The Measurements of Decay

by K.K. Edin

have spoken to you before about the ocean of consciousness. About its sublime immensity, about how terrifying it is to behold. It is the eyes, laden with an entire world trapped in a moment of perspective, which express the terrifying consciousness of the other. To suffer the infernal gaze of the other is to witness another consciousness recognizing you. Not the frozen eyes of the dead or the sheathed daggers of the dreaming, but the waking, attentive other. It is to have this terrific alien consciousness confront you and elude you with its mysteries; with its secret history, which it will not reveal to you; with its endlessness, which you shall never capture. Conversely, when you gaze into the mirror and look yourself in the eyes, you see nothing but a blank appearance. You feel nothing but the pacific and neutral zero of totality. You do not feel the same apprehension, the same sense of mystery or unpredictability. Everything behind those familiar eyes is already clarified. Your reflected gaze is, in fact, mute, because it signifies nothing except the very act constituting it. Yet the closest you will come to seeing the other— not merely her corpse, but her and her existence —is by looking her in the eyes. When you return her gaze, you are struck by the possibility of her history, of her present being like an immortal’s never-finished painting covered in centuries of layers. What would otherwise be just an animated object in the world, no different to the wind or an eart...