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Strange, how a moment of existence can cut so deeply into our being that while ages pass unnoticed, a brief love can structure and define the very topology of our consciousness ever after.
One book I found not long ago was full of random characters except for pages 111 to 222, wherein I found an exposition that speculated that God had created the universe as a way of sorting through the great library, finding those books that were most beautiful and meaningful.
The demon gave a mirthful laugh. “Well, it was fair when you were sending all the Chinese to Hell who had never heard of Jesus. Wasn’t it? And what a cruel and vicious Hell it was. And your Hell was not our short little correct-you-a-little Hell. This was eternal damnation. At least in the true Zoroastrianism system you eventually get out of Hell. Do you have any idea how long eternity is? My heavens, what an imagination you humans have. What kind of God would leave you burning forever? Most of you wouldn’t do that to a neighbor’s dog, even if it barked incessantly at two a.m. every morning.
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Hell is for your edification and wisdom. Punishment? Yes. But not forever.”
“The Library of Babel.”
Reading babel next…
Lastly, you are here to learn something. Don’t try to figure out what it is. This can be frustrating and unproductive.
“These books are nothing but garbage,” Larisa said in a disgusted voice. “When I was looking at these, I was thinking about a lifetime spent reading great works of literature. Now I get it – this is Hell; an eternity surrounded by books, but they’re all nonsense.”
What creatures of habit we are. After only a few nights in Hell we had settled into a comfortable routine.
Where do all the things you believed go, when all the supporting structure is found to be a myth? How do you know how or on what to take a moral stand, how do you behave when it turns out there are no cosmic rules, no categorical imperatives?
How do you stay with someone when there are no dreams to build? No purpose to accomplish? No meaning? No meaning – that was the monster that drove us away from one another in the end. Always.
