow the links back in time. As always, thanks for the kind words. :-)
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